Franz Felhaber is a customs broker near the Mexican-American boarder who helps to make sure Mexican goods get past customs bureaucracy and into America. He has been raising alarm among the Justice Deparment, the Treasury and Boarder and Custom officials by trying to exchange damaged cash, up to $6 million that he and his family "found" in Mexico. But Felhaber’s story is full of holes and inconsistencies. The only part of his story that has stayed the same is that the money "has nothing to do with drugs."
In the past few years, Franz Felhaber has been helping family members from Mexico exchange damaged cash from the 1970s and 1980s for new, clean cash. He brought his aunt Esther into an El Paso, TX bank with $120,000 that she apparently discovered while expanding a building in Juarez, Mexico claiming there was $20 million more. Some time later, Esther said the money was an inheritance from her mother.
Felhaber continued to exchange money with questionable backgrounds for the following few years, starting at $136,000, then $1.2 million and finally $5.2 million this April.
Federal authorities seized the last $6.2 million Franz Felhaber tried to deposit saying that there wasn’t any documentation saying how the money got from Mexico to the United States, a violation of smuggling laws that carries jail time. Felhaber and his family will have the opportunity to claim the seized money in front of a judge, but they will have to say where the money came from. Considering how riddled with inconsistencies his story already is, his story will have to be fool proof to get the $6.2 million back.
Source: Associated Press
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