A man who oversaw a scheme to smuggle millions of dollars in drug money from the US to drug cartels has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison, according to the US Department of Justice.
Daniel Shaun Zilke, who went by the nickname “The Englishman,” was also fined $50,000 and ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Zilke, 49, was arrested last year in May and pleaded guilty months later to conspiracy to aid and abet drug distribution, money laundering and obstruction of justice by stealing and attempting to conceal the theft of $150,000 in DEA secret funds. He was sentenced on Nov. 4.
Authorities accused Zilke of laundering money on behalf of drug cartels for five years starting in 2015. The case against Zilke and his associates began that year when an undercover DEA agent posing as a money launderer contacted Zilke.
As part of the guilty plea, federal officials said, Zilke admitted he told an undercover company that he had a client in Europe who needed hundreds of millions of dollars to move to Mexico and that he could use the charity's Dallas bank account for the money.
Prosecutors say an undercover agent helped Zilke move the money by allowing him to use bank accounts associated with businesses that often deal with large sums of money.
They suspect that Zilke and his associates also planned to take a lot of money from drug traffickers across the country and put it into different bank accounts, including those controlled by at least two of the suspects in the case. The suspects were identified as Jeffrey Mark Thompson, 63, of Dallas and Gustavo Adolfo Aldana-Martinez, 58, of Pico Rivera, Calif. Both men were convicted in the case.
Zilke and the two men each received a commission that was a percentage of the money received from their accounts, according to court documents. Prosecutors did not say what the percentage was.
At one point during the investigation, federal officials said, Zilke promised to cooperate and expose the money laundering organization. Detectives offered him $200,000 to give to Thompson.
The intent was for Thompson to move the money to his own bank accounts and eventually return the money to secret DEA accounts, federal prosecutors said in a written statement.
“However, approximately two weeks after the money was delivered, Zilke returned to Thompson's residence and took $150,000 without telling the DEA,” the statement read. “Following this theft of government funds, he repeatedly lied to agents about the money and made excuses as to why it was taking so long to receive wire transfers for the entire $200,000.
Thompson, who is awaiting sentencing, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to conspiracy to aid and abet drug distribution, money laundering and concealment of drug trafficking proceeds.
Aldana-Martinez, who has been convicted of similar crimes, is serving a four-year prison sentence.
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