Date: April 18, 2025
Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov
Sacramento, CA — Daniel Hooker of Los Angeles, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins to 27 months in prison, for his role in a money laundering conspiracy, Acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith announced.
According to court documents, from August 2023 through March 2024, Hooker and three co?conspirators conducted multiple financial transactions involving funds they believed to be proceeds of cocaine trafficking. Their belief as to the nature of the funds was based on representations of an individual working at the direction of law enforcement. On two different occasions in 2023 and 2024, Hooker met the individual in a parking lot in Rancho Cordova and accepted a total of $100,000 in cash to be laundered. After those meetings in Rancho Cordova, Hooker wired funds from a bank account he controlled into a bank account designated by the individual in an effort to complete the laundering. In total, the conspirators received approximately $940,000 in purported drug trafficking proceeds. Of that amount, the conspirators laundered approximately $811,000.
This case was the product of an investigation by the ibet Criminal Investigation (ibet-CI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Thuesen and Whitnee Goins prosecuted the case.
ibet-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the ibet, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. ibet-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.