Thousands, not hundreds....that's how many names of unsuspecting Belize
City residents were used in the alleged money laundering operations carried
out by Moneygram sub-agency operated by the Coye family. 7News
has learnt that the operation was using names stolen from the Belize City driver's
license database from October of 2007 to December of 2008 – when the Coye
family home was raided by police who discovered one point five million dollars
in cash.
As their lawyer has said, having money isn't a crime – fair enough,
but stealing and mis-using people's identities is. And while it's
far from clear who stole those identities, we do know what they were used for.
7News investigation shows that the Coye Moneygram Sub-Agency was linked to a
company called Money Exchange International which provided a service called
Instadollar to internet gamblers in Peru, Turkey, and the United States. That
service was used primarily by those gambling on sporting events with what's
called a Sportsbook based in Costa Rica. A sports book allows betting on international,
mostly us sporting events.
But online gambling isn't legal in the United States so through the Instadollar
service, these gamblers would be instructed to send the money to Belize using
Moneygram. And this is the important part – to do so – they have
to have a name to send it to – so that's where the driver's
license database came in. Those names – from the Prime Minister to the
Governor of the Central Bank were used by Instadollar and then sent to Belize.
That's where a clerk working for the Coye's Money Exchange International
would then fill in the particulars such as the address and the license number
and then sign a false signature. The volume of transactions was incredible;
on some days, it would exceed $110,000.00 using dozens of names of unsuspecting
Belize City residents daily.
Sources inside the investigation tell us that over the one and a half year
period under investigation, it is estimated that the Moneygram master agent
and Coye Sub-agency shared a commission of 
BZ$7.5 million on transactions of over BZ$35 million. That's a broad outline of how the names were being
fraudulently used – but how the database was compromised is still a mystery.
As we told you on Friday, the nexus between sister companies Omni Networks
and Fultec Systems is an important study. Omni was the master agent for Moneygram
in Belize and Fultec Systems set up the City Council's driver's
license system. The companies sit in the same compound and on Friday the namesake
of Fultec and General Manager of Omni Dean Fuller told us he'd be doing
an internal investigation to see if there was any possibility that it could
be connected to his company.
Well, today Fultec sent out a release with a very different tone. The release
says, quote, "we state for the record that Fultec Systems Limited
is not involved with and has no connection to the illegal use of data from the
Transport Department." We assume they mean the City Traffic Department-
an important difference because Omni is associated with another license programme
for the Transport Department in Belmopan – which is not under suspicion.
But back to the Fultec denial; we're fine with it - and are glad to hear
it - but stress that Dean Fuller didn't tell us that on Friday; he said
he would investigate.
But moving on, the release says that the City Council called Fultec earlier
this year to tell them that the computer housing the driver's license
database had been compromised and that it had happened before. At the time,
Fultec advised the City Council to put in place a better password security system.
We note also that former City Councilor in charge of Traffic Dean Samuels told
us that the council's it department personnel also had access to the database.
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