The owner of La Popular, a series of money transfer services in Oregon and Washington, was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison on Wednesday for laundering millions of dollars in drug revenues to Mexico.
Brenda Lili Barrera Orantes, 40, of Beaverton pled guilty to conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.
She owned and operated La Popular locations in Hillsboro, Beaverton, Woodburn, Odell, Canby, and Vancouver. According to prosecutors, she also acted as the company’s compliance officer, in charge of ensuring that the rules and regulations governing its financial operations were followed.
U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut sentenced Barrera Orantes to three years and five months in prison.
According to Assistant US Attorneys Christopher L. Cardani and Julia Jarrett, La Popular businesses transmitted more than $4.2 million in wire transfers to drug-trafficking locations in Mexico between August and November 2024.
Homeland Security Investigations investigators, in collaboration with the Internal Revenue Service and the Westside Interagency Narcotics team, launched the investigation in 2021 after receiving tips from a confidential informant. Police investigating fentanyl trafficking revealed that many drug dealers used La Popular to transfer their revenues.
“By early 2021, defendant and her La Popular businesses had become a magnet for drug traffickers in the Portland metro area,” Cardani and Jarrett wrote.
Barrera Orantes charged a 10% fee for each transaction, netting her at least $1.8 million, according to prosecutors. La Popular divided the money into several wire transactions among its outlets, using fictitious names and addresses for the senders to bypass record-keeping requirements, they alleged.
In April, federal officials searched Barrera Orantes’ Beaverton house with a warrant and discovered $120,000 in cash packed in $10,000 stacks in the bottom of a closet, according to Jarrett.
They also investigated three La Popular locations in Beaverton, Hillsboro, and Vancouver, seizing over $300,000 in cash, a 2021 Cadillac Escalade, jewels, and high-end apparel.
Barrera Orantes consented to give up her Beaverton home, as well as all of the seized cash and property related to her crime.
Her defense attorney, John C. Terry, advocated for a prison sentence of no more than a year and a day, emphasizing that his client is a first-time offender who has accepted responsibility and served more than nine months in jail since her arrest. He claimed she made the wire transactions for confidential informants acting on the orders of federal agents.
Terry said she is now hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and fears deportation, which would separate her from her three minor children, all of whom are U.S. citizens, after living in the country for more than two decades.
Barrera Orantes, who is originally from Guatemala, was told nearly a decade ago to leave the country voluntarily after overstaying her visa, but she refused, according to the administration.