Miami Professor and Crime Expert Admits to Money Laundering

(Bloomberg) -- A Miami professor who wrote about drug trafficking and international organized crime pleaded guilty to laundering more than $2 million in a Venezuelan bribery and corruption scheme, U.S. prosecutors said.

Bruce Bagley, who served as a professor of international studies at the University of Miami, entered his plea on Monday in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors said. They said he had studied how corrupt Venezuelan officials moved huge sums into South Florida and had built up a rich list of contacts with Latin American policymakers and U.S. anti-money-laundering officials -- then tried his own hand at it.

“Bagley, a college professor and author, went from writing the book on crime -- literally writing a book on drug trafficking and organized crime -- to committing crimes,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement.

Bagley's lawyer, Peter Quijano, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the case and his client's plea.

Bagley, 73, from Coral Gables, Florida, was co-editor of the 2015 book “Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime, and Violence in the Americas Today” as well as a contributor to various journals on the topic. He was charged last year with helping move millions of dollars into the U.S. from Venezuela and taking a 10% cut.

Colleagues said in November they could scarcely believe that the white-bearded scholar, also known for caring for his disabled wife, could get tangled up in such a scheme. But in recent years he had narrowly escaped a foreclosure sale of his home. John Polga-Hecimovich, a U.S. Naval Academy professor who knew him through academic networks, said it was easy to understand how Bagley could have turned to the nearest expedient -- his expertise.

“In the course of where he lives and in the research he does, I'm sure he came into contact with figures like the ones he's accused of coming into contact with,” Polga-Hecimovich said at the time.

Venezuela has been in crisis for years under the regimes of Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, the pain increasing with the global decline in oil prices. The nation's chief source of income, state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, has proved a rich target for theft, U.S. prosecutors say. The Bagley case was another sign that Venezuela's entrenched corruption had expanded to South Florida, where officials associated with both regimes have hidden ill-gotten profits and snapped up real estate.