AT HIS OFFICE IN WACO, PENNINGTON PORED OVER THE PURCHASE RECORDS and bank statements from the stack of boxes Lawson had given him. He could see that a company called Grupo Aduanero Integral had made at least ten money wires in the amount of $935,000 to Heritage Place after Graham bought Dashin Follies and three other horses for José Treviño. Six months later, Graham paid the remaining $100,000 balance on the horses. This was Carlos Nayen’s backpack filled with cash that Lawson had told him about.
Pennington noticed two other Mexican companies also wiring money for Treviño’s horses: Basic Enterprises and ADT Petroservicios. The money wires from Basic Enterprises had come from Monterrey, Mexico, and were associated with the horse agent Ramiro Villarreal. But by early 2010 the activity from Basic Enterprises had dried up.
He also had the BBVA Compass bank records for Francisco Colorado Cessa, the owner of ADT Petroservicios, who’d spent millions in Ruidoso. Lawson and Perez said they still knew little about the wealthy businessman, but that his company, ADT Petroservicios, appeared to make its money from government oil contracts.
On the surface, the businesses seemed legitimate and the money looked clean. It would be his job to dig deeper until he found the truth. He would work in reverse, starting with the assets—the racehorses—and subpoena more auction houses to figure out how each horse had been purchased. He supposed there could be hundreds of racehorses from Oklahoma to California. It would be a massive undertaking.
For this he would need the help of his longtime partners, Steve Junker and Brian Schutt. He’d been working with the two narcotics investigators from the Irving Police Department, in the suburbs of Dallas, for more than a decade. Unlike most cops, Schutt and Junker were willing to wade through boxes of bank records and stacks of documents as long as it paid off in the end.
Over the years, the three of them had formed the core of the Waco Treasury Taskforce, and were known as “Steve P and the Two Irving Boys” in law enforcement circles. Schutt sported a biker mustache and was the quiet skeptic, while Junker, a bodybuilder, was the extrovert. They were both workaholics with an encyclopedic knowledge going back decades of street dealers and smugglers in the sprawling Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. Another thing they shared was that everyone mispronounced their last names. Schutt was pronounced “Skut,” not “Shut.” Junker had it worse. His last name was actually pronounced “Yunker,” but he’d resigned himself a long time ago to the fact that no one was ever going to get it right.
The three made an effective team. Pennington was intense and felt the weight of each investigation on his shoulders as the lead agent, while Schutt was a pragmatic sounding board and Junker would motivate the other two whenever they hit a snag. They looked forward to working with Doug Gardner. Pennington had helped the prosecutor on cases in the past but had never been through a trial with him. He admired Gardner’s work ethic, and he trusted that the diligent prosecutor would make sure their evidence and case were solid. Any holes and the defense would drive a spike right through their case. Pennington had discovered this the hard way during his first money laundering trial in the 1980s, when the defense attorney had raked him over on the stand during his testimony. Unnerved, he’d felt that their case was unraveling, and by the time he stepped down from the witness stand he was sure they’d lost. But much to his surprise they’d prevailed. That day he’d learned the value of having an experienced prosecutor on his side in the courtroom.