GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A restaurant owner/businessman has been arrested and accused of laundering money to support Mexican drug cartels.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan says 58-year-old Juan Romo-Padilla was arrested on Thursday. He owns La Posada, a Mexican restaurant, along with a convenience store in Detroit.
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According to the criminal complaint filed by the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Internal Revenue Service, the agencies started investigating Romo-Padilla in September of 2024.
They claim that between 2022 and 2026, he had made cash transfers of more than 100,000 wire transfers totaling more than $140 million. Most of the transfers were sent to Mexican states “associated with major drug cartels, including the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, La Familia Michoacana and the Sinaloa Cartel.”
In a statement, Joseph O. Dixon, the Special Agent in Charge for the DEA’s Detroit Field Division, said this investigation shows that “money laundering is not a victimless crime.”
“(Money laundering) is the financial engine that allows drug traffickers to turn illicit profits into the resources that fuel addiction, violence and death in cities across America,” Dixon stated. “We will follow the money, expose the networks behind these operations and dismantle the financial infrastructure that allows them to thrive. We are moving with a renewed sense of urgency and will not stop until these criminal networks are destroyed.”
Romo-Padilla faces charges of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, international money laundering, laundering of represented drug proceeds and violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. Each of those charges comes with a 20-year prison sentence.
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