Former Broker Pleads Guilty

A former investment manager at Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. pleaded guilty Thursday to helping the former governor of a Mexican state launder $11 million in drug money.

Consuelo Marquez admitted helping Mario Villanueva Madrid, former governor of the state of Quintana Roo, launder cash from the notorious Juarez drug cartel, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.

The governor took the money in exchange for providing police support and other help to the cartel as its massive cocaine shipments traveled through his state, prosecutors said.

Marquez, who worked at the brokerage firm until 2000, pleaded guilty last year to banking and wire fraud charges involving her taking out fraudulent loans from Lehman Bros. and using them for personal investments.

Marquez already faced as many as 30 years in prison on the wire fraud charges. She faces as many as 10 years more after Thursday’s guilty plea. Her sentencing has not been scheduled.

Prosecutors said Marquez helped Villanueva Madrid set up brokerage accounts at Lehman in the name of foreign shell corporations and laundered the money through a Mexican bank and back to another Lehman account.

The governor was a fugitive for two years after he left office in early 1999 and his constitutional immunity from prosecution expired. He was arrested in 2001 and is in custody in Mexico, awaiting extradition to the United States to face drug and money laundering charges.

Lehman Bros. has said it has fully cooperated with the federal investigation. Federal prosecutors have praised the brokerage firm for its help.