Federal officials have quietly dropped 21 counts of money laundering against a Weston mother of four who had been accused of living off the proceeds of her husband’s marijuana smuggling in the 1970s and ’80s.
Authorities confirmed on Wednesday that prosecutors have dismissed all charges against Delores E. Pegg, 41, who was accused of helping her husband, Joe, a twice-convicted marijuana smuggler now serving a 30-year prison sentence, launder millions of dollars.
“Of course, she’s as happy as she can be,” said Fred Haddad, Delores Pegg’s attorney.
The government originally had said Delores Pegg knew her husband made his money smuggling drugs, and her involvement included withdrawing $700,000 from a bank and staying with him in Jamaica while he was a fugitive on drug charges in 1981.
The indictment was also dismissed against Joe Pegg and brother-in-law William “Buck” Pegg, a prominent Nashville, Ga., bank director and businessman.
Government attorneys were tight-lipped about the reasons for the abrupt dismissal on Monday before U.S. District Judge Lenore S. Nesbitt.
“We did it and it’s done,” said U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Wilfredo Fernandez.
“It’s being dismissed and there’s not much else we can say about it.”
The government also dropped its attempts to seize 500 acres of land the Peggs own in Colorado; Delores Pegg’s home on Derby Lane in Weston; a marina and boat brokerage in Sunny Isles; and hundreds of thousands of dollars scattered in several bank accounts.
Part of the problem appears to be the manner in which prosecutors in Georgia negotiated a guilty plea with Buck Pegg at about the same time prosecutors in Miami were preparing to indict him for the money-laundering conspiracy.
That plea, entered on July 11 at U.S. District Court in Macon, Ga., has been sealed and the attorneys are forbidden to discuss it. But it is mentioned several times in motions and judicial orders in the Miami case file.
Buck Pegg’s attorney, Jerry Froelich, refused to discuss the sealed plea, but praised Tom Scott, the new U.S. Attorney for South Florida, for dropping the case.
“We have always said there was insufficient evidence,” Froelich said on Wednesday from Atlanta.
“The new U.S. Attorney looked at it. He was clearly troubled by it. And they dropped it.”
Scott’s spokesman Fernandez refused to discuss whether the charges could be refiled against the Peggs.
Joe Pegg remains in a federal prison serving a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to marijuana smuggling charges in 1993 in Fort Myers.
The stint is his second in the federal prison system for marijuana smuggling. He pleaded guilty in February 1982 to a dozen counts for his role in a conspiracy to smuggle almost 500,000 pounds of marijuana on three freighters from Colombia into coastal Louisiana.
Joe Pegg was sentenced to 18 years in prison on the first case. The sentence was later cut to 15 years. But officials released him in August 1985, less than 39 months into the sentence, and placed him on parole and special probation until April 1993.
As part of the 1982 plea bargain, Joe Pegg promised to disclose all his assets, to forfeit those related to drugs, cooperate in other prosecutions and pay a $180,000 fine. According to federal filings in Fort Myers and New Orleans, Joe Pegg never made good on those promises to turn over the assets.
Many of the same properties, businesses and bank accounts were the focus of the money-laundering case authorities dropped on Monday against the Peggs.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in New Orleans dismissed the 1994 forfeiture case officials brought against the Pegg brothers, Froelich said.
