A federal jury in Miami, Florida, convicted a U.S. businessman today for his role in a nearly five-year-long scheme to bribe Honduran government officials and to launder money to secure business for a Georgia-based manufacturer of law enforcement uniforms and accessories.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Carl Alan Zaglin, 70, of Marietta, Georgia, agreed to pay bribes to Honduran officials to obtain and retain business with Comité Técnico del Fideicomiso para la Administración del Fondo de Protección y Seguridad Poblacional (TASA), a Honduran governmental entity that procured goods for the Honduran National Police and other Honduran security agencies.
Instead of playing by the rules, Carl Zaglin unfairly sought to get ahead and enrich himself by paying bribes to Honduran officials, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Galeotti further noted that bribing government officials to win business “undermines the rule of law and distorts competitive markets.
“Today’s verdict reaffirms the Criminal Division’s commitment to rooting out corruption and providing an equal playing field for American businesses,” he added.
The trial evidence showed that, between March 2015 and November 2019, Zaglin, the owner and CEO of Atlanco LLC (Atlanco), orchestrated the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to Honduran officials, including former TASA Executive Director Francisco Roberto Cosenza Centeno (Cosenza) and former TASA Titular Director Juan Ramon Molina, to secure contracts with TASA worth more than $10 million.
The bribes were paid through Aldo Nestor Marchena, a third-party intermediary then residing in Boca Raton, Florida, who received $2.5 million in payments pursuant to sham invoices authorised by Zaglin.
In exchange for the bribes, Cosenza and other Honduran government officials assisted Zaglin, Marchena and others in obtaining contracts for the sale of uniforms and other goods for the Honduran National Police and securing payment on the contracts. Marchena, Cosenza, and Molina all previously pleaded guilty to their roles in the scheme.
To conceal the scheme, Zaglin, Marchena, Cosenza, and their co-conspirators used coded and oblique language like “commissions” and “fees” to refer to bribes and “Miami” to refer to Marchena, “the guys” and “the others” to refer to foreign officials, sham “Brokerage Agreements” falsely detailing legitimate services, and they communicated using personal email accounts and encrypted messaging applications.
The conspirators laundered the bribes by moving funds from Atlanco to Marchena’s front company in the United States to accounts held for the benefit of Honduran officials in the United States, Belize, and elsewhere.
The jury convicted Zaglin of one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), one count of violating the FCPA, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on both the FCPA count and the FCPA conspiracy count, and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the money laundering conspiracy count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Charges in the form of a criminal indictment against Zaglin, Marchena, and Cosenza were unsealed on December 20, 2023. Marchena and Cosenza previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering on June 5, 2025 and August 13, 2025, respectively.
Molina pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering on December 11, 2024.
