Police uniform supplier sentenced to eight years in Miami-Honduran corruption case

Jay Weaver, Miami Herald on Dec 4, 2025

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A Georgia supplier of law-enforcement uniforms was sentenced to eight years in prison on Tuesday after he was found guilty in Miami federal court of conspiring with a former South Florida banker to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to the ex-head of a Honduran government agency to secure a $10 million contract.

Carl Alan Zaglin, 70, the owner and CEO of Atlanco LLC in the Atlanta area, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra to turn over $2 million to the federal government for his ill-gotten profits from the illicit foreign transaction.

At his trial in September, Zaglin was convicted of conspiracy, foreign corruption and money-laundering charges and faced between 12 and 15 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, according to court records. Assistant U.S. Attorney Eli Rubin argued the guideline range should be higher in light of Zaglin’s leadership role in the international bribery scheme. His defense attorney, Robert Perez, sought a prison term of less than three years, citing his age, health and other factors, but to no avail.

Zaglin’s case highlighted the sometimes tainted nexus among U.S. businesses, the South Florida banking system and Latin American countries, federal authorities said.

“This defendant tried to buy influence, rig contracts and corrupt a foreign government for his own gain,” Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones said in a statement, adding that Zaglin’s sentence “makes clear that when you bribe public officials, anywhere in the world, you answer for it in an American courtroom.”

Worked at Wells Fargo

Before trial, co-conspirator Aldo Nestor Marchena, a former asset manager with Wells Fargo Bank in Boca Raton, pleaded guilty in June to a conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was sentenced to seven years in October. Marchena, 52, also has a prior fraud conviction stemming from his work as a banker.

Zaglin and Marchena were accused of conspiring to bribe Honduran government officials, including Francisco Roberto Cosenza Centeno, the former executive director of the Honduran government entity known as TASA. Cosenza, 67, the third defendant in the foreign corruption indictment, pleaded guilty in August to a money-laundering charge and faces sentencing in February after he undergoes a neuropsychological evaluation, court records show.

The trial evidence showed that between March 2015 and November 2019, Zaglin orchestrated payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to Honduran officials — including TASA’s Cosenza and former TASA titular director Juan Ramon Molina — to secure uniform contracts worth more than $10 million.

The bribes were paid through Marchena, the banker, who in turn received $2.5 million in payments from “sham invoices” authorized by Zaglin.

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, according to the Justice Department.

Molina, 60, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit money laundering last year, as the Homeland Security Investigations probe focused on the other defendants, Zaglin, Marchena and Cosenza. Molina still faces sentencing.

To conceal the scheme, Zaglin, Marchena, Cosenza and their co-conspirators used coded and oblique language, such as “commissions” and “fees” to refer to bribes and “Miami” to refer to Marchena. They also used “the guys” and “the others” to refer to foreign officials, and sham “Brokerage Agreements” falsely detailing legitimate services, according to the Justice Department.

They communicated using personal email accounts and encrypted messaging applications, according to the department’s trial attorneys, Peter Cooch and Clayton Solomon, and the Miami prosecutor, Rubin.

Connections with Bolivian case

The Honduran corruption scheme was uncovered after Rubin had brought previous charges against a South Florida businessman, his father and others who paid bribes to government officials in Bolivia to obtain a tear-gas contract.

Bryan Berkman, former CEO of Bravo Tactical Solutions in Tamarac, his father, Luis Berkman, and another businessman were convicted of paying more than $1 million in kickbacks to high-ranking Bolivian officials to obtain a $5.6 million tear-gas defense contract with the government of former interim Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez, who succeeded Evo Morales in 2019.

As part of their plea deals, the Berkmans not only helped make the Bolivian tear-case case, but they later provided additional evidence in the Honduran police-uniform investigation, including trial testimony.