Pair of South Texas men even busted at port of entry with weapons,$ 159, 531 in money headed to Mexico
Jose Luis Torres, a native U. S. resident, was arrested at the Progreso, Texas, port of entry on June 3 after Mexican men denied him access into Mexico while driving his friend’s Cadillac Cta with devices and several other boxes in the tree.
Customs and Border Protection officers were suspicious that his immediate return to U.S. land in a car with North Carolina permit plates. According to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, he was taken to a secondary assessment place where he told an officer that he had four containers of miscellaneous weapons in the tree.
Torres claimed that his friend’s sweetheart had placed the boxes it. He allegedly claimed that he was paid$ 100 to give the 350 guns to Mexico along with the vehicle and the belongings when he was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations agents.
On a national cost of unlawful and illegally attempting to trade goods from the United States, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
In a different incident, CBP stopped a pair of South Texas men traveling north to Mexico on the Brownsville &, Matamoros global bridge in Cameron County, Texas.
A CBP officer allegedly asked Jose Luis Vega and Jesus Alejandro Soto if they were carrying more than$ 10,000 in cash and they later claimed they were not. According to a criminal complaint filed on June 7, a CBP officer alleges that they were.
An examination of the car, but, turned up 200 rounds of.380- caliber ammunition and numerous vacuum- covered plastic bags containing$ 159, 531 hidden inside the speaker- system panels, court records show.
Vega allegedly claimed in HSI interviews that he knew about the weapons and money in the car and that he would receive a percentage ( 1,595 ) of the cash after giving it to an unnamed party in Mexico. Soto also allegedly admitted to allegedly stealing over$ 10,000 from the country without making a declaration and doing so for financial gain.
Vega and Soto are accused of conspiring to illegally and knowingly export goods from the United States and attempt to move money over$ 10,000 illegally out of the United States.
The people were scheduled to make an appearance in Brownsville on June 12th for a detention reading before U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Betancourt.
