EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A North Carolina resident and two South Texas men are facing federal charges in connection with failed attempts to smuggle ammunition and cash to Mexico.
Jose Luis Torres, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested at the Progreso, Texas, port of entry on June 3 after Mexican soldiers denied him entry into Mexico while driving his niece’s Cadillac CTS with appliances and several other boxes in the trunk.
His sudden return to U.S. soil in a vehicle bearing North Carolina license plates raised the suspicion of Customs and Border Protection officers. They sent him to a secondary inspection area where he told an officer he had four boxes of assorted-caliber ammunition in the trunk, documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas show.
Torres told CBP his niece’s boyfriend had placed the boxes there. But when turned over to Homeland Security Investigations agents, he allegedly said he was paid $100 to deliver the 350 bullets to Mexico along with the car and the appliances.
He faces up to 10 years in prison on a federal charge of knowingly and unlawfully attempting to export goods from the United States.
In a separate case, CBP stopped a pair of South Texas men in a vehicle headed south to Mexico on the Brownsville & Matamoros international bridge in Cameron County, Texas.
A criminal complaint filed June 7 alleges Jesus Alejandro Soto and Jose Luis Vega were asked by a CBP officer if they were carrying firearms, ammunition, or more than $10,000 in cash and stated they were not.
An inspection of the vehicle, however, turned up 200 rounds of .380-caliber ammunition and several vacuum-sealed plastic bags containing $159,531 hidden inside the speaker-system panels, court records show.
In interviews with HSI agents, Vega allegedly said he knew about the money and ammo in the vehicle and that he would be paid 1 percent ($1,595) of the cash once he delivered it to an unnamed party in Mexico. The complaint states Soto also allegedly admitted to taking cash over $10,000 out of the country without declaring it and doing so for financial gain.
Vega and Soto face one count each of conspiring to knowingly and unlawfully exporting goods from the United States and unlawfully attempting to transport currency over $10,000 out of the U.S.
The men were scheduled to appear at a detention hearing June 12 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Betancourt in Brownsville.
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