Posted: Monday, July 15, 2013 8:04 pm

Ildefonso Ortiz | The Monitor

Posted on July 15, 2013

McALLEN — A human smuggler who worked for the Gulf Cartel and recruited people through ads on the classifieds website, Craigslist, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on human smuggling and gun charges.

On Monday afternoon, Jose Gustavo Diaz Velázquez went before Chief U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa, who accepted a guilty plea — which was filed previously — and sentenced Diaz to 87 months in prison. Diaz had entered a guilty plea to the two charges July 27, 2012, and had been in custody since, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Diaz was arrested March 14, 2012, in Rio Grande City as he tried to transport a group of immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally, court records show.

Once in custody, federal agents then added charges when they tied him to an investigation into the use of online postings to recruit drivers to transport people suspected of being in the country illegally, court records show.

During questioning, Diaz admitted to possessing an AR-15 despite being an immigrant in the country illegally, and he also admitted to carrying out all the human smuggling operations for his bosses with the Gulf Cartel in both Mexico and in the U.S., records show.

The investigation was started in August 2011 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who had come across human smugglers claiming they had been recruited through Craigslist.

As part of the investigation, the agents found 10 different postings connected with Diaz’s group; soon after they were able to track the postings to a computer at the home of Diaz’s wife in McAllen.

http://www.themonitor.com/news/local...a4bcf6878.html