Border officer hiring binge got ahead of screening

Agency is now catching up, while new corruption measures are taken

By Greg Moran, UNION-TRIBUNE
Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 1:49 p.m.

For nearly two decades, Lorne Leslie Jones worked among the smog-choked inspection lanes at the border crossings in San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, one of hundreds of uniformed customs officers tasked with guarding gateways into the U.S.

But something set Jones apart from his colleagues, federal prosecutors say — that for almost half the time he was a Customs and Border Protection officer, the ex-Marine known as “Hammerâ€