Thread: VA: Man charged with selling license plates to illegal immig

Man charged with selling license plates to illegal immigrants
April 30, 2008
NORFOLK

A Guatemalan national made it easy for illegal immigrants on the Eastern Shore to drive, according to the FBI.

The FBI arrested Felipe Jesus Mazariegos-Perez at his home Tuesday on federal charges of buying hundreds of Tennessee and Mississippi license plates and car titles and selling them to immigrants who cannot prove their residency, as Virginia requires.

The FBI raided Mazariegos-Perez's home in Nelsonia, Accomack County, on Tuesday morning, looking for the out-of-state plates and titles. He was arrested and taken into U.S. District Court that afternoon, where a magistrate ordered him jailed pending a bond hearing Thursday.

Mazariegos-Perez, speaking through an interpreter, told the judge he could not afford to hire his own lawyer. His wife, Elvia Elizabel Soto-Ortiz, also was charged, but she was allowed to turn herself in by Monday.

The FBI has been investigating Felipe Perez, as he is known, for more than a year and a half, and following reports in The Virginian-Pilot in October 2005 of a swell of car crashes, some fatal, involving unlicensed, undocumented Hispanics driving cars with Tennessee plates.

The agents were led to Mazariegos-Perez, who turns 44 today, after breaking up an Eastern Shore prostitution ring that catered to Hispanic migrant workers, an FBI agent said in a court affidavit unsealed Tuesday. Several people convicted in that case as well as other illegal immigrants became cooperating witnesses in the Perez matter, the affidavit says.

In 2003, the Virginia State Police actually caught Mazariegos-Perez with 19 new Tennessee license plates and 31 new vehicle titles but never charged him.

He "claimed it was common knowledge among people in the area that vehicle titles and license plates can be easily obtained in Tennessee," the agent wrote in the affidavit. The case wasn't pursued again until fall 2006.

After Tennessee tightened up its requirements for obtaining plates and titles, Mazariegos-Perez switched to Mississippi, where identification requirements are more lax, according to the FBI.

The FBI said it learned through the witnesses that Mazariegos-Perez was charging $300 to $350 per set of license plates, but that his price increased to $450 as of January, the FBI affidavit says.

About twice a month, he would drive to Mississippi to pick up orders delivered to two post office boxes he rented there, the papers say.

The FBI said he typically used phony Social Security numbers and false names.

One witness told the FBI he saw 50 to 100 license plates in Mazariegos-Perez's trailer one day in 2006, the FBI said. In one deal about a year ago, Mazariegos-Perez sold five sets of license plates and titles to an individual for $1,010, the agent said in the affidavit.

Undocumented Hispanic drivers have been a menace on Eastern Shore roads for years, according to statistics and past interviews.

Thirteen fatal accidents between 2002 and 2005 involved Hispanic workers, most without insurance, and six of the vehicles involved bore Tennessee tags, according to a Virginian-Pilot investigation in 2005.

"It has contributed to a large volume of vehicular accidents involving illegal immigrants with poor driving skills and no automobile insurance, and many people have been seriously injured or killed," the agent wrote in the affidavit.

The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment on the case.

The couple face as much as 10 years in prison each if convicted.

Soto-Ortiz, suspected of being in the country illegally, also faces possible deportation. Mazariegos-Perez's immigration status could not be verified Tuesday.

http://hamptonroads.com/node/463038

In 2003, the Virginia State Police actually caught Mazariegos-Perez with 19 new Tennessee license plates and 31 new vehicle titles but never charged him.

How many people died in accidents between 2003 and now, because of him? Can the State Police be sued by the victim's families? Why the hell was he never charged?

He "claimed it was common knowledge among people in the area that vehicle titles and license plates can be easily obtained in Tennessee," the agent wrote in the affidavit. The case wasn't pursued again until fall 2006.

After Tennessee tightened up its requirements for obtaining plates and titles, Mazariegos-Perez switched to Mississippi, where identification requirements are more lax, according to the FBI.

If this isn't proof enough that illegal aliens should not have licenses, I don't know what is!

He made all that $$$$ but he can't pay for a lawyer?

Man gets 30 months for selling license plates to Illegals

By Tim McGlone

December 19, 2008

The Virginian-Pilot

NORFOLK

A Guatemalan national who says he fled political persecution and a threat of execution in his native country to start a new life in America was sentenced Thursday to 2-1/2 years in federal prison for selling hundreds of out-of-state license plates to illegal immigrants on the Eastern Shore.

Authorities said at a sentencing hearing Thursday that they have linked 56 automobile accidents, including five fatalities, to vehicles with license plates sold by the defendant, Felipe Jesus Mazariegos-Perez, 44.

The operation, which Mazariegos-Perez ran from his trailer in Nelsonia in Accomack County for at least six years, netted him more than $200,000, an estimate the U.S. attorney's office says is conservative.

The authorities, including the FBI, the Virginia State Police and immigration agents, found only a little more than $2,000 in the trailer when they arrested Mazariegos-Perez and his wife earlier this year. They don't know where the rest of the money went.

Mazariegos-Perez's wife, Elvia Elizabel Soto-Ortiz, 26, was sentenced Thursday to nine months in prison for her role in the scheme.

The couple, both of whom face deportation, have five American-born children who will now be living with relatives, the attorneys in the case said.

Based in part on a Virginian-Pilot investigation in 2005, the authorities launched their own inquiry into the heightened number of vehicles with out-of-state plates, mostly from Tennessee and Mississippi, involved in serious crashes.

While investigating a prostitution ring on the Eastern Shore, the authorities were able to get informants to record conversations with Mazariegos-Perez and his wife about the sales of license plates.

After Virginia tightened its vehicle registration requirements, making it difficult for illegal immigrants to title cars, the migrant workers turned to states such as Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina and Georgia where it was easier to register cars under phony names. Mazariegos-Perez would drive to those states to buy the plates.

In many of the crashes, the drivers and passengers fled the scene, leaving no way for state troopers to trace the driver or vehicle owner.

Mazariegos-Perez, 44, who has been in the country for 22 years, said in court that he seeks forgiveness from residents of the Eastern Shore for his actions.

"I want to apologize," he told U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson through an interpreter. "During the time I have been in jail, I've come to recognize my mistakes."

Mazariegos-Perez has a long history of traffic and misdemeanor offenses but has been in the country legally.

His attorney, Richard Colgan, an assistant federal public defender, argued for a more lenient sentence, saying that his client was only providing a service to the undocumented migrant farm workers and never intended to cause any harm.

Colgan placed part of the blame on "contradictory" immigration policies where a blind eye is turned to undocumented immigrant workers yet those same workers are not given any legal way to drive.

Jackson wouldn't hear it.

"The court will not make that connection," the judge said.

Colgan also argued for leniency based on Mazariegos-

Perez's difficult upbringing. Taken from his mother at the age of 3, he lived on the streets beginning at age 7 and was imprisoned and threatened with execution in Guatemala as a teenager for joining an anti-government group, Colgan said in a court filing. He fled the country after his release.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Moore argued for a stiffer sentence than federal guidelines called for, and the judge granted the request.

"The State Police could not do anything proactive to stop this practice," he said. "They're stuck with the aftermath of these problems."

Special Agent Albert R. Ashley of the State Police testified at the sentencing that accidents continue to occur on the Eastern Shore involving vehicles with license plates traced to Mazariegos-Perez.

http://hamptonroads.com/node/491971

This government does not care how many Americans are injured or killed by illegal alien drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol, unable to read road signs, have poor driving skills and other issues. Obama, LULAC, LaRaza and MALDEF still want to give driver's licenses to them regardless of this. Again this government views any injuries or deaths of innocent Americans as acceptable consequences for the open borders, cheap illegal labor and illegal alien vote agenda which exemplifies their extreme hatred for those they SHOULD be representing.

He gets 30 months. Americans get death and their families get a lifetime of grief.