Thread: Border inspector accused in cocaine-smuggling case

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 03935.html

Border inspector accused in cocaine-smuggling case
New York Times
Nov. 9, 2008,


A veteran customs inspector recently arrested in Texas on drug charges helped traffickers smuggle about 3,000 pounds of cocaine into the country over five years, according to a court document filed last week.

The inspector, Jorge A. Leija, 43, allowed smugglers to drive cars loaded with cocaine through his entry lane at the Eagle Pass border crossing, about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio, without inspection, according to testimony by an unnamed Drug Enforcement Administration agent.

Leija was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from January 2001 to October 2006, the agent said at a bail hearing on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Del Rio.

Court documents said Leija was also paid $30,000 to make false statements on an application he submitted in September 2003 to obtain an American passport for another person.

Leija worked as an inspector for 11 years, said Rick Pauza, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman in Laredo.

Late last month, a federal grand jury indicted Leija on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and making a false statement. He was arrested on Oct. 30.

Leija had been placed on administrative duty more than two years before his arrest and assigned to a desk job, said his lawyer, Richard F. Gutierrez.

Leija's arrest is the latest in scores of corruption cases in the last few years involving agents along the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

SERIOUS prison time and forfiture of ALL assets!