Border agent in Arizona marijuana case is indicted

Border agent in Arizona marijuana case is indicted

azdailysun.com

A federal grand jury indicted a U.S. Border Patrol agent Tuesday on charges of marijuana trafficking after prosecutors said he appeared to be a mole who infiltrated the agency to smuggle drugs.

The indictment came a day after a federal magistrate in Yuma allowed suspect Michael Atondo to be freed without bond until his trial on previously filed charges.

Atondo was arrested while on duty April 4.

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Well he is not convicted yet but it looks bad for him. Paid cash for a $26,000 boat. Then they released him on his own recognizance. That part of the story floored me. Can you imagine that you would be released on your own recognizance if you were indited for this crime? I think not. More likely you or I would be held on a couple million dollar bond.

azdailysun.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by wayouttheredude


Can you imagine that you would be released on your own recognizance if you were indited for this crime? I think not. More likely you or I would be held on a couple million dollar bond.

Maybe the judge is on the Cartel payroll as well ? That's very strange he didn't have to post any bond.

700+ lbs of pot in a border patrol vehicle, caught red handed while on duty ? Yeah this guy is going down. Without looking it up, I'd think that's got to be a 10-20 year prison sentence.

Assuming he's got contacts in Mexico and knows Spanish, he could disappear quite easily.

reply to post by wayouttheredude
Considering the cartel can spend over a million dollars on a sophisticated tunnel, it's not surprising they'd try to infiltrate the border patrol, or even bribe existing agents.

They have no shortage of money and inside help like that could be quite valuable to them.

Now the question is, how many more are there that haven't been caught yet?

Or better yet, why not just legalize it and tax it and use the taxes collected to help balance the budget, which would divert the flow of money from drug lords that are killing people, to governments that need the money? I'm more worried about people driving around under the influence of alcohol, than marijuana.

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Originally posted by wayouttheredude


Well he is not convicted yet but it looks bad for him. Paid cash for a $26,000 boat. Then they released him on his own recognizance. That part of the story floored me. Can you imagine that you would be released on your own recognizance if you were indited for this crime? I think not. More likely you or I would be held on a couple million dollar bond.

azdailysun.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Not even that, If you are a bank laundering drug money. You just pay part of the loot to the gov. and you're ok.

Wachovia Laundered Billions From Mexican Cartels

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the coc aine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.
Click on the the link.

reply to post by Schaden


That crossed my mind as well so you might be on to something. Money makes fools of a lot of people. A cartel paid off federal judge in that district would be of high value to them for sure.