Cloned business and law enforcement vehicles used as a smuggling tool

(Picture of "toy" Border Patrol vehicle courtesy of SpongeBob22 at Flickr)

It appears that the criminals exploiting our notoriously "not very secure" Southern border have a new tool in their arsenal.

Vehicles bearing fake logos of the Border Patrol, Fedex, DirecTV and everyone's favorite source of outsourced goods, "Walmart" are being used to smuggle illicit merchandise and human beings across the border.

Brian Ross (ABC News) reports:

A fake U.S. Border Patrol van was found to be carrying 31 illegal aliens in Casa Grande, Ariz.

An alert agent recognized that the "H" in the van's serial number is a letter used only on U.S. Border Patrol Jeep Wranglers. It should have been a "P."

"Neither emergency service vehicles nor any government vehicles are exempt from terrorist or other criminal use," the report warns its law enforcement readers.

The ABC report didn't have much source information about this case so I decided to do a little digging.

I started at the Border Patrol site -- and although a found press releases with an impressive (overwhelming) amount of illegal activity they are catching -- I couldn't find anything on cloned vehicles.

Sadly enough, we are seeing border patrol agents pay the ultimate price trying to defend our borders, and as most people know two of them are in prison for shooting a known drug smuggler.

Digging a little deeper, I found a story on WFAA TV (Dallas) by Rebecca Lopez with more detail on this. Both reports reference a report (I couldn't find) from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Of note, there is concern that terrorists could use this method to obtain entry (or worse) into the United States. The report referenced has allegedly been passed out to law enforcement agencies nationwide.

The WFAA story also references a cloned vehicles fact sheet put out by National Insurance Crime Bureau. Apparently cloning vehicles is a known method used by auto theft rings to fence their stolen merchandise.

Recently, there was quite a bit of uproar over Mexican truck drivers being given carte blanche access to U.S. roadways. Sadly enough, with cloned vehicles and the easy availability of counterfeit documents (identification) -- it might be difficult to tell which the difference between legitimate and illegitimate truck drivers.

I've covered counterfeit documents, as well as, the ease in which they are obtained frequently on this blog. A lot of these posts reference Suad Leija, who has been covered frequently in the press regarding the assistance she has given the government in exploring the problem we face with counterfeit documents (paper weapons).

Suad assisted the government in their prosecution of the largest counterfeit document cartel operating in this country. The case is still pending in court.

ABC News story by Brian Ross, here. Of note, boingboing, which a much more popular blog than this one linked to the Brian Ross story on this, also.

My daughter and her partner sent me the boingboing link, which inspired me write this rant.

WFAA did a video presentation of this story, which is on YouTube:

Kidnapping scams head North of the Border

Over the years, I've heard stories of illegal immigrants having family members kidnapped, or held in safe (?) houses until they pay up. Sometimes the kidnapping occurs in Mexico -- where kidnappings are common -- and the illegal aliens are compelled to wire money for the release of their loved one(s).

Dane Schiller of the Houston Chronicle recently wrote a interesting article about this with a slightly different twist. In this article, the alleged victim fakes the kidnapping and attempts to collect the money, herself.

From Dane's article:

A chilling voice mail came over Delfino Ramirez Diaz's cell phone: His pregnant and sobbing girlfriend told Ramirez she'd been snatched by kidnappers and only a ransom of $10,000 would stop them from inducing labor and selling their twins on the black market.

"Help me, my love! Help me!" Maria Isabel Puente said in Spanish. "They said they are going to give me an herb to remove my babies," she continued. "I love you so much. Whatever happens, I love you so much."

The incident, which police said played out quietly in Houston last week, turned out to be a scam.

The article quotes a retired FBI agent, who is now the mayor of a town in Texas as saying:

Retired FBI agent Raul Salinas, who taught anti-kidnapping courses to Mexican police and is now mayor of the border city of Laredo, said kidnapping scams are so common in Mexico that there is a term for them — autosecuestro — which basically translates as "self-kidnapping."

"I handled a couple in Mexico City — they would claim they were kidnapped and they were just trying to extort their families," Salinas said.

Going back to the alleged kidnapping in the article found the so-called victim in an apartment and arrested her.

Interesting article from the Houston Chronicle, here.

When I first started writing this post, I referenced I few personal instances of hearing about illegal immigrants being kidnapped, or having family members held for ransom. I decided to run a Google search, "illegal immigrants kidnapping," and a lot of references to this subject. If you would like to see for yourself, the search results are here.

Since illegal immigrants are generally fearful of reporting things to the authorities, it makes me wonder how much of this might be going on?

No matter what side of the immigration debate you are on (one thing is for certain) a lot of criminal activity is hidden within this growing issue.

Operation Paper Tiger - the true story, which reveals why our borders aren't very secure!

(Mohammed Atta of 9/11 infamy used counterfeit documents to get this legitimate Florida Driver's License. Counterfeit documents used to get legitimate ones are known as "feeder documents.")

Border security has become a major concern for all us ever since 9/11 revealed how vulnerable we really are.

Counterfeit documents paved the way for the terrorists in 9/11 to get into our country and cause the terrible event, which has forever changed the way we live.

In 2006, Suad Leija, who was raised as the stepdaughter of the founder of the largest counterfeit documents cartel in the United States began assisting the federal authorities in discovering how widespread this problem has become.

Suad has been able to identity members of the organization, who were previously unknown to law enforcement and provide historical data on the organization dating back to the late eighties.

The story begins with Suad meeting and marrying an American businessman, who runs businesses in Mexico and Central America.

Although, this part of the story still isn't completely clear, her husband turned out to be a little more than a person operating businesses in foreign lands.

Saud discovered her husband was trying to gather intelligence on suspected terrorists the cartel had supplied with counterfeit documents. The information he was interested in was contained in an extensive database of the cartel's business dealings.

Upon this discovery, Suad had to make a hard choice. The choice was between her family, or her husband and the United States.

After her husband described the terrorist threat -- comparing it to the violent drug gangs operating in Mexico, she chose to support him -- and ultimately the United States of America.

There is an excellent description of how this occurred in a La Raza article, which has been translated into English on the Paper Weapons site, here.

I found it interesting that La Raza was covering this story, given their political agenda. La Raza isn't the only Spanish media outlet covering the story, Saud has been featured on La Opinion and Univision, also. This would indicate to me that a lot of Hispanic Americans are worried about the criminal and possible terrorist implications that counterfeit documents pose to all of us.

Eventually, Suad and her husband fled to the United States and this is where Operation Paper Tiger begins.

Operation Paper Tiger documents the federal investigation into the widespread use of counterfeit documents in the United States, which are available to anyone, who can come up with the money to pay for them. It also reveals how these documents, which are produced in large numbers, aren't very expensive, either.

The book introduces a term (Paper Weapons), which might unfamiliar to the general public:

Counterfeit documents are Paper Weapons. The first weapon a terrorist needs to "FIT IN" in the United States is a document. Once he has this weapon and cover he can then go about his business of causing great harm to the United States and its citizens.

Here is a description of the cartel and their scope of operations:

The Castorena Leija-Sanchez crime organization is the major supplier of counterfeit documents/paper weapons in the United States. They are Mexico based and have been operating in the United States for 17 years. They are in every major American city and earn approx.300 million dollars per year. They also deal in narcotics and human smuggling. They are the new silent terrorist. Just about every illegal immigrant has purchased documents or knows some one who has from this organization. This book will go into the history, organization in Mexico and the United States, money laundering, illegal document manufacturing, human smuggling and murder.

Counterfeit documents are easily purchased in most major U.S. cities. Most of us have been led to believe that they are used by illegal immigrants, who are trying to make a better life for themselves.

While this is partially true, these documents are also used by criminals to commit a lot of different crimes and have been used by terrorists to blend into our society. The book is able to substantiate this with factual information from government sources, as well as, information revealed during Operation Paper Tiger.

If you were to consider the criminal activity alone, it would include narcotics, white slavery, and a host of financial crimes. More violent crimes result out of these so-called lesser crimes, also.

In fact, Suad once asked her grandfather if the family would sell documents to terrorists. His reply was chilling, “terrorism is an American problem, not a Mexican one.”

The novel includes actual transcripts of wiretaps, revealing a lot of criminal activity, including a pretty gruesome description of a murder within the cartel.

Also revealed are some amusing blunders made by members of the cartel and how the business of counterfeiting documents is set up much like any other successful organization.

It even shows how inmates in prison are serving their sentences under assumed identities.

Operation Paper Tiger shows how these documents are enabling benefits fraud and points out that most of the people, who immigrate here are poor and need assistance. In other words, it shows how the American taxpayer is picking up the cost for all this.

Benefits fraud is another growing problem. In 2006, Los Angeles was losing an estimated $1.5 billion dollars to benefits fraud.

Also revealed is how the recently defeated amnesty legislation wouldn't have done much to stop the flow of illegal immigrants across our Southern border. Quoting the book, itself:

Border Patrol agents have found fraudulent utility bills -- dating back more than five years, and thus proving residency under the Senate's bill --in the possession of those illegally crossing the border into the United States. Many of the immigrants with the documents had never visited or lived in the country, said one Border Patrol agent who requested anonymity.

This fact is substantiated in the wiretaps, which are available in the book.
Quite simply had this legislation passed, counterfeit documents would have made it easy for just about anyone to qualify as having been here for five, or more years.

Given this, it's possible the bill would have caused a rush to our borders by people seeking to get in on the amnesty provision.

If you are interested in knowing the truth about all the criminal activity, which is hidden in illegal immigration, Operation Paper Tiger is a must read.

Suad has paid a price for revealing this information. Her life has been threatened by the cartel and she is forced to remain in hiding. Since she is hiding with the borders of the United States, one has to assume this cartel has a pretty far reach.

Operation Paper Tiger can be bought directly on the Paper Weapons site, here.

Suad has been interviewed extensively by the mainstream media, including Lou Dobbs, Paula Zahn, Fox, CNN, Univision and La Opinion. Many of these stories are linked to the Paper Weapons site.

She has also produced her own set of YouTube videos, which can also be seen on the site.

I highly recommend reading this novel, which reveals Suad's and the government's efforts to keep us out of harm's way!


Pedro Leija-Sanchez serving time in prison under an assumed name.

Previous posts, where Suad is mentioned can be seen, here.

ICE raids two more companies and discovers stolen identities being used by illegal immigrants

Two more food processing companies have been raided by ICE (Immmigration and Customs Enforcement) in the past week. At least some of the illegal immigrants detained were found to be using stolen identities.

In North Carolina, 25 of the illegal immigrants were using the identities of U.S. citizens.

From the ICE press release:

United States Attorney George E. B. Holding announced today that his office has obtained criminal complaints charging 25 individuals with identity theft and various immigration violations. These individuals were arrested on Aug. 22, 2007, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as part of an investigation that focused on individuals who were working at the Smithfield Processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., and who had, as part of the commission of other crimes, transferred, possessed or used the identification of someone else in violation of federal law. The United States Attorney will ask the federal grand jury to consider these cases in the near future.

Meanwhile, in Ohio raids were conducted on Koch Foods and 160 illegal immigrants were detained. While this was going on a search warrant was executed at their corporate office in Chicago.

From the ICE press release:

Special agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today executed criminal search warrants at Koch Foods in Fairfield, Ohio. ICE identified more than 180 Koch employees working at the Fairfield plant requiring further questioning and administratively arrested more than 160 as of 4PM for immigration violations. ICE agents simultaneously executed criminal search warrants at Koch's corporate office in Chicago.

There is no disclosure as to whether any of these people were using other people's identities.

In both press releases, ICE outlined the reasons for the raids:

Unlawful employment is one of the key magnets drawing illegal aliens across our borders," said Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for ICE. "When illegal aliens use fraudulent documents or engage in identity theft, they not only exploit a vulnerability, they also cause real harm to U.S. citizens. We will pursue egregious violators by seeking criminal charges and continue to deploy tools such as the new social security no match guidelines to help businesses comply with the law."

Besides unlawful employment, there is a flourishing trade in counterfeit documents that enables a lot of illegal immigrants to obtain employment.

Suad Leija's Paper Weapons site is a place, where you can get an inside look at how bad this problem is. It also shows how other crimes, besides illegal immigration are tied into the trade.

Suad is currently writing a book, which will go into a lot of detail about the trade in paper weapons.

ICE press release on the North Carolina raid, here.

ICE press release on the Ohio and Illinois raids, here.

Previous posts on how illegal immigration ties into other crimes can be viewed, here.

A look into Arizona's identity theft and counterfeit document problem

Fake ID picture courtesy of caural at Flickr

I've done a couple of posts about how new employment verification laws are likely cause more illegal immigrants to use real identities. In the not too distant future, Social Security numbers are probably going to have to be able to be tied into a real identity to meet federal employment eligibility requirements.

Arizona -- which already ranks extremely high in incidents of identity theft, according to the various studies conducted on the subject -- might be on the front line of a new effort designed to stem the flow of illegal immigration.

Daniel González (Arizona Republic) did an interesting story on this issue in Arizona:

Arizona's new employer-sanctions law requires companies to verify worker eligibility through a federal database. Lawmakers in other states also are taking steps to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to use fake documents to land jobs, hoping the crackdown will cut down on illegal immigration. And under new rules announced last week by the Bush administration, employers risk prosecution if they don't fire workers whose names and Social Security numbers don't match.

But nobody thinks the fraudulent-document industry in Arizona will dry up and disappear. If anything, it's going to get bigger and more sophisticated as criminals who make fake documents adapt to meet demand. The database can't flag documents made with stolen identities, where the names and numbers match. As a result, a proliferation of fraudulent IDs, combined with identity theft, could undercut the employer-sanctions law.

In July, Arizona signed a pretty tough law designed to go after employers, who hire illegal immigrants:

In July, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed a tough employer-sanctions law aimed at turning off the job magnet that draws illegal immigrants. The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, revokes business licenses of employers caught knowingly hiring illegal workers a second time. It also requires the more than 150,000 licensed Arizona employers to run Social Security numbers and other data for new employees through the federal Basic Pilot Program, an electronic verification system. Arizona businesses employ about 2.6 million workers.

Two other states, Colorado and Georgia, have passed similar laws.

David's interesting article goes on to give some scary (real world) examples of how easily counterfeit documents are obtained.

In the article, David cites an Arizona Task Force, which was able to get all kinds of counterfeit documents using names of known terrorists.

The crooks and gangsters behind data breaches -- which frequently make the news, and already provide a lot of information to criminals in too many places, including Internet chatrooms -- are probably gearing up to sell to a potentially large market segment (20 million people).

Of course, a lot of legitimate businesses are already marketing to this segment of society. How many times do we hear, "press 1 for English ..," when using the services of a lot of the businesses out there?

It's become easy to counterfeit documents and too much information has already been compromised. A lot of these documents are produced in apartments and garages, using portable technology, easily purchased from a variety of sources. It doesn't take a lot of expertise to accomplish what causes a lot of damage to the person, who has had their identity stolen.

The criminals selling the information and producing the counterfeit documents don't really care, who is buying them as long as they are getting paid.

There is no easy solution to this. There are a lot of reasons from the rights of the middle class (who foot the bill for all of this) to our health and well-being, which dictate that stronger action needs be taken.

I just hope, we aren't planning to take half-steps and end up with a bigger problem.

The key would be to look at the enabling factors, which make it pretty easy to use someone else's information. The government, financial, retail and IT sectors need to start working together instead of against each other. Recently, this problem seems to be turning into a blame game, where everyone seems to be blaming each other.

Hopefully, most of them are already taking measures to do this. Getting caught losing information doesn't exactly inspire consumer confidence, or the trust of the voting public.

Besides that, it's getting more and more expensive to clean up the mess that this problem causes. Maybe the cost (money involved) will be what finally gets a few people's attention!

Daniel González's very interesting article, here.

Are illegal immigrants from Islamic nations slipping across our Southern border?

Not all the illegal immigrants slipping across our Southern border were born in Mexico. For years, a substantial amount of them hail from Central America and now there is evidence that Islamic drug traffickers are using the route, also.

Although many of the people making this crossing are looking for jobs, which will enable them to make a better life for themselves, the entire process is controlled by organized criminals.

While many of us have sympathy (empathy) for people trying to make a better life for themselves, it is often hard to distinguish between innocent workers and hardened criminals, or worse.

Sara Carter of the Washington Times is reporting some of our leaders, who are alarmed by this are calling for an investigation to study how bad the problem could be.

In Sara's own words:

Rep. Ed Royce, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs terrorism and nonproliferation subcommittee, said the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) document — first reported yesterday by The Washington Times — highlights how vulnerable the nation is when fighting the war on terrorism.

"I'll be asking the terrorism subcommittee to hold a hearing on the DEA report's disturbing findings," said Mr. Royce of California. "A flood of name changes from Arabic to Hispanic and the reported linking of drug cartels on the Texas border with Middle East terrorism needs to be thoroughly investigated."

According to the DEA report, the people of interest in the report are versatile in their linguistic abilities:

These "persons of interest" speak Arabic, Spanish and Hebrew fluently, according to the document.

The report includes photographs of known Middle Easterners who "appear to be Hispanic; they are in fact, all Spanish-speaking Arabic drug traffickers supporting Middle East terrorism from their base of operations" in the southwestern United States, according to the DEA.

Birds of a feather tend to flock together and it is no secret that a lot of terrorist activity has been funded by a booming poppy trade in Afghanistan for over twenty years now.

Another Congressional leader, Congressman John Culberson (R) supports taking a deeper look at this, also.

According to the Department of Justice's National Drug Threat Assessment (2006), heroin production has declined in most source countries, with the exception of Afghanistan.

The report stipulates that no large increase of heroin has been noted in the United States, but it did speculate:

Any significant substitution of Southwest Asian heroin for South American heroin most likely would take several years to occur because Colombian and Dominican criminal groups control most white heroin drug markets, and as such, there are relatively few established Southwest Asian heroin transportation and distribution networks in the United States. Moreover, Colombian and Dominican criminal groups quite likely would strive to maintain control over domestic heroin distribution by purchasing Southwest Asian heroin from sources in Asia or Europe and distributing it in eastern drug markets.

Perhaps, the new report cited in the Times means that this process is already occurring and the groups involved in this deadly trade are creating an unholy alliance.

Terrorists need money to fund their causes, and one of the ways they make it is through illegal means, including drug trafficking.

Sara Carter also has written about Suad Leija, who is helping the federal authorities deal what will probably prove to be a major blow to a major counterfeit document cartel operating throughout the United States. Suad is the stepdaughter of one of the major players in the organization.

I first became interested in Suad's story after reading Sara's article.

Suad has been featured by Lou Dobbs, Fox News, Paula Zahn and several other news organizations.

One of the reasons, Saud decided to assist the authorities in going after her family was a chilling remark her grandfather made when she asked him if the "family" would sell documents to terrorists. His reply was "terrorism is an American problem not Mexican."

Suad is now writing a book about her experiences and is offering a personally autographed copy to anyone, who drops her an e-mail before the release date and then purchases the book directly from her Paper Weapons site.

The e-mail address can be had by clicking on the contact link on the left side of the main page. The book will help support the sacrifices, she has made assisting the authorities in identifying a threat to the citizens of the United States.

Washington Times story, here.

Department of Justice's 2006 National Drug Threat Assessment, here.

If you would like to write Congressman Ed Royce to show support, or make a comment on his call for an investigation, his website is here.

Another person supporting this investigation, Congressman John Culberson's site can be reached by linking, here.