Officials shut down two major smuggling operations
January 9, 2006
NYNewsday.com
www.nynewsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--smugglingrings-ar0109jan09,0,1769621.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork
EL PASO, Texas -- Two human smuggling operations that earned more than $1.6 million over a two-year period and shuttled more than 600 people to locations across the U.S. have been shut down, officials said Monday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents and U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested alleged ringleaders Mike Lynn Price, 53, Fabiola del Carmen Moguel de Price, 39, and Samuel Walter Jarvis, 52, last week after a two-year investigation, ICE said Monday in a statement. All three Socorro residents originally operated one smuggling operation but the Prices and Jarvis later split to direct their own enterprises, officials said.

The suspects were indicted Dec. 21 by an El Paso federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to smuggle aliens. Thirteen of their alleged associates were also indicted, officials said.

Three defendants remained at large Monday but the rest were in custody on the conspiracy charges, but other charges could be added later, according to the ICE statement.

The two separate rings allegedly smuggled Brazilians, Colombians, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Ecuadorans and Mexicans in 18-wheelers to locations including Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Illinois, Florida and New York, charging between $1,500 and $6,000.

Officials said the organizers recruited tractor-trailer drivers at truck stops to conceal and transport the undocumented immigrants.

Also indicted were: Ronald Dean Anglin, 54; Juan Carlos Rios, 31; Lluvia Christa Pantoja, 24; Pedro Cruz Moreno; Melissa Santiba Inez, 35; Ruth Dolores Santiba Inez, 33; Pedro Escobar, 27; Marco Antonio Moguel-Lozano; Raul Lorenzo Lezama-Landeros, 35; Maria Guadalupe Castro, 46; Michel Rodriguez-Rincon, 27; Fermin Rodulfo Dominguez, 37; and Roger Alvin Auxter, 54.