Feds crack down on half billion-dollar Guatemalan smuggling operation

(The Center Square) – A multi-agency operation led to the indictment of a major transnational criminal organization based in Guatemala smuggling thousands of foreign nationals through Mexico into New Mexico and throughout the United States.

In the U.S., the organization primarily operated in New Mexico, Arizona, California and western Texas in the El Paso region. Once in border states, illegal foreign nationals were smuggled to Virginia, Florida and other states thousands of miles away, facilitated through the U.S. banking system.

U.S. Attorney Alexander Uballez for the District of New Mexico announced a grand jury indictment issued in May had been unsealed in which eight leaders of the Guatemala-based Lopez Human Smuggling Organization were charged with “conspiracy to bring in, transport, and harbor illegal aliens.”

The Lopez Human Smuggling Organization is believed to have generated between $104 million and $416 million in illicit proceeds from human smuggling operations between September 2020 and April 2023, Uballez said.

So far, law enforcement officials have arrested six alleged members of the organization in California, Arizona and Florida in a coordinated, multistate enforcement operation.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also sanctioned the organization and froze its members’ assets.

According to the indictment, Ronaldo Galindo Lopez-Escobar, known as “Tio Roni,” 46, of Malacatan, Guatemala, leads the organization in Guatemala. He and nine co-defendants were charged “with conspiracy to bring in, transport and harbor illegal aliens” in May. He remains a fugitive.

Elvis Bersai Lopez-Ambrosio (“Pepe”) and Whiskey Hans Lopez-Ambrosio (“Hands”) worked with Mexican cartel human smugglers to move foreign nationals from Guatemala through Mexico into southern New Mexico. They include Jumilca Sandivel Hernandez-Perez and La Linea Cartel member known by several names: “Chikis,” “Chiquis,” “Enano,” and “Chicken.”

Once the foreign nationals were smuggled into New Mexico, Elvis and Whiskey allegedly oversaw the next level by managing “mid-level smugglers.” They include Eli Adonis Esteban-Lopez and Wenry Gabriel Gomez-Lopez, who allegedly helped manage the day-to-day operations, and Karen Stefany Hernandez-Vanegas, who managed the money, according to the indictment. Hernandez-Vanegas allegedly received deposits and made payments to co-conspirators nationwide using the U.S. banking system, peer-to-peer money transfer applications, and in bulk cash payments.

Elvis allegedly instructed co-conspirators to open U.S. bank accounts to be able to receive “smuggling fees from smuggled aliens on Elvis’s behalf and in a manner that would be untraceable to Elvis,” according to the indictment. He then instructed his co-conspirators to withdraw the funds and either give him the funds, convert the funds into assets including real estate, or send the funds to Lopez-Escobar or others in Guatemala. He allegedly used wire transfers through money service businesses “to minimize the trackability of the funds to Lopez-Escobar,” according to the indictment.

The organization also allegedly “purchased fraudulent Mexican documents and paid cartel fees to facilitate the movement of migrants through Mexico,” the Treasury Department said. “As their business grew, the organization acquired buses to transport greater numbers of migrants to the United States” and operated stash houses along the U.S. southwest border to illegally house those they were smuggling. To fund their operations, they relied on several “U.S. banks and money service businesses to receive payment from the family members of those being smuggled and to pay other members of the organization, located in Mexico and Guatemala, for their smuggling services,” the Treasury Department said.

If convicted on current charges, members of the Lopez organization face between 10 and 20 years in federal prison.

The action comes after the leaders of two Texas-based smuggling operations were sentenced to dozens of years in prison for orchestrating an elaborate human smuggling and stash house enterprise in south Texas that stretched from Honduras to Boston.

OFAC also recently sanctioned other transnational criminal organizations allegedly involved in human smuggling. Last month, it sanctioned a Tijuana, Mexico-based Abdul Karim Conteh Human Smuggling Organization and a Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua human smuggling and trafficking operation specializing in “gender-based violence, money laundering, illicit drug trafficking, and other criminal activities.”