The indictment of a significant transnational criminal organization headquartered in Guatemala, which was responsible for the smuggling of thousands of foreign nationals through Mexico, into New Mexico, and throughout the United States, was the result of a multi-agency operation.
The organization’s primary operations were located in the El Paso region of western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California in the United States. The U.S. banking system facilitated the smuggling of illegal foreign nationals to Virginia, Florida, and other states thousands of miles away once they were in border states.
U.S. Attorney Alexander Uballez for the District of New Mexico has announced the unsealing of a grand jury indictment issued in May. The indictment charges eight leaders of the Lopez Human Smuggling Organization, which is based in Guatemala, with “conspiracy to bring in, transport, and harbor illegal aliens.”According to Uballez, the Lopez Human Smuggling Organization is estimated to have generated illicit proceeds from human smuggling operations between September 2020 and April 2023, ranging from $104 million to $416 million.
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So far, law enforcement officials in California, Arizona, and Florida have detained six alleged members of the group as part of a coordinated multistate enforcement operation.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury Department also sanctioned the organization and placed its members’ assets under freeze.
According to the indictment, Ronaldo Galindo Lopez-Escobar, also known as “Tio Roni,” 46, is the organization’s leader in Guatemala. In May, he and nine co-defendants were charged with “conspiracy to bring in, transport, and harbor Illegal Alien.” He continues to be a fugitive. Elvis Bersai Lopez-Ambrosio (“Pepe”) and Whiskey Hans Lopez-Ambrosio (“Hands”) collaborated with Mexican cartel human traffickers to transport foreign nationals from Guatemala and through Mexico to southern New Mexico. They consist of Jumilca Sandivel Hernandez-Perez and a member of La Linea Cartel who goes by the names “Chikis,” “Chiquis,” “Enano,” and “Chicken.”
Elvis and Whiskey are purported to have overseen the subsequent stage of the operation by overseeing “mid-level smugglers” after the foreign nationals were smuggled into New Mexico. The indictment alleges that Eli Adonis Esteban-Lopez and Wenry Gabriel Gomez-Lopez assisted in the management of the day-to-day operations, while Karen Stefany Hernandez-Vanegas was responsible for the financial management. Hernandez-Vanegas allegedly used the American banking system, peer-to-peer money transfer programs, and large-scale cash payments to receive deposits from and make payments to accomplices across the nation.
In order to receive “smuggling fees from smuggled aliens on Elvis’s behalf and in a manner that would be untraceable to Elvis,” the indictment alleges that Elvis instructed co-conspirators to establish U.S. bank accounts. He subsequently directed his co-conspirators to withdraw the funds and either transfer them to him, convert them into assets such as real estate, or transmit them to Lopez-Escobar or others in Guatemala. The indictment alleges that he utilized wire transfers through money service businesses to “minimize the trackability of the funds to Lopez-Escobar.”
The Treasury Department also alleged that the organization “purchased fraudulent Mexican documents and paid cartel fees to facilitate the movement of migrants through Mexico.” The organization acquired buses to transport a greater number of migrants to the United States as their business expanded.
Additionally, they operated stash houses along the U.S. southwest frontier to illegally house the individuals they were smuggling. The Treasury Department stated that the organization depended on numerous “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.”
Members of the Lopez organization may be sentenced to 10 to 20 years in federal prison if they are found guilty of the current allegations.
After leaders of two Texas-based smuggling operations were sentenced to dozens of years in prison for orchestrating an intricate human smuggling and storage house enterprise in south Texas that extended from Honduras to Boston, the action was taken.
Additionally, OFAC has recently imposed sanctions on additional transnational criminal organizations that are purportedly engaged in human smuggling. Last month, it sanctioned the Abdul Karim Conteh Human Smuggling Organization, which is headquartered in Tijuana, Mexico, and the Tren de Aragua human smuggling and trafficking operation, which is based in Venezuela. These organizations specialize in “gender-based violence, money laundering, illicit drug trafficking, and other criminal activities.”
