INS Agent Accused of Ransom Scam

A Los Angeles INS agent was accused Thursday of collaborating with a convicted drug dealer to free illegal immigrants from federal custody and ransom them to their relatives in the United States.

Jesse Gardona, a 15-year veteran of the Immigration and Naturalization Service assigned to the anti-smuggling squad, was indicted on federal charges of conspiracy, bribery, graft, and transporting and harboring illegal aliens.

Also charged were Jose Quintanilla Guzman, described by an FBI agent as a Mexican drug trafficker who ran an auto body shop in East Los Angeles, and Quintanilla’s girlfriend, Leticia Chavez.

Gardona, 40, is the target of a separate investigation into allegations that he sold work authorization permits to illegal immigrants, according to an FBI affidavit.

At the time of his arrest on May 9, Gardona was preparing to move from Studio City to Fresno to accept a promotion at the INS office there. He is free on $100,000 bail.

INS officials said they are cooperating fully in the investigation and have placed Gardona on unpaid leave.

Quintanilla, 33, has been behind bars since late last year when he was arrested while trying to reenter the United States illegally from Mexico. Convicted of drug trafficking in Los Angeles in 1990, he is scheduled to go on trial in San Diego in July on federal charges of cocaine smuggling.

Two former Quintanilla associates told investigators that Gardona provided the drug dealer with “pollos,” street parlance for illegals held for ransom, to pay off a business debt.

They said he had borrowed $20,000 to $30,000 from Quintanilla to set up a soda vending operation and a pay phone business.

Gardona told an FBI agent last year that he had used Quintanilla as an informal source who provided information about drop houses used by immigrant smugglers.

It was a tip from Los Angeles police about a drop house that brought Gardona and a team from the anti-smuggling squad to a house on South Normandie Avenue on July 13, 1998, according to the affidavit by FBI Agent Ron Twersky.

There, they arrested three suspected smugglers and 11 illegal immigrants from El Salvador.

Four days later, according to the affidavit, Gardona took the illegal immigrants out of the INS detention facility in downtown Los Angeles and told them to walk to a nearby gas station, where they were loaded into a van driven to a drop house operated by Quintanilla on Cornwell Street.

One of Quintanilla’s couriers, subsequently arrested on suspicion of narcotics trafficking, told authorities that he was present when Quintanilla telephoned the illegal immigrants’ relatives, demanding $1,000 to $1,500 for each one’s release.

Gardona’s share of the ransom was $300 a head, according to the FBI informant.

FBI agents and investigators from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office tracked down three of the illegal immigrants allegedly freed by Gardona.

Twersky said in his affidavit that all three positively identified Gardona from a photo spread as the INS agent who took them out of the agency’s detention center on July 17, 1998.

One of them, Miguel Angel Lizama, interviewed on the East Coast, said Gardona threatened all the immigrants not to reveal how they got out of jail because he could track them down anywhere in the country.

Gardona also was accused by one of the government informants of having arranged for the release of three young women so they could work as dancers or prostitutes at a downtown Los Angeles club.

During one visit to Quintanilla’s auto body shop, the informant said, Gardona displayed a brown book filled with photos he apparently had taken of the three women in nude poses.

He also was said to have arranged for the release of Quintanilla’s brother, Juan, from INS custody in Arizona in November 1998. The FBI affidavit said the brother’s immigration file contained a fax from Gardona and a note to call him “when Juan Quintanilla’s disposition is known.”

Quintanilla’s girlfriend, Leticia Chavez, 23, of Huntington Park, was accused of helping him contact relatives of the illegal immigrants held for ransom, and later transporting them to Los Angeles International Airport for flights to other parts of the country. She is in custody.

All three are scheduled to be arraigned May 22 in Los Angeles federal court. If convicted, they could be sentenced to a maximum 40 years in prison.