Couple stopped at border with $750k in undeclared cash

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Federal officials have filed felony smuggling charges against a couple allegedly trying to leave the United States with more than three-quarters of a million dollars stashed in the spare tire of a pickup truck.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents discovered the cash after subjecting a GMC Sierra driven by Malcolm Angel Tapia-Llopis to a secondary inspection at the Calexico West port of entry in Calexico, Calif., on July 10. The vehicle was traveling on the southbound lanes of the border crossing, headed to Mexicali, Mexico, court records show.

Border officers utilized the advanced ‘Z Portal’ – an x-ray machine that produces a six-sided image of a solid object – and successfully detected anomalies in the spare tire of the pickup. This led to the discovery of several vacuum-sealed green cellophane bundles containing $756,980 in cash.

Court records show a CBP officer conducting outbound inspections at the crossing had asked Tapia-Llopis and his passenger, Edith Olivia Valenzuela if they had anything to declare before the inspection. Both allegedly said, “No.”

Title 31, subsection 5332 of the U.S. Criminal Code requires individuals to report the transportation of more than $10,000 when traveling “from a place within the United States to a place outside the United States,” or vice versa. Penalties include seizure of the cash and up to five years in prison.

Tapia-Llopis and Valenzuela, due to their alleged involvement in bulk cash smuggling, are now facing the full force of the law. They are scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing July 25 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Lupe Rodriguez Jr. of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

Five days earlier, border officers at the Andrade, California, port of entry announced the seizure of another $103,500 headed out of the country.

Federal law gives CBP authority to search vehicles and people entering and leaving the country. However, so-called “outbound” inspections are infrequent. According to a recently unredacted report from the Office of the Inspector General, border officers typically perform outbound inspections to disrupt the activities of transnational criminal organizations (the drug cartels).

These operations have resulted in the seizure of $58 million in cash and 2,306 firearms between 2018 and 2022. However, the OIG report found CBP is missing the opportunity to make more seizures because “officers at many locations are not conducting any outbound inspections and not making any seizures.”