Company

Major Investigations

Dismantling a Human Smuggling Operation

In any given year, law enforcement officers in the Florida Keys interdict hundreds of illegal immigrants from Cuba. Many are brought to the country by professional smugglers who violate immigration laws and endanger lives for profit.

In 2000, authorities traced 176 of these immigrants, including 37 children, to 6 separate landings that occurred between January and September 2000. They suspected that a single, highly organized smuggling operation was behind the landings. However, identifying those responsible and developing a strong enough case to prosecute them would prove difficult.

The Challenge
In the course of their investigation, officers collected a large body of evidence. Not only did they need to make sense of this information – including comprehensive financial records and details on thousands of telephone calls – they would have to convince a grand jury of their findings.

Although the evidence suggested that a single organization was behind all 6 landings, without an eyewitness authorities had a difficult case to make. It would have to rely entirely on circumstantial evidence.

The Solution
Investigative Analyst G.M. Allen of the Monroe HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) had used i2 Analyst's Notebook extensively for international narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime investigations. She turned to it again to scrutinize the vast amount of information collected by the four agencies.

i2 Analyst's Notebook reveals patterns leading to conviction of smuggling ringleader

"I have seen a number of similar products and nothing comes close to Analyst's Notebook," she says.

Using Analyst's Notebook, Ms. Allen was able to identify a number of patterns in the telephone calls and financial transactions. She quickly established that the smuggling ventures were all led by a single individual: Wilfredo Feal.

Based on information collected by the participating agencies, her analysis connected him to boats used in the smuggling operations and revealed that his telephone was used to contact sponsors of the smuggled aliens.

"That is the true beauty of Analyst's Notebook," she says. "It is so versatile it can be used to clarify, through the use of visuals, vast amounts of information that takes sometimes months or even years to amass."

This left Ms. Allen with a final challenge. How could she organize the evidence to effectively convince a jury of laymen that Mr. Feal was guilty? Again she turned to the i2 product, this time to create evidence presentations for the grand jury.

As she explains, "Analyst's Notebook enables me to bring all the elements of an investigation together in a way that anyone can understand, regardless of the type of information or the format it arrives in."

The Result
The work of Ms. Allen and others from the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, the U.S. Border Patrol Anti-Smuggling Unit and the Internal Revenue Service resulted in the largest alien smuggling indictment ever brought in the Southern District of Florida (353 counts).

Mr. Feal pled guilty and was sentenced to 3 years in prison for his role in the 6 landings. Having made $100,000 a week from the smuggling operations, he also pled guilty to a $1.76 million forfeiture count. Two of Mr. Feal's associates pled guilty as well and were sentenced to 18 months incarceration for their roles in one of the smuggling ventures.

Without an eyewitness to any of the landings, the analytical charts that Ms. Allen created in Analyst's Notebook were key to securing the indictments and the guilty pleas.

For their outstanding work on this case, Investigative Analyst Allen and 3 of the other officers involved received Outstanding Law Enforcement Officer (OLEO) Awards from the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Almost 18 months after the original indictment was filed, prosecutors took a subject in a related case before a grand jury. At the last minute Ms. Allen was asked to prepare charts for presentation using information gleaned from the original case.

"I worked through the weekend with my trusty Analyst's Notebook," she says, "and we again struck our mark." Mr. Remberto Moya was convicted of 55 counts of smuggling Cuban immigrants. Of Analyst's Notebook, Ms. Allen says, "It is refreshing to have a tool which works toward the common goal of crime fighting so effectively."