{"id":315318,"date":"2010-02-12T20:43:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T01:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a8952354970b"},"modified":"2010-02-12T20:43:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-13T01:43:00","slug":"3-indicted-in-illegal-immigrant-smuggling-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/315318","title":{"rendered":"3 indicted in illegal immigrant smuggling case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three men who allegedly guarded hundreds of smuggled Central and South American illegal immigrants at a \u201cdrop house\u201d in Lynwood were indicted Friday by a federal grand jury. <\/p>\n<p>Gustavo Sanchez-Lopez, 30; Diego Martinez-Gonzalez, 28; and Francisco Moreno-Lopez, 55, are accused of holding the immigrants until relatives could pay as much as $13,000, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney\u2019s office. The men claimed to be Mexican, but are believed to be from Guatemala, he said. <\/p>\n<p>\n  The suspects were arrested last month when authorities served a search warrant at a house on South Virginia Avenue. At the time, authorities found 37 illegal immigrants, but Mrozek said investigators think the men harbored as many as 336 during a two-month period.\n<\/p>\n<p>The illegal immigrants allegedly were threatened with beatings or death if their relatives did not pay the smuggling fee quickly, Mrozek said. <\/p>\n<p>According to the indictment, Martinez-Gonzalez and Sanchez-Lopez told female immigrants that they would be given blankets or jackets, or be allowed to shower, in exchange for sex. <\/p>\n<p>\nIf convicted, each man faces a maximum penalty of 60 years in federal prison. <\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Hector Becerra <\/p>\n<p><input id=\"gwProxy\" type=\"hidden\"><\/input><input id=\"jsProxy\" onclick=\"jsCall();\" type=\"hidden\"><\/input><\/p>\n<div id=\"refHTML\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three men who allegedly guarded hundreds of smuggled Central and South American illegal immigrants at a \u201cdrop house\u201d in Lynwood were indicted Friday by a federal grand jury. Gustavo Sanchez-Lopez, 30; Diego Martinez-Gonzalez, 28; and Francisco Moreno-Lopez, 55, are accused of holding the immigrants until relatives could pay as much as $13,000, said Thom Mrozek, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4566,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}