The leader of a human smuggling operation, Tony Cardenas, of Phoenix, was sentenced to 48 months in prison, by United States District Judge Jennifer G. Zipps, after pleading guilty to Conspiracy to Transport and Harbor Illegal Aliens for Profit and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering on November 17, 2023.
Cardenas’ prison sentence is to be followed by three years of supervised release.
Cardenas, the leader of a Phoenix-based human smuggling organization, pleaded guilty after he and 18 co-conspirators were indicted in November 2021. A financial investigation conducted by IRS-CI identified numerous co-conspirators who were using their bank accounts and money service businesses to channel over $1 million back to the alien smuggling organization in Arizona.
According to the Department of Justice, in June 2018, HSI – Sells began investigating Cardenas and his human smuggling organization. Throughout the course of this investigation, agents discovered that undocumented noncitizens were being moved from Central America and Mexico to the Tohono O’odham Nation where they were directed to nearby stash houses or picked up and taken to stash houses in the Tucson and Phoenix areas. Using Phoenix as a distribution hub, the human smuggling organization held undocumented noncitizens in Phoenix until final payment was received. Once payments were made, the undocumented noncitizens were driven to their final destinations throughout the United States. Seventeen co-conspirators with ties to the Cardenas human smuggling organization have been convicted of alien smuggling and/or money laundering.