After pleading guilty last April to one charge of bribing public officials, Oziel Cantu was sentenced for a decade
Corrupt US Customs and Border Protection agent turned drug dealers’ concierge Oziel Cantu has been sentenced to ten years in prison after pleading guilty last spring to the lesser charge of bribing a public official. US District Judge Micaela Alvarez added three years of supervised release after reading off Cantu’s sentence on Wednesday.
The judge appeared to be baffled by Cantu’s decision to imperil his solid career with the border patrol agency and enter a life of crime just because he was under financial stress. “Every person in court has experienced financial hardship before and none of them have resorted crime.,” she pointed out.
Cantu was also charged in the Bribery Scandal, where he was accused of illegally accepting $15,000 to make it easier for drugs to cross the border through the Pharr Port of Entry. The disgraced officer of law enforcement was also accused of helping a few dealers to move their goods north, while he worked immigration at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge.
Cantu didn’t wait for business to come to him – he reportedly reached out to dealers himself, offering to make their anxiety disappear by shepherding them smoothly through his customs booth. The charges do not identify the cartels he collaborated with. However, the Gulf Cartel is the predominant group in the Pharr–Reynosa zone.
Unfortunately for Cantu, not one but two of his smuggling clients turned out to be federal agents, and he was arrested shortly after one of the federal groups caught him red-handed helping out the fake “Smugglers” in August 2020. The plot to entrap him in the act of helping government “Smugglers” move cocaine north had begun in June of that year, by which time federal agents already believed Cantu was deeply involved with the cartels.
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