Trial for allegedly corrupt CBP officer opens with talk of Tijuana strip club, drug-laden cars (2024)

SAN DIEGO—

A prosecutor told jurors Monday that a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to allow drugs and undocumented migrants through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, while a defense attorney said the officer was being scapegoated by drug traffickers and his own wife.

Leonard Darnell George, 41, is charged in federal court in San Diego with felony counts involving receiving a bribe as a public official, conspiring to bring undocumented migrants to the U.S. for financial gain and conspiring to import and distribute methamphetamine.

Prosecutors allege that George befriended two travelers passing through his inspection lane in 2021 over their shared interest in a Tijuana strip club. The men turned out to be members of a drug trafficking group and used the new friendship to establish a plan in which they would send drugs — including methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine and heroin — as well as undocumented migrants through George’s lane when he was on duty, according to prosecutors. The government alleges that George made between $300,000 and $400,000 while working for the group between about October 2021 and June 2022.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Kimura told jurors during opening statements Monday that George’s nickname among the drug traffickers that he worked with was “The Goalie” because he was supposed to stop contraband from entering San Diego through Tijuana.

“He was a goalie that switched sides to enrich himself,” Kimura told the jury.

Building on the sports metaphor, Kimura said that if the jurors “want to know what’s happening in the huddle, you need to talk to the team members.” He told the jury that George’s teammates were drug and human smugglers who would testify against George, who he said “wasn’t worthy of the badge he wore.”

Defense attorney Antonio Yoon attacked the credibility of the witnesses.

“Four felons and one angry wife — sounds like a Broadway play, doesn’t it?” Yoon asked. But he said that rather than a theatrical performance, his client was living through a “nightmare of false accusations.”

Yoon told the jury that George’s co-defendants stood to benefit from lighter sentences by testifying for the prosecution. The defense attorney said George’s wife has motive to testify against her husband because of potentially incriminating text messages that she sent.

“What option does she have?” he asked.

The defense attorney did not dispute that George befriended the two men — Mario Gutierrez and Esteban Galvan — who passed through his vehicle lane at the San Ysidro border crossing. Yoon also admitted that his client cheated on his wife and frequently visited the Hong Kong Gentleman’s Club in Tijuana, a strip club known for offering prostitution.

“That was not the smartest thing for a law enforcement officer to be spotted down there,” Yoon told the jury.

But the defense attorney said that was all circ*mstantial evidence that didn’t prove his client’s guilt. He said the four drug traffickers who would testify against George all had something in common — “a lot of (potential) time in jail.”

Kimura, the prosecutor, said the Tijuana strip club played a key role in the conspiracy. It’s where Gutierrez and Galvan told George they were coming from on the day they met. George allegedly exchanged numbers with the men, asking them to text him the next time they were going. The two traffickers then got approval from their boss “to shower (George) with a lavish party” at the club in order to get him on board with the plan to send drugs and migrants through his lane.

Kimura showed the jurors text messages between members of the drug trafficking group discussing a CBP officer being on payroll. He played an audio recording of a drug courier explaining the plan to go through the lane of a corrupt CBP officer. And he showed the jury text messages, translated from Spanish, allegedly between George’s wife and a high-level member of the drug-trafficking group discussing whether George was supposed to be paid a flat fee for a vehicle full of undocumented migrants or for each person in the vehicle.

“I agreed with your husband per car,” read the message from the alleged trafficking group leader to George’s wife.

“It doesn’t get more explicit than that,” Kimura told the jury. The prosecutor also showed the jurors a selfie taken by Galvan showing him jokingly wearing a CBP uniform — allegedly one that belonged to George.

Galvan, Gutierrez and several other co-defendants in George’s case have pleaded guilty but not yet been sentenced. The factual basis laid out in Galvan’s plea agreement states that George would sometimes flash his CBP badge to sex workers at the Hong Kong club.

Galvan’s plea agreement states that the trafficking organization would send four or five vehicles loaded with drugs or undocumented migrants through George’s lane during every shift he worked. Galvan estimated in his plea agreement that about 300 undocumented migrants entered the U.S. through George’s lane.

Galvan’s plea agreement and others in the case do not specify the amount of drugs that allegedly went through George’s lane, saying only that it was “kilo quantities.” But one vehicle allegedly sent by the trafficking group — prosecutors said it was inspected after its license plate set off an alert that George couldn’t override without raising suspicion — contained 223 pounds of methamphetamine and 13 pounds of fentanyl.

George, who joined CBP in 2018 after previously working as a prison guard for the private firm CoreCivic, has remained in federal custody since he was arrested last July after prosecutors successfully persuaded a judge that he posed a flight risk because of his significant ties to Tijuana.

If convicted, George would become the second officer from a Department of Homeland Security agency to face justice in San Diego in recent weeks. Last month, former Border Patrol agent Hector Hernandez was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison after admitting that he accepted bribes in exchange for opening a border fence believing that he was allowing undocumented migrants into the country. On another occasion, he transported drugs inside his agency vehicle while on duty.

In 2013, a federal jury convicted former CBP Officer Lorne Jones of drug conspiracy charges in a prosecution similar to George’s case. Jones, who worked at the border crossings in San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, was acquitted of a bribery charge. He allegedly received about $500,000 in exchange for allowing drugs and undocumented migrants to pass through vehicle lanes. He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

Oscar Ortiz Martinez, a former Calexico-area CBP officer, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2013 for a similar scheme to allow drugs and migrants to pass through his inspection lane. Former San Diego-area CBP Officer Luis Francisco Alarid was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2009 after pleading guilty in the same type of scheme.