What is interesting to me about the U.S. Attorney’s press release is it references the Government having evidence Mr. Argondana intended to smuggle this particular shipment into Mexico and supposedly this is but one of many shipments where other parties pled to violations of U.S. law and included admissions they had helped him smuggle those previous shipments into Mexico.

This is noteworthy for two reasons. First, typically the Government does not prosecute based on bad intent alone but rather waits for factual evidence to support that intent, look at the failure to declare cash or other monetary instruments as an example.

Second, this case is just one more example of the question – doesn’t the Justice Dept. have better things to do with its time, like going after bad guys intent on doing harm in the U.S.? It’s looking more and more like Justice is going the mail and wire fraud route relying on this Patriot Act provision. Ugh!