Opinion

An asset seizure that raises some troubling issues

José Villarreal Saldivar has some advice for wealthy Mexicans. Don't come to Texas.

“I want to go to the press and say, 'Hey, Mexicans; don't come with your money. Don't go to Las Vegas. Stop shopping (here),'” he said.

Villarreal, from Tamaulipas, has about 4.4 million reasons for offering this advice. That's the amount seized from him in cash and other assets.

Texas and the Bexar County District Attorney's Office, relying on an affidavit from a Drug Enforcement Agency agent, seized these in September from his accounts and from his San Antonio area home.

The affidavit alleges an illegal money service business, a failure to declare to Mexico the departure of the money and that by using two passports — Mexican and U.S. — Villarreal was attempting fraud.

But Villarreal says he was deemed suspicious because he's Mexican and has money.

Nowhere in the affidavit, says attorney Rolando Rios, does agent Jennifer Sanchez show concrete connections between the seized assets and any criminal enterprise.

Rios says Villarreal takes pesos to a money-changing house and transforms them to dollars, much as tourists do, albeit not typically in these amounts. And he drives the money across to avoid wire transfer fees that can be pretty hefty on these amounts.

He is slowly transferring resources to live here permanently — with his wife and three U.S. citizen children. It is dangerous for wealthy people in Mexico.

Villarreal notes it would be a pretty stupid money launderer who declares the money he is bringing across, as he has done. He physically transported all but $2.6 million, which he wired into an investment management account, seized before the account's maturation.

He uses two passports and alternately represents himself as a U.S. citizen or a Mexican citizen because he is both. He says he was born here but adopted into a wealthy Mexican family at an early age.

Agent Sanchez says that based on Villarreal's reported income in Mexico, he earns $55,480 annually. But Villarreal has submitted documents showing gross earnings of his companies of about $45 million annually.

The DEA agent contends that it is not reasonable that a person could transport these amounts of funds in Mexico “unless he was under the protection of a major criminal organization.”

No, Villarreal says. The quickest way to attract attention while carrying cash is to align with criminals or to surround yourself with bodyguards.

There will be a hearing in the county courthouse on Friday on this matter.

Cliff Herberg, first assistant DA in Bexar County, says that the seizures are allowed because “the law allows you to make inferences based on the facts.”

Rios says that relatively low bar is correct in a forfeiture hearing, but there was no such hearing. There was an outright seizure.

Outwardly, Villarreal seems like a successful Mexican businessman. But in a sense, it doesn't matter. This case raises questions about the apparent ease with which the government can do this.

I get it. There are sealed affidavits, seizures and, later, a hearing because officials often want to protect investigations or witnesses or because they fear suspects will flee. But none of those claims is in this affidavit, now unsealed.

Who knows? Investigators could drop a bombshell. And it's not unusual, I'm told, for civil forfeitures to occur though criminal proceedings haven't, as is the case here.

But the conundrum of our forfeiture laws for me is that there can be a seizure and no proven crime. And if he has evaded Mexican taxes, why is that a Texas issue? This affidavit reads like a litany of suppositions.

Stay tuned.

o.ricardo.pimentel@express-news.net