EL PASO, Texas — A Texas man was apparently arrested on the 16th of February in El Paso based on criminal charges related to his alleged bribery of a Homeland Security Investigations special agent. Quite alarming, isn’t it? The man goes with the name Pedro Thiessen and is 70 years old, belongs from Seminole and who failed to declare more than $10,000 when entering the United States at the Ysleta Port of Entry in October 2022, according to a criminal complaint against him since then.
Thiessen filed a petition however, in order to recover the funds, and in January 2023, an HSI special agent interviewed him. An affidavit attached to the complaint alleges that Thiessen had actually offered to pay the agent an unknown amount of money if the agent assisted with the recovery in its totality. The agent reported the offer to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of Professional Responsibility and that got him into further trouble.
The affidavit alleges that Thiessen again proposed a monetary offer to the agent during a 6th of February phone call. On Feb. 15, the agent arranged a meeting with Thiessen for the following day. According to court documents, Thiessen presented the agent with $1,000 at that meeting and was immediately arrested thankfully.
Thiessen is charged with bribery of public officials. If convicted, he will be facing a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and not anything less than that. A federal district court judge will determine his sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors in a few days.
HSI and the Office of Professional Responsibility are investigating the case as of now, which Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Osterberg is prosecuting.
A criminal complaint is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law but this case looks like it could crack an evident person to accept that he was guilty in all counts.
HSI is the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responsible for investigating transnational crime and threats, particularly those criminal organizations that exploit the global infrastructure through which international trade, travel, and finance move. HSI’s workforce of more than 8,700 employees really consists of more than 6,000 special agents assigned to 237 cities throughout the United States, and 93 overseas locations in around about 56 countries. HSI’s international presence represents DHS’s largest investigative law enforcement presence abroad and one of the largest international footprints in U.S. law enforcement, which is quite a massive thing to own.
