How Traffickers Use Vehicle Identification Numbers To Plant Drugs In Cars
Your car’s Vehicle Identification Number, also known as the VIN, may reveal more than you’d think it does. Located in plain sight by the dashboard, VIN digits are often all a licensed locksmith needs to duplicate a car key copy. If that copied key gets in the wrong hands, the car owner could be victimized.
A federal investigation into a pot smuggling operation allegedly run by two El Paso men details the use of VIN numbers to carry out the crime. ABC-7 obtained an affidavit, which implicates two men: Jesus “Jesse” Chavez and Carlos Gomez.
The affidavit states Gomez and Chavez helped carry out a pot smuggling operation that depended on unsuspecting border crossers. According to the documents, Gomez and Chavez allegedly hired teens in Ciudad Juarez to target frequent travelers on the Stanton Street express lane, usually students and professionals with predictable schedules.
The hired hands would secretly jot down the targeted car’s VIN number and allegedly passed it on to Chavez and Gomez. Then Chavez and Gomez used a locksmith to allegedly make two copies of the target car’s key.
The affidavit states one of the key copies went to unidentified accomplices in Juarez. At nightfall, those accomplices would allegedly follow the unsuspecting car owner home to open the owner’s car trunk with the copied key, thus enabling the Juarez accomplices to allegedly plant duffel bags full of drugs in the car’s trunk.
The next day, the innocent car owner would cross into El Paso and go to work or school while Gomez and/or Chavez allegedly retrieved the bags of pot with the second car key copy they’d made.
ABC-7 spoke with a local locksmith unrelated to the FBI investigation to get some insight regarding the key copying process. Laura Milliorn with Hassle Free Lock & Key said it’s up to individual locksmiths to exercise due diligence in verifying that a potential client is the owner of a car before the locksmith agrees to make a copy of that car’s key.
Milliorn said VIN numbers are often the only reference needed to obtain a car’s key code. The key code spells out how many cuts need to be made so a duplicate key will have the right shape to open a car.
Milliorn said locksmiths have different ways of obtaining an individual car’s key code. One of the ways is by paying a private company that compiles a database of key codes. However, there is not a lot of oversight within those companies. Milliorn said an unethical locksmith could theoretically get away with requesting a key code for a client through one o those private companies without actually proving that that client is the owner of the car in question.
“I don’t have to prove anything to (those companies) so if I wasn’t legit, I could just say I’m a locksmith and get my license (to request the key code). They don’t care if I’m verifying proof of ownership. It’s up to me to make sure i am verifying,” said Milliorn.
The affidavit states Gomez and Chavez used one unidentified El Paso locksmith every time they ran an operation. It is unknown whether that locksmith is in trouble with the law or if he/she was in on the operation.
