Former BISD teacher gets 87 months for smuggling firearms
BY EMMA PEREZ-TREVI‘O
The Brownsville Herald
A former Brownsville Independent School District teacher was sentenced in federal court Monday on weapon-charges as part of a scheme to smuggle firearms into Mexico.
The plot involved the purchase of more than 100 firearms, the majority of which were semi-automatic rifles, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas.
U.S. District Judge Hilda Tagle sentenced former teacher Sotero Sotelo, 37, to 87 months in jail for conspiracy to export firearms and unlawful export of firearms. Tagle also fined him $6,500 for each count for his role in the plot to buy firearms and sell them, knowing that they were to be smuggled into Mexico. The sentence and fine are to run concurrent, the court record reflects.
Sotelo, of Brownsville, was the third and last defendant that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Cameron County Sheriff's Department nabbed in 2008 in Operation Dirty Pig.
Sotelo initially pleaded not guilty, but changed the plea in October 2009.
Tagle also sentenced Sotelo to an additional 10 months for violating terms of his supervised released on a prior 2003 conviction for dealing firearms without a license.
Sotelo served as a history teacher from 1995 to 2004 before he surrendered his teaching license on April 28, 2004, state education records show. Sotelo last taught at Porter High School, according to BISD Spokeswoman Drue Brown.
Another defendant arrested as part of the operation, former Cameron County bailiff Oscar Orlando Peáa Jr., 28, was sentenced in January this year to 31 months in jail and assessed a $5,000 fine for conspiracy to export firearms.
Tagle also directed Peáa to complete 150 hours of community service when released from federal prison. Peáa pleaded guilty to the charge in April 2009.
Additionally, Tagle directed that Peáa be placed in a facility where his law enforcement background would be taken into consideration.
The third defendant, Mark George Machado, 53, of Los Fresnos, was sentenced to 16 months in jail and fined $3,300 in August 2009 for dealing in firearms without a license. He also pleaded guilty in April 2009.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Sotelo and Peáa, who operated the La Cueva drive-through convenience store in Brownsville, conspired between January 2007 and February 2008 to buy firearms from Machado and others and then sold the firearms at inflated rates to people they knew would export them into Mexico.
