UTEP student who was unwitting drug mule sues Ford
A UTEP student has filed suit against Ford Motor Co., claiming the automaker negligently handed out key codes that allowed smugglers to plant illegal drugs in his car in 2010.
The smugglers planted more than 500 pounds of marijuana in the vehicles of Ricardo Magallanes, the man suing Ford, and four others who lived in Juárez and worked in El Paso, FBI agents said in a 2011 affidavit. Once in El Paso, the marijuana was intended for distribution throughout the United States, the affidavit says.
Of the five vehicles FBI agents learned were targeted by the scheme, four were made by Ford. Agents were told by a locksmith that the automaker gave "widely available access to Ford-key cut codes" while the biggest American carmaker, General Motors Co., did not, the affidavit says.
The document also said the codes in the Ford database were accessed by a single account at a Dallas auto dealer that gave out more than 2,300 codes for cars and trucks all over the United States during an 18-month period. But the documents don't say whether that was suspicious -- or if federal law enforcement is investigating the system that put innocents' car keys into the hands of drug smugglers.
More at http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_23751589/unwitting-drug-mule-sues-ford-says-company-too?source=rss_viewed .
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