University of Texas-El Paso Student Ricardo Magallanes accuses Ford of mismanaging their key code system, which allowed drug smugglers to break into his car and hide marijuana in the trunk.
Customs agents arrested Magallanes on November 16, 2010. He was crossing the Stanton Street Bridge, which many people use to travel between El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Mexico. Customs agents found marijuana in the trunk of his car.
“It’s a quagmire for the government because every bridge case could be an innocent person,” Louis Lopez, Magallanes’ attorney, told the Daily Caller .
Magallanes was convicted and sentenced to more than three years in jail.
The charges against him were dropped in 2011.
FBI agents discovered that Jesus Chavez and Carlos Albert Gomez obtained fraudulent copies of people’s car keys to use in their drug smuggling scheme.
A locksmith told FBI agents that Ford granted "widely available access to Ford-key cut codes," in an affidavit, according to the El Paso Times .
FBI agents identified three additional Fords and one General Motors vehicle that were used in the drug smuggling ring as well. Chavez and Gomez were using the keys to break into the vehicles and planting the drugs to smuggle them into the United States without the vehicle owner’s knowledge.
"This group of drug smugglers were able to determine the daily routine of people who lived in Juarez. ... They would get the VIN numbers from the front window of their cars and work with a local locksmith, and within 18 minutes get the car codes and duplicate keys," Lopez told MSN News . "When people get arrested on the bridge for carrying narcotics, one of the first things they say is, 'It wasn't me.' … You become kind of jaded listening to it, but now every case could be an innocent person."