TIRANA, Dec. 7 – An Albanian court has sentenced five people to prison on charges of arranging for more than 600 Albanians to illegally immigrate to the United States through Mexico.
The defendants, who were arrested last year, received sentences ranging from 9 to 14 years in prison, in a ruling praised by the U.S. Embassy last Friday.
Thursday’s court ruling found that the gang was paid $25,000 by each person they took to Mexico, via Bulgaria, Italy or Spain, and then supplied them with false documentation to enter the United States.
Prosecutors said the gang made more than $15 million from its illegal activities.
The U.S. Embassy said the verdicts came as “the result of a multi-agency investigation” between the two countries.
The group was mainly based in the Tirana and Shkodra regions and Albanian investigators told the local media last year that members of the criminal group contacted people who were interested to go to the United States and then in cooperation with other organized their illegal trips through different lines of trafficking, mainly Italy-Spain-Mexico-U.S. or Bulgaria-Spain-Costa Rica-Guatemala-Mexico-U.S..
Mainly fake Bulgarian passports were used by the Albanians to move freely within the European Union to transit with a final destination to the United States, the investigation authorities told VOA last year. Two of those convicted were experts at forging documents such as passports, identity cards, driving license and others.
Authorities also said they had also made efforts to traffic people illegally into Britain as well, without giving much detail.
Albanians have been able to travel to European Union member countries without a visa since 2010. They require a visa for the United States and Great Britain.
The arrests and the large numbers of people smuggled marked the first case of its kind in Albania for trafficking to the United States for large financial gains.
