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HOCKLEYCOUNTYSHERIFFRAYSCIFRES
A cooperative effort among multiple law enforcement agencies resulted in the execution of Operation Snake Eyes which saw 29 arrests across Hockley County at seven game room locations.
Law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hockley County Sheriff’s Office, Levelland Police Department and Department of Public Safety have been working on the joint operation for the better part of a year.
A two-phase operation, the first part of the take down resulted in 13 arrests with five additional individuals that have already been in custody being served for a total of 18.
The second part of the operation began with seven groups of law enforcement personnel that raided five game room locations in Levelland, one game room in Opedyke West and the seventh location in Anton. From the second portion of the operation, 11 individuals were arrested.
Additional locations included Morton and Brownfield.
Following the Wednesday operation, the Hockley County Sheriff’s Office released the pending charges with mugshots for multiple individuals arrested during Wednesday’s game room bust operation.
Additional charges and offenses may be possible in the future according to the sheriff’s office.
Individuals arrested include: Chen Mingzhou, 49, Gambling Promotion, Possession Gambling Device/ Equipment, Joseph Olivas, 35, Possess Controlled Substance PG 1, 1<4 grams Tam Thanh Nguyen, 57, Money Laundering $2500>30k, Possess Gambling Device/Equipment, Gambling Promotion Josephine Pesina, 52, Gambling Promotion, Keeping Gambling Place, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Mikka Toscano, 30, Gambling Promotion, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Qi Bin Xiao, 46, Gambling Promotion, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Lin Jin Xing, 25, Gambling Promotion, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Steven Altman, 60, Parole Violation, Man/Del Controlled Substance PG 1, 4<200 grams Esther Carrasco, 48, Money Laundering $2500<30k, Gambling Promotion, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Jinhua Lu, 51, Gambling Promotion, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Yang Chi, 24, Money Laundering $2500<30k, Gambling Promotion, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Jingfeng Xiao, 43, Money Laundering $2500<30k, Gambling Promotion, Possess Gambling Device/ Equipment Kavan Cherry, 55, Man/Del Control Substance PG 1, 4<200 grams.
During the press conference held Wednesday afternoon, Hockley County Sheriff Ray Scifres, Levelland Police Chief Albert Garcia, DPS Sergeant Johnny Burres and FBI Special Agent Jim Dwyer each spoke about the importance of interagency cooperation and how important those relationships are to take down large scale criminal activity.
Sheriff Scifres highlighted the importance of time and effective investigative work to properly handle and create successful cases.
“This has been a year in the making,” said Scifres. “I will say that we have been running a simultaneous operation alongside the LPD, DPS and FBI. This has been a great partnership and I know folks will ask the question what we are doing about the game rooms; well, we’ve been for the last year working on these game rooms and then today finally arrived we were finally able to complete this part of the investigation.”
Moving forward, Scifres explained that the next part of the process will be seeking indictments and seeking further investigative efforts to get the game rooms closed.
Handling the Cochran County side and aiding in the operation efforts was Cochran County Sheriff Jorge De La Cruz.
Unable to attend the press conference, Scifres read a message on De La Cruz’s behalf, “I want to thank the state and federal law enforcement partners for their continued support and helping us make our community safer. I appreciate all of the support we’ve received from these agencies during the last few months while these investigations were underway and most importantly thank you to the Cochran County Sheriff’s Office staff for their continued dedication and commitment to keeping our citizens safe.”
Chief Garcia reassured that the citizens of Levelland and within Hockley County are continued to become heard and their voices are not going unnoticed.
“I’m really excited for our community because this is a great day,” said Garcia. “We took a lot of people into custody, and I know that we have had some of our citizens throughout Levelland and Hockley County wonder why we have taken so long to do something with our game rooms or some of the other different types of trafficking that’s been happening in our city.”
Chief Garcia explained that time, patience and quality work is what will rid the community of this type of criminal activity. “As a whole, these investigations take time, and this is an example of how long it normally takes to put a good case together,” explained Garcia. “It’s going to be up to our AOA that’s going to be doing all the federal type of prosecution as well as our local district and county attorneys that are going to be doing their part to make sure that we get convictions on all these cases.”
Both Garcia and Scifres added that the focus on game rooms encompasses more than one criminal element.
“A lot of things have been happening and revolving around these game rooms,” explained Chief Garcia. “A lot of other criminal issues that we’ve been having in our community and in Hockley County revolve around these game rooms. We’ve had several different things that we’ve investigated from prostitution to narcotics to dealing in stolen property those kind of things like that.” With a few of the arrests made, Scifres also added that these areas prove to be safe havens for criminals.
“I think as a couple of arrests that were done proves our point,” said Scifres. “We’ve been saying that these are a safe haven and have been for folks who engage in criminal activity and it ranges from narcotics, trafficking narcotics, possession of weapons, trafficking weapons and one of the individuals was on parole. This is a convicted felon who is in one of these locations.”
I think that it’s been unfortunately a place where they have flocked to do their activity and we have taken a range of offense reports related to recovered stolen property from these locations where someone has been burglarized and victimized in that way and we’ve recovered their property from these locations, added Scifres. “The importance of it is not just the gambling operations, it’s what it allows and what actually is drawn to those locations, and I think that’s what we disrupted today.”
FBI Agent Dwyer applauded the work of each agency along with his team of investigators and the roughly 150 law enforcement personnel that took part in the day’s events.
“It is my great pleasure to be standing here with our partners from Hockley County, the LPD, Texas DPS and the United States attorney’s office,” said Dwyer. “The goal of this operation is to make a significant impact on drug related crime in west Texas and have dedicated resources and strong partnerships to help maintain the ongoing efforts to reduce violent crime, these types of crimes that unsettle our communities and undermine our citizens efforts to build safety and security in their neighborhoods.”
Special Agent Dwyer explained that the group effort between all agencies allowed them to use every possible resource to dismantle the criminal element in this operation because in today’s world the threats they face are too diverse, too dangerous and too all-encompassing for any one agency to tackle the issue. “Through our law enforcement partnerships and task forces we are sending a loud and clear message to violent criminals that we will deploy our collective strength to ensure the safety and security of our neighborhoods and our communities,” said Dwyer. “I’m proud of the work that our federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have performed together to effectively combat violence plaguing our neighborhoods. We will continue to pursue justice in all of those investigations and thank you to my entire team for their tireless work to dismantle a wide range of criminal activity.”