Cult fortune teller, carjackers get prison time after attack on Border Patrol agent in Mission

McALLEN — A cult fortune teller left federal court Tuesday with the lightest prison sentence among a quartet of defendants who learned their fates.

But Claudia Cecilia Gomez Aguilar told U.S. District Judge Randy Crane she already paid the highest price of anyone involved with the June 2009 botched carjacking of an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent in Mission.  

Gomez, 29, worked as a fortune teller who blessed a drug cartel courier planning to drive about $400,000 from Georgia to the Rio Grande Valley.

The fortune teller snitched on her client. But instead of leading seven others to the courier, they mistakenly targeted the off-duty agent, who was returning to the Valley with his young daughter to visit her grandmother.

The case came to a head last month after jurors convicted Jose Antonio Armendariz, the carjacking ringleader, following a weeklong trial in U.S. District Court.

Gomez — an illegal immigrant — admitted her role soon after her arrest and cooperated with prosecutors. But as she remained in federal custody awaiting her sentence, an accident caused Gomez to lose the child she’d been carrying in the womb.

“I believe I have paid a very high price for what I did,” Gomez told Crane in Spanish at her sentencing hearing Tuesday afternoon: “perhaps more than anyone else.”

Crane agreed with Gomez, sentencing her to five years in federal prison on federal carjacking and weapons charges. She had faced more than 12 years in prison, given her clean criminal record.

“I believe Ms. Gomez has been punished the most of anyone,” Crane said at the hearing. “She is the one who is least culpable and least likely to re-offend.”

After her prison term, Gomez will be deported to Mexico.

Three other men also learned their fates Tuesday for their roles in the botched carjacking, all of whom received reduced sentences for pleading guilty and building the case against Armendariz, testifying against him during his trial:

>> Juan Vite Martinez, 41, the man Gomez called after praying for the drug money courier headed to the Valley. Martinez helped organize the operation, which ended with mistakenly tracking down the off-duty Border Patrol agent along Shary Road in Mission, with one gunshot that struck his Cadillac sedan.

Crane sentenced Martinez to eight years in prison for his role in the crime.

“If I could help the government further, I would do it,” Martinez told the judge in Spanish. He will be deported after serving his prison time.

>> Jose Concepcion Hernandez, who was sentenced to seven years in prison. He will serve three years probation after his prison term. 

>> Nieves Rogelio Ramirez, 28, who was recruited into the scheme and blocked the agent’s car during the attempted carjacking near The Club at Cimarron. Crane sentenced Ramirez to six years in prison and three years of probation for his role in the crime.

Armendariz, 27, is set to be sentenced July 26. Prosecutors also successfully linked Armendariz to a pair of carjackings and the hostage taking of Uriel De Alba, owner of a chain of local bakeries that bear his name, in 2006. He faces up to life in prison for the crimes.

Three others — Jose Wenceslado Mejia, Dagoberto Navarro Pompa and Maria Teresa de la Rosa — already received prison sentences ranging between five and 15 years at a hearing in November 2010.

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Jared Taylor covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4439.