Ex-San Diego Customs official sentenced to probation

By: Associated Press | Saturday, January 14, 2006 12:22 AM PST ∞

SAN DIEGO -- A former Customs Service official was sentenced Friday to three years probation for lying about her relationship with a corrupt immigration inspector.

Daphiney Kimberly Caganap, 43, pleaded guilty in October to lying to an FBI agent and resigned her job as port director at Detroit's airport for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Before moving to Detroit, Caganap served as assistant director at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, overseeing the intelligence unit and anti-smuggling operations at the world's busiest border crossing linking San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.

The charges stem from an investigation into a corrupt Immigration and Naturalization Service inspector who collected thousands of dollars each week for allowing marijuana and illegal aliens to smuggled through lanes he was staffing at the border crossing, according to Caganap's indictment.

The inspector was not named in the indictment, but was identified in The San Diego Union-Tribune as Michael Taylor, who was sentenced in November to nearly four years in federal prison.

Caganap admitted that she lied to an FBI agent when she said she never went to dinner with Taylor in 2000 or 2001. In exchange for her resignation and guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to drop charges that she accepted up to $30,000 in cash and a deluxe spa from Taylor and that she concealed his wrongdoing from investigators.

A message seeking comment from Caganap's attorney, Thomas Warwick, was not immediately returned Friday.

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