Grandmother gets probation for role in San Diego drug tunnel

By Marty Graham

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - A 74-year-old grandmother who rented a warehouse on the U.S. border with Mexico that served as the northern end of a tunnel used to smuggle drugs was sentenced to five years of probation on Friday by a federal judge in San Diego.

Glennys Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to launder money in December 2014, was also fined $1,500 for her role in leasing the property in an industrial area in south San Diego.

In April 2014, federal agents found a 600-yard tunnel that began in Tijuana, Mexico, and came up in the warehouse on the U.S. side of the border.

It was equipped with lights and a simple rail system used to move large quantities of marijuana, the agents said at the time.

At the time, the tunnel was the sixth one discovered in San Diego County in four years. Within days of Rodriguez's arrest, a seventh tunnel was discovered.

Rodriguez and two men rented the warehouse for $1,729 a month in May 2013, according to court records. The tunnel entrance was covered with boxes of children's toys and television sets, the court records said.

Rodriguez's attorney asked for probation, saying her client had just been trying to help two longtime clients whom she trusted, and that she did not know she was being duped.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherry Hobson pointed to surveillance evidence which showed Rodriguez was at the warehouse on numerous occasions, and that she made veiled references to illicit activity in wiretapped phone conversations with the other two defendants.

(Reporting by Marty Graham; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Eric Beech)