United States v. Rojas

Appellant, Maria Rojas, was convicted after a bench trial of transporting in excess of $5,000 in currency out of the United States without filing a report as required by 31 U.S.C. § 1101. On appeal she contends that certain evidence and statements she made should have been suppressed as fruits of an illegal detention and search, and that the evidence was insufficient to sustain her conviction. We reject appellant's arguments and affirm. I. Background On August 22, 1980, the Miami Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office received information from the DEA office in Bogota, Columbia that the following day a woman would be departing from the Miami airport on a commercial airline flight for Bogota, carrying $1,000,000 in cash. This information had been given to the Bogota DEA office by a previously reliable1 confidential informant, who also had provided a Miami telephone number for the woman. Miami DEA agents were able to match the telephone number with a call-back number left with Braniff Airlines by one Maria Lilia Rojas to reserve a seat on the August 23 Braniff flight 905 to Bogota.