ALEXANDRIA BAY — A Michigan man was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court, Syracuse, to two days’ time served in federal custody and three years’ probation after being found in October transporting illegal aliens at the Alexandria Bay port of entry.

Jason Lindsey, 34, Ypsilanti, Mich., formerly of Biloxi, Miss., also was ordered to serve four months of consecutive weekends at a federal prison in Michigan and six months’ home detention for a March 30 guilty plea to transporting illegal aliens. According to a criminal complaint filed with the court, Mr. Lindsey’s boss at a carpet business in Gulfport, Miss., instructed him on Oct. 5 to pick up $2,400 in cash from an unidentified male and send it to a man in Mexico. A day later, he was told to pick up $1,200 from the man and send it to someone in Rio Grande, Texas.

On Oct. 9, Mr. Lindsey was given $5,500 from the man and was told to drive to Houston to pick up three illegal aliens from Mexico. The money was to be given to “coyotes” who had smuggled the men into the United States. He returned with the men to Gulfport before traveling to New York on Oct. 15. The next day, he stopped at Walmart in Watertown to buy his passengers soap and shampoo, according to the complaint. Mr. Lindsey was then told by his boss that he was to travel with the men to an address in Fort Covington.

However, according to the complaint, Mr. Lindsey’s global satellite positioning system offered him a route along Interstate 81 to the Canadian border. The complaint states that “Lindsey did not intend to go to Canada, but the GPS led them there.” He was refused entry into Canada and was returned to U.S. Customs at the Alexandria Bay port of entry, where he told agents he was headed to the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino.

With his guilty plea, he admitted to being paid to transport the aliens and that he knew they were in the country illegally.

Thousands of readers like you have made Northern New York Newspapers the number one ranked website* for local news and sports coverage in the north country.

You can continue on to this article in a few seconds, or you can visit one of our websites:

• Watertown Daily Times
• The Ogdensburg Journal
• Daily Courier-Observer