FBI Agent Ann Cox Busted for Hiring Illegal Immigrants

(Aug. 19) -- Businesses across the U.S. get busted with regularity for hiring illegal immigrants, but what made one recent case in Texas all the more unusual was that involved an FBI agent.

Federal authorities late last month charged FBI agent Ann Cox of Dallas with a misdemeanor, alleging that from 1997 to 2008 she hired six illegal immigrants for a restaurant, Schlotzsky's Deli, she owned in Rockwall, Texas.

The Dallas Morning News reported that she was fired shortly after authorities filed charges. It noted that she has a husband in the FBI who was not implicated in the case.

Mark White, a spokesman for the FBI in Dallas, told AOL News "she's a former agent" and simply said she recently left the agency. Beyond that, he said, "we don't comment on internal disciplinary things."

According to court documents, Cox has signed a guilty plea agreement and is scheduled to enter the plea on Aug. 27. The agreement says that she faces a fine "not to exceed $3,000 for each unauthorized alien" and a prison sentence of up to six months, even though it appears she would have a chance of probation.

The government filed a "factual resume" on the case that said: "From in or before August 1997 until in or about December 2007, Ann Cox owned and operated a Schlotzsky's Deli in Rockwall, Texas. While operating the deli, Cox engaged in a pattern and practice of hiring and employing aliens in the United States while knowing they were unauthorized for such employment."

The document went on to list the names of the workers and the years they worked at the restaurant.

The manager of Schlotzsky's, Rohan Ban, told AOL News that Cox sold the restaurant at the end of 2008.

Her attorney, Terence J. Hart of Dallas, and the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, Robert H. Dunikoski, did not immediately return phone calls for comment.