After a scandal erupted in 2014 amid news reports about the property, Rivera said in November that she was buying the house from the company on monthly payments with money she earned as an actress.

The two-year investigation led to the arrests of more than 400 people, some 60 indictments and US$187,000 seized. The ring extended from western border cities to San Antonio and Dallas.

Three out of every five convicted smugglers are U.S. citizens, according to an analysis by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review of 3,254 federal trafficking convictions during 2013 and 2014 in federal courts in the southern stretches of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.