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Victor L. Ochoa at the age of 73 prospecting at his mine near Caballo Lake, New Mexico, 1933. (Victor Ochoa

Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Smithsonian Institution.)

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Agent Sheldon Bover, January 11, 1915—February 10, 1915. United States Secret Service, Daily Reports of Agents, 1879-1936. Daily Reports

from San Antonio and El Paso (Vol. 1-13, roll 490) Record Group 87. National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

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Its El Paso offices were in Room 402 at the Two Republics building.

116

“Ochoa Organizes Million Dollar Mine Corporation,” unattributed and undated article. Victor L. Ochoa Papers, National Museum of American History.

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• 1914-1915—Currency Counterfeiter

As part of the clandestine war between the Carrancistas and the Villistas along the border,

Ochoa counterfeited Villista money.

• 1915—U.S. Secret Service Informant

According to United States Secret Service documents which were not unclassified until the

1970s, Victor Ochoa served as a paid informant to the agent Sheldon Bover. He passed on

information about counterfeiting activities going on in El Paso’s and Juárez’ revolutionary

underworld.¹¹⁴

• 1933—Mine Owner

Ochoa claimed to have found several manuscripts and maps in the archives of a Mexican

church that helped him locate an old Spanish gold mine near Elephant Butte, New Mexico.

He founded and declared himself president of a mining corporation—the Caballos

Development & Mining Co.¹¹⁵ Ochoa promised prospective shareholders that his mine had

all kinds of precious metals in it. “Zinc, lead, iron, gold, vanadium, molybdenum and copper

are everywhere to be found in abundance,” Ochoa announced.¹¹⁶ Within a few weeks, he

found more than 20 business partners willing to buy shares in his company. He was 73-years

old at the time.

If the Mexican Revolution created a kind of cultural renaissance in El Paso, then Victor L. Ochoa was in

some ways its Leonardo Da Vinci. Both men were extremely versatile and neither could get their ornithopters

off the ground.