What Happened to the Border Patrol Agents?

How would a smuggler profit from telling such a thing? Fear of encountering ghosts would have ruined a profitable journey and created fear to the point that people would no longer want to cross in the mountains. Every group that was caught landed at the mig an jail facility for processing, with the smuggler facing possible jail time. So it doesn't sound like the hoax would plausibly begin with the smugglers themselves. Then what the border patrol agents? In this case, we need to consider two main possibilities. It could be someone on the boarder patrol was hoaxing both the crossers and elmore. However, this last possibility falls apart if either one of the first two falls apart, so we