By Durkin-Richer, Alana
Washington (AP) Prosecutors claim that El Mencho, a close associate of fugitive Jalisco New Generation commander, for years planned a massive drug trafficking operation, supplying guns to one of Mexico’s most potent gangs and evading detection via a semi-submersible and other means.
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Following his 2017 arrest at a Brazilian beach resort while on vacation with his family under a false identity, Jos Gonz lez Valencia was sentenced on Friday in a federal court in Washington to 30 years in a U.S. prison.
Gonz lez Valencia, 49, also known as Chepa, and his two brothers were the leaders of a gang named Los Cuinis, which provided funding for the drug trafficking activities of the murderous cartel Jalisco New Generation, or CJNG, which the Trump administration has classified a foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. government has been looking for his brother-in-law, CJNG leader Nemesio Rub n El Mencho Oseguera Cervantes, for years.
Cristian Fernando Gutirrez Ochoa, El Mencho’s son-in-law, entered a guilty plea to a money laundering conspiracy charge earlier Friday in the same courtroom. After faking his own death and escaping Mexico, Gutierrez Ochoa was captured in California during the close of the Biden administration last year. According to police, he was living under a false identity.
The prosecutions collectively show the U.S. government’s efforts to find the elusive leader of the violent Jalisco New Generation cartel and slow its importation of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine into the United States. With the designation as a foreign terrorist organization, which provides police with new tools to prosecute anyone connected to cartels, the Trump administration has attempted to increase pressure on CJNG and other cartels.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Matthew Galeotti, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, stated that while it is not possible to completely prosecute your way out of the cartel problem, you can have a real impact by informing people that we will be enforcing this, demonstrating that Mexico is cooperating with us, and then attempting to get high-level targets to sort of set the organization back.
Dismantling CJNG and other cartels has been a primary objective for Trump’s Justice Department, and Galetotti said Mexican officials have been cooperating more with the U.S. in recent months. 29 cartel leaders, including drug kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero, who killed a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, were transported by Mexico to the United States in February to face charges.
Since labeling CJNG and seven other Latin American crime groups foreign terrorist organizations in February, the Trump administration has already prosecuted a few defendants with terrorism offenses. According to Galeotti, a number of other indictments involving CJNG and other cartels are still pending.
Galeotti stated that we are approaching this from a division-wide perspective. Our money laundering prosecutors target financial intermediaries in addition to the cartels themselves. Therefore, I believe that we have seen a very big pipeline and some of the most significant situations that we have had when we have used this wide strategy.
For worldwide cocaine trafficking, Gonz lez Valencia entered a guilty plea in 2022. According to authorities, he led Los Cuinis with his siblings for over ten years until going into hiding in Bolivia in 2015. After visiting Brazil, he was detained in 2017 during the first Trump administration and then extradited to the United States.
According to authorities, Los Cuinis smuggled cocaine headed for the United States using air, land, marine, and underwater routes. Gonz lez Valencia allegedly invested in a cargo of 4,000 kilograms of cocaine that was transported from Colombia to Guatemala aboard a semi-submersible vessel. Prosecutors claim that Los Cuinis also used frozen shark carcasses to conceal cocaine. He is also charged with ordering the murder of a competitor.
He wore an orange jumpsuit when he appeared in court and wore headphones to listen to the proceedings through an interpreter. As attorneys fought over the sentencing, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell shut off a portion of the hearing, preventing the public and media from entering the courtroom. The judge’s reasoning for requiring it to be sealed was unclear. Following the hearing, Gonz lez Valencia’s attorney chose not to comment.
In the other case, prosecutors claimed that Gutirrez Ochoa was wanted in Mexico on charges that he abducted two members of the Mexican Navy in 2021 in an attempt to secure El Mencho’s wife’s release after she had been detained by Mexican officials. El Mencho informed acquaintances that he killed Gutirrez Ochoa for lying, and investigators claim that he staged his own death and fled to the United States to elude Mexican authorities.
After being found guilty in a federal court in Washington of distributing cocaine and methamphetamine for importation into the United States and using a firearm in a criminal conspiracy, El Mencho’s son, Ruben Oseguera, also known as El Menchito, was sentenced to March to life in prison.
