Top Mexican Cartel Leader Faces 25 Years In US Prison

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A top Mexican drug cartel boss — arguably Latin America’s answer to Al Capone or John Gotti — pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to launder money on Wednesday in a U.S. federal courtroom in San Diego.

Benjamin Arellano Felix, considered one of the world’s most powerful drug lords, was extradited to the U.S. in 2011.

According to court documents obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police’s Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Committee, his crime group tortured and killed rivals in the United States, Mexico, and Central America while smuggling hundreds of tons of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine.

The 56-year old gangster faces upwards of 25 years when he is sentenced on April 2, 2012.

The Tijuana-based drug cartel, known as the Arellano Felix Organization, smuggled along the Mexico-California border. It gained the reputation as a bloodthirsty crime gang that didn’t fear local and federal police (Federales) or the military.

Its cartel members and associates were known for dissolving the bodies of cartel enemies in vats of deadly corrosives.

Benjamin Arellano Felix was allegedly the crime gang’s leader from 1989 until his arrest in 2002. He personally oversaw his cartel’s drug trafficking operations and the kidnapping and murder of rival traffickers, informants and members of the Mexican security forces.

His criminal organization began to lose its power and influence when Arellano Felix was captured and locked up in a Mexican detention facilities in 2002.

He was sentenced there in 2007 to 22 years in prison for drug trafficking and organized crime charges. After serving four years in a Mexican prison, he was finally extradited to the US, where he will now avoid a trial after pleading guilty.

Mexico’s drug violence has surged and grown more gruesome in recent years, particularly in the northern border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez.

Jim Kouri

Jim Kouri, CPP, formerly Fifth Vice-President, is currently a Board Member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, an editor for ConservativeBase.com, and he's a columnist for Examiner.com. In addition, he's a blogger for the Cheyenne, Wyoming Fox News Radio affiliate KGAB (www.kgab.com). Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.

One thought on “Top Mexican Cartel Leader Faces 25 Years In US Prison

  • January 6, 2012 at 3:15 pm
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    A good majority of currently living citizens face varying degrees of the same fate…incarceration…fines…and a twisted version of what is called judicious…a senational court with it’s legislatures that in 1776 would have been called despotism…
    Our children need something like a Congress that knows how to endorse first what they even use in their own commerce and apply the same simple methods or be the ones that continually get rich from allowing such high levels of crime and being so dependant on the need finacially for the high levels of crime.
    Electronic debit is coming to the uS…and will succeed as an audit and invoice allowing the ones that do…to barter what they trade, etc. or even manufacture. Today you can open offshore accounts using bit coins…paypal…google wallet…a tap phone at some merchant…that uses alternative currency…and not do it illegally either.You can even have a construction company that uses Hoem Depot do what they do with a contractor that supplys the land accomplish the non use of the uS currency using bitcoins and smile.
    Most men historically were not born as drug king pins for the uS government to role a pair of dice to see when they would grow up and end with 25 years in prison.Everyone…please have a safe…and pleasant day.

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