poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
Pedro and Margarito Flores to face sentencing after spilling cartel secrets
IDENTICAL twin brothers who partnered with Mexico’s most notorious cartel kingpin to build a $2 billion North American drug ring will be sentenced on Tuesday in Chicago.
Anyone convicted of trafficking a fraction as much cocaine and heroin could normally expect a life sentence. But the twins can enter their sentencing hearing Tuesday confident of receiving far less.
That’s because they spilt secrets that led to the indictments of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a half-dozen of his lieutenants and around 40 lower-level traffickers, prosecutors are asking for a remarkably lenient term — around 10 years.
If credited for six years in protective custody, the 33-year-old siblings could go free within a few years.
Guzman “ran the one of the biggest trafficking organisations in the last 100 years, and these brothers were crucial in helping to bring him and his people to justice,” said Jack Riley, former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Chicago and now the agency’s No. 3 in Washington. “I don’t think you can get bigger than that.”
Details of the twins’ story have been kept under seal for years, but recently opened federal government files, and an Associated Press review of documents in related cases, have lifted some of the secrecy surrounding the two, offering a fuller narrative of their journey from flamboyant teen traffickers to associates of Guzman, who was captured last year by Mexican authorities.
American authorities portray the twins as among the most valuable drug traffickers who became informants. Chicago criminal lawyer Joe Lopez, who represented several clients indicted on evidence from the twins, put it more starkly: “They’re some of the most significant rats in U.S. history.”
Drug-world figures weighed in on their importance, too, in their own way. After word spread in mid-2009 that the twins had turned informants, their father was kidnapped, according to government documents. A note left for the twins on the windshield of his abandoned car read, “Shut up or we are going to send you his head.” He is presumed dead.
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/world/north-...g-cartel-secrets/story-fnh81jut-1227197836074
IDENTICAL twin brothers who partnered with Mexico’s most notorious cartel kingpin to build a $2 billion North American drug ring will be sentenced on Tuesday in Chicago.
Anyone convicted of trafficking a fraction as much cocaine and heroin could normally expect a life sentence. But the twins can enter their sentencing hearing Tuesday confident of receiving far less.
That’s because they spilt secrets that led to the indictments of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a half-dozen of his lieutenants and around 40 lower-level traffickers, prosecutors are asking for a remarkably lenient term — around 10 years.
If credited for six years in protective custody, the 33-year-old siblings could go free within a few years.
Guzman “ran the one of the biggest trafficking organisations in the last 100 years, and these brothers were crucial in helping to bring him and his people to justice,” said Jack Riley, former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Chicago and now the agency’s No. 3 in Washington. “I don’t think you can get bigger than that.”
Details of the twins’ story have been kept under seal for years, but recently opened federal government files, and an Associated Press review of documents in related cases, have lifted some of the secrecy surrounding the two, offering a fuller narrative of their journey from flamboyant teen traffickers to associates of Guzman, who was captured last year by Mexican authorities.
American authorities portray the twins as among the most valuable drug traffickers who became informants. Chicago criminal lawyer Joe Lopez, who represented several clients indicted on evidence from the twins, put it more starkly: “They’re some of the most significant rats in U.S. history.”
Drug-world figures weighed in on their importance, too, in their own way. After word spread in mid-2009 that the twins had turned informants, their father was kidnapped, according to government documents. A note left for the twins on the windshield of his abandoned car read, “Shut up or we are going to send you his head.” He is presumed dead.
Cont -
http://www.news.com.au/world/north-...g-cartel-secrets/story-fnh81jut-1227197836074
what goes around comes around.
