A Mexican court sentenced four Gulf Cartel members who kidnapped migrants and held them for ransom to 90-year terms in prison following their conviction for aggravated kidnapping. Another cartel member received a 50-year term in prison for a similar but separate crime.
This week a judge in Tamaulipas, Mexico, sentenced four Gulf Cartel members to spend 90 years in prison for their role in kidnapping 11 migrants and holding them for ransom. The kidnapping took place in May 2021 in the Balcones de Alcala neighborhood on the southeast side of Reynosa, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office revealed.
Following intelligence information, authorities raided the house where they found 11 migrants who were bound and gagged inside the house as their captors held them for ransom, information from local news outlets revealed at the time. The migrants arrived in Reynosa with the hopes of being smuggled into Texas. However, cartel gunmen kidnapped them and tried to extort additional funds from their loved ones.
During the raid, authorities arrested the four gunmen who are only identified as Fidel Gabriel “L”, Sergio Jonathan “L”, Giovanni Axel “L” and Emilio Quetzal “M.” After the arrest, a Tamaulipas state judge found the men guilty on the charge of aggravated kidnapping and last week sentenced each to the prison term as well as 5,000 days of minimum wage work. The judge also ordered the gunmen to pay restitution.
The judge also sentenced a gunman named Loth “G” to 50 years in prison for his role in collecting the ransom for a victim that had been kidnapped in a separate incident in Reynosa. Authorities arrested him in February 2021 in the same neighborhood as the previous kidnapping called Balcones de Alcala.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.