Fifteen members of one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to helping smuggle tons quantities of drugs into Texas. The cartel members will be sentenced later this year.
The convicted drug smugglers are all part of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas, a criminal organization based in Nuevo Laredo The cartel is responsible for a large part of the violence in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas and for several violent crimes in South Texas.
This week, Gustavo Alberto Duenes-Perez, went before a U.S. District Judge and pleaded guilty to various drug conspiracy charges. Duenes-Perez is the fifteenth member of the CDN-Los Zetas to plead guilty in recent days. All fifteen members will be sentenced in June. The cartel members along with several other individuals who remain unnamed in a multicount criminal indictment are all accused of working for the CDN-Los Zetas cartel.
According to information released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, the case began in March 2019 when agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration learned that the CDN-Los Zetas provided Duenes-Perez and his associates with funds to purchase a utility truck that would be used to transport drugs to a warehouse located in Laredo, Texas.
Authorities monitored the vehicle and through surveillance operations learned that Duenez-Perez regularly drove the vehicle. The drug smuggling cell that operated in Texas used personal vehicles and utility trucks to move drugs within Laredo from various stash houses and onto a ranch.
In April of that year, authorities followed Duenes-Perez as he and his group moved a load of drugs from a ranch to a stash house in Laredo.
Authorities raided the ranch and stash house, seizing a total of 11,240 kilograms (approximately 12 tons) of marijuana with an approximate value of $11.6 million.
Luisana Moreno is a contributing writer for Breitbart Texas.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.