Mexican national sentenced to 14 years for smuggling 1,900 kg of cocaine into U.S.

A Mexican national was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to smuggle nearly 1,900 kilograms of cocaine into the United States, the Justice Department announced.

Jesus Rauda-Avila, 46, was a member of a Mexico-based drug trafficking organization led by Marisela Flores-Torruco that imported multi-hundred-kilogram quantities of cocaine into the United States, according to court documents. The organization maintained operations in New York, Texas and elsewhere in the country.

Between 2016 and October 2017, Rauda-Avila arranged and directed the transportation of funds, drivers and vehicles from northern Mexico to southern Mexico to purchase and collect cocaine that was subsequently transported into the United States for distribution, prosecutors said. He conducted at least 10 such narcotics purchases in partnership with Flores-Torruco’s organization, each involving between 100 and 400 kilograms of cocaine.

The organization sourced its cocaine from Colombia and provided logistical and financial support to coordinate the narcotics’ passage through Central America and Mexico before entering the United States. During the investigation, law enforcement seized approximately 971 kilograms of cocaine on April 21, 2017, and another 500 kilograms on May 10, 2017, nearly all of which authorities attributed to the trafficking organization.

“Jesus Rauda-Avila conspired with a drug trafficking organization to import almost 2,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said. “This level of Mexican DTO importation is the root of the injection of drugs and violence into our communities.”

Rauda-Avila pleaded guilty to conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. Three co-conspirators — Flores-Torruco, Qiyun Chen and Jose Francisco Mendoza-Gomez — have also been convicted in the Eastern District of Virginia for their roles in the organization, as have several individuals connected to a related Chinese money laundering network.

Flores-Torruco pleaded guilty to possession, manufacture or distribution of a controlled substance and was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in prison. Chen pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy and received a 10-year prison sentence. Mendoza-Gomez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division and Bilateral Investigations Unit investigated the case, with assistance from DEA offices in Colombia, Panama, Mexico and Guatemala, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs helped secure Rauda-Avila’s arrest and extradition from Mexico.

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The case is part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative established under Executive Order 14159, as well as Operation Take Back America, a Justice Department initiative targeting transnational criminal organizations, cartels and related criminal activity.

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