Cartel leader’s ex-wife pleads guilty to violating U.S. sanctions over school tuition

The ex-wife and current partner of a leader of the Mexican cartel Los Cuinis pleaded guilty to violating U.S. counternarcotics sanctions, according to the Justice Department.

Los Cuinis is closely tied to the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), which the State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025. The case is part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, the department said.

According to court documents, Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arevalo, 45, of Mexico, violated the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Act by engaging in transactions and dealings in property with IMG Academy, a preparatory school and athletic training facility headquartered in Bradenton, Florida, that her child attended. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Amaral Arevalo on Aug. 19, 2015, for assisting Los Cuinis’ international narcotics trafficking activities, court documents state. Despite that designation, which prohibited her from engaging in transactions or dealings within the U.S. financial system, Amaral Arevalo signed contracts for her child to attend IMG Academy and arranged $504,497.48 in tuition payments, prosecutors said.

Her ex-husband and current partner, Gerardo Gonzalez Valencia, was sentenced to life in prison on July 21, 2023, for conspiring to distribute tonnage quantities of cocaine for importation into the United States, according to the release. Separately, OFAC announced a $1.72 million settlement with IMG Academy on Feb. 12, 2026, over the school’s yearly tuition agreements with Specially Designated Nationals sanctioned for ties to a Mexico-based drug cartel and its receipt and processing of payments under those agreements.

Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said Amaral Arevalo “willfully violated” the sanctions by funneling more than half a million dollars in illicit drug proceeds through the school. Duva said the Kingpin Act is intended to prevent foreign narcotics traffickers and their operatives from using the U.S. financial system. DEA Administrator Terrance C. Cole said Amaral Arevalo exploited a trusted institution to funnel illicit drug proceeds for CJNG, calling her guilty plea evidence of cartel financial networks’ “calculated audacity” and reach inside the United States.

Amaral Arevalo faces up to 10 years in prison and a $10 million fine. Her sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 2.

The DEA’s Special Operations Division Bilateral Investigations Unit Los Angeles investigated the case with support from OFAC. Chief Kaitlin Sahni of the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Unit and Trial Attorneys Lernik Begian, Douglas Meisel and Nicole Lockhart of the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section are prosecuting.

The case is part of the HSTF initiative established under Executive Order 14159. The Justice Department describes HSTF as a whole-of-government partnership targeting cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings, with particular emphasis on child trafficking and other crimes involving children.

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