Federal authorities charged a Whittier man with directing a conspiracy to ship weaponry and ammunition to members of the Jalisco New Technology Cartel, a drug trafficking group that legislation enforcement officers describe as some of the highly effective in Mexico.
Marco Antonio Santillan Valencia, 51, was charged with conspiring to evade restrictions on the export of firearms, conspiring to launder cash and possessing ammunition as a felon.
Santillan and his codefendants, together with his son Marco Santillan Jr., 29, are accused of shopping for weapons, ammunition and firearm elements in Nevada, Oregon, Nebraska and Arizona and arranging to smuggle them into Mexico. The weaponry was bought with the proceeds of drug gross sales, prosecutors charged.
An indictment, returned in December and unsealed final week, presents a way of the alleged operation’s scope: Stopped by legislation enforcement in San Bernardino County, Santillan Jr. and two others have been discovered to be transporting 64,400 rounds of ammunition, 20 50-round ammunition belts, rifle scopes, $52,471 in money and $10,000 in cash orders, the doc says.
In keeping with the indictment, authorities seized weapons and ammunition at numerous websites throughout the state: 4 rifles at a house in Halfway Metropolis in Orange County, 77,300 rounds of ammunition in a trailer in Westlake Village, bins of rifle elements and bullets in a minivan in Whittier, and two rifles on the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, the place an Orange County man tried to smuggle the weapons, ammunition and money into Mexico.
Santillan and all however one in all his codefendants have been arrested final week. Rafael Magallon Castillo, who was charged with conspiring to violate export restrictions, is a fugitive and believed to be in Mexico, in keeping with a spokesman for the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Los Angeles. Magallon, 34, was final residing in Oceano, simply south of San Luis Obispo.
Santillan has pleaded not responsible. He was beforehand convicted in federal court docket in San Diego of conspiring to import contraband in 1994 and sentenced to 6 months in jail, court docket data present. His lawyer didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
The weapons and ammunition have been stated by legislation enforcement officers to be certain for members of the Jalisco New Technology Cartel, identified by its Spanish initials, CJNG. Prosecutors cited a Fb message through which Santillan Jr. allegedly stated that “Mencho’s cartel” was “shopping for every little thing.”
Authorities say the CJNG is led by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, often called “El Mencho.” A 55-year-old former policeman, Oseguera is the topic of a $10-million bounty supplied by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
In its 2021 risk evaluation, the DEA warned that the CJNG was one in all Mexico’s two dominant drug trafficking teams, together with the Sinaloa cartel previously led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The CJNG particularly has pushed artificial medication — mainly methamphetamine and fentanyl — into the USA by the border cities of Tijuana, Juarez and Nuevo Laredo, company officers wrote within the evaluation. Many of the methamphetamine and fentanyl offered in Los Angeles is provided by the group, the evaluation says.
Authorities in Los Angeles warned two years in the past that Oseguera’s group was utilizing drug proceeds to purchase weapons in the USA, then smuggling the weapons and ammunition to Mexico. Federal prosecutors charged 4 males on the time with conspiring to purchase assault weapons; one of many defendants, a prepare dinner at a Santa Ana seafood restaurant, was stated to have requested a DEA informant in regards to the viability of shopping for a number of hundred AK-47s and AR-15s.
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