‘El Mayo’s’ Move to Federal Court in New York Is to Avoid Murder Charges Against U.S. Citizens ~ Borderland Beat

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The agreed transfer of Ismael Zambada García, “El Mayo,” from Texas to a federal court in New York is part of a defense strategy to avoid the drug lord facing murder charges in Texas in 2012, even though it would mean he would be charged with fentanyl trafficking, sources familiar with the matter said.

Both cases are federal, but the New York indictment does not include any murder-related charges.

“There are charges he will avoid in New York and will have to answer to in the Southern District of Texas, such as the murder charge, which could carry the death penalty and make his trial more difficult. That is why the defense has preferred to negotiate with the prosecution,” said a person close to Zambada García’s family, who asked not to be named.

While New York may be “easier,” the reality is that Zambada García faces 17 charges related to trafficking in cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, heroin, marijuana, conspiracy, criminal association, making threats, money laundering, possession of weapons for the sole use of the person, and international distribution of more than 5,000 kilos of cocaine.

The file names members of the organization, such as Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa, who testified against Joaquín Guzmán Loera during the so-called ‘Trial of the Century’, and who would later be called again.

“There is information that Zambada García, along with others, shipped nearly 3,000 kilos of cocaine to the United States between January 2004 and December 2008, and that he did so through the Cifuentes Villa organization,” the document states.

The file also reveals the identity of another drug trafficker with whom Mayo allegedly did business, a capo known as Luis Agustín Caicedo Velandia “Don Lucho,” from whom Zambada García allegedly bought more than 100 tons of cocaine between 2003 and 2010, until Don Lucho was arrested and Mayo allegedly negotiated with other Colombian cartels.

Murder Charges in Texas

The 2012 indictment in the Western District of Texas charged Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia with murder and conspiracy in connection with drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime. The indictment also charges 22 other people who prosecutors say have ties to the cartel.

The 2010 kidnapping and murder of a U.S. citizen and two members of his family during a wedding ceremony in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, over suspected ties to the rival Juarez La Linea cartel.

The target was the family of groom Rafael Morales Valencia, all residents of La Mesa, New Mexico. The three were abducted at El Señor de la Misericordia Church in Juarez, and another was fatally shot at the wedding. Police found the bodies of the groom, his brother and his uncle in the back of a pickup truck three days after the wedding.

“Based on the false belief that the victims were part of La Linea and that Guadalupe Morales-Arreola worked for the person responsible for his father’s death, Irvin Enriquez enlisted the help of Jose Antonio Torres-Marrufo and his alleged team of hitmen to exact revenge,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Enriquez was sentenced to 30 years in prison in El Paso after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country.

The indictment also details the 2009 kidnapping, murder and mutilation of a Texas resident “to account for the loss of a 670-pound shipment of marijuana seized by Border Patrol,” prosecutors said.

According to the complaint, investigators found the Texas resident’s body in Ciudad Juarez. Sergio Saucedo, 30, was taken at gunpoint from his Texas home in front of a school bus full of children and taken to Marrufo, Mexico.

“He had been beaten and strangled and his hands had been severed above the wrists and placed on his chest as a warning to those who would attempt to steal from the cartel,” the indictment said.

Two men, Rafael Vega and Cesar Obregon Reyes, were convicted of Saucedo’s murder and sentenced to life in federal prison. Both have maintained their innocence. A third man, Omar Obregon Ortiz, pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 100 months in prison.

According to the indictment, Torres Marrufo had been overseeing the Sinaloa cartel’s law enforcement activities since late 2007 or early 2008. However, in the fall of 2008, cartel leaders expanded his role to include overseeing all drug trafficking activities in the Juárez region.

He also led members of the cartel’s Gente Nueva organization, which Mexican officials say he founded, and the Artistas Asesinos gang, also known as Los Doble As/AAs and Los Mexicles, a rival of the Barrio Azteca prison gang, founded in El Paso, Texas.

He was extradited to the US in 2019. The following year, it was rumored that “El Jaguar” had reached a plea deal with US authorities in Texas. But in early 2022, he and several others were convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison, including for the murder of employees of the US consulate in Juarez, Mexico, where Marrufo was a gunman alongside several members of Barrio Azetca.

Alleged Threats to Los Aztecas

According to author Anabel Hernandez, Mayo decided to move to New York because of death threats from the gang living in the Barrio Azteca prison.

“He was threatened with death by Los Aztecas in retaliation for the bloody war that was taking place for the control of Ciudad Juárez. The old drug trafficker understood that his life was really in danger.”

The communicator assured that even the US Department of Justice was aware of the risks that ‘El Mayo’ Zambada faces if he remains in Texas.

“The Attorney General’s Office states: As the leader and founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, to which many members are loyal and many rivals remain motivated to take violent retaliation, the defendant’s detention and transfer pose extraordinary security risks, including risks to the defendant himself and risks to the personnel who detain and transfer him,” the report found.

The U.S. government has kept the date of his transfer secret until now, so it is not known whether he is still in Texas or has already been placed in a New York prison.

There is still no exact federal BOP listing of “Mayo” under the name Ismael Zambada Garcia (the exact spelling of his name on the 2012 arrest warrant and indictment) or a similar spelling.

Source Riodoce, Borderland Beat, Infobae, CNN, Borderland Beat