Cartel leader who faked own death is arrested in California, officials say

[Zorro]

Source: Washington Post

Authorities have arrested a high-ranking member of a drug cartel who allegedly faked his own death to evade the Mexican authorities and spent the past few years living “a life of luxury” in California, the justice department said Thursday.

Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa, who was arrested this week on international drug trafficking and money laundering charges in Riverside, California, was a leader of Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), “one of the world’s most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.

According to the justice department, Gutierrez-Ochoa is the son-in-law of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the alleged founder and head of CJNG. The state department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Oseguera Cervantes, who is also known as El Mencho. CJNG “is responsible for unprecedented violence in Mexico and helping to fuel the deadly drug crisis in the United States,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement.

Gutierrez-Ochoa, 37, who allegedly began working for the cartel in 2014, is believed to have personally coordinated the transportation and distribution of an estimated 40,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and an estimated 2,000 kilograms of cocaine in Mexico destined for the United States, the justice department said. In 2021, Gutierrez-Ochoa allegedly kidnapped two members of the Mexican Navy in an attempt to secure the release of El Mencho’s wife, who had been arrested by Mexican law enforcement, authorities said.

Read more: https://wapo.st/4i1l3hJ

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-11-21/cartel-leader-faked-death

Cartel leader’s son-in-law faked death to enable ‘life of luxury’ in Riverside, feds say
By Brittny Mejia
Nov. 21, 2024 2:32 PM PT

When a man who called himself Luis Miguel Martinez moved into a $1.2-million home in an exclusive Riverside neighborhood in 2023, he brought standard luxuries.

But after his arrest this week by federal authorities, neighbors learned that Martinez was allegedly an alias. His real name, investigators say, is Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa, and he is a son-in-law of the reputed Mexican drug lord known as El Mencho.

Gutierrez-Ochoa, a high-ranking member of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, or CJNG, went missing in Mexico in December 2023, reportedly murdered for lying to his wife’s father, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes.

Gutierrez-Ochoa, 37, allegedly began working for the CJNG around 2014, and later married El Mencho’s youngest daughter, identified in court records as a U.S. citizen who owns a coffee shop in Riverside.

The same year of Gutierrez-Ochoa’s disapperance, a company named Pasion Azul, a purported tequila manufacturer and suspected money laundering front for the cartel, paid $1.2 million in cash for a luxury residence in an exclusive neighborhood of Riverside, according to an affidavit from Kyle Mori of the DEA’s Los Angeles office.

Mori said he interviewed the escrow agent, real estate agent and seller of the home, who called the circumstances of the purchase “suspicious.” The prior owner of the house said she believed the purchasers were “drug dealers” from Mexico.

In October 2024, the DEA in L.A. learned of an Interpol notice seeking the detention of Gutierrez-Ochoa. The Department of Homeland Security compared known photographs of Gutierrez-Ochoa and found they matched that of Martinez, according to the affidavit.

...