According to the Government's sentencing memo, they laundered more than $1.8 billion dollars and distributed 64,500 kilos of cocaine and a lot of heroin in the three and one half year period between May, 2005 and November, 2008. (According to other court filings, the Government seized a grand total of 1,930 kilos.) Pleadings from 2009 show their annual income to be $700 million. According to the Government's sentencing memorandum:
On average, this cell received 1,500-2,000 kilos of cocaine per month. Approximately half of this cocaine was distributed to the Flores brothers’ Chicago-area customers; the other half was distributed to customers in additional cities, including Columbus, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Vancouver.
Media reports, including this one
in the Chicago Sun Times, give the impression the Flores twins were only in business for three years, from 2005 to 2008. That is certainly not the case.
According to their statements to the grand jury (available here and here), they began their drug business in 1998, and continued until 2008. The Government doesn’t mention the first six years because it is outside the time period charged in the Chicago Indictment. The Twins got their cocaine from the Sinaloa and Beltran-Leyva cartels for years before 2005, but 2005 was the year the twins say they met and began dealing directly with Sinaloa co-leaders Ismael Zambada-Garcia and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman-Loera, rather than underlings.
Also, the Twins were charged in Wisconsin for activity from 2001 to 2004, and because they had the case transferred to Chicago, the reduced sentence they will receive in Chicago includes their Wisconsin activity. They apparently get a pass on everything from 1998 to 2001. Pedro's plea agreement is here and Margarito's plea agreement is here.)
At least the Government finally admits that the Flores twins continued their illegal drug business after they began cooperating, and twice lied about it, before finally 'fessing up. The Government says the totality of the Twins' cooperation was so great, it’s not going to hold their lies against them.
The Government effusively praises the twins for their cooperation which it says resulted in charges against 9 Sinaloa Federation members from Mexico, including Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera. That Indictment is here. The Government's focus on "charges" rather than "convictions" is telling.
To date, the Flores' twins cooperation has contributed to convictions of only three of Sinaloa members (Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez and Tomas Arevalo Renteria.) El Chapo may never face trial in the U.S. because Mexico has opened several new cases against him and he has years left on the sentence he was serving when he escaped from jail.(Just Friday, a judge in Mexico accepted his latest request for protection from extradition for filing. Mexico has yet to acknowledge receiving a new extradition request since his arrest in February, 2014. The last one was made in 2001.)
El Chapo's son, Alfredo Guzman-Salazar, is a fugitive. Ismael Zambada-Garcia, the "co-leader" of the Sinaloa federation, is a fugitive in his 60's who may never be caught. German Olivares and Heriberto Zazueta-Godoy are fugitives. Juan Guzman Rocha was a fugitive but died, so the charges against him were dismissed. Felipe Carbrera-Sarabia is a fugitive now in custody in Mexico where he has been battling extradition for 2 years. If any of these fugitives reach Chicago, by the time their cases are ready for trial, the Flores twins will have finished their sentences. It's highly unlikely they would be called as witnesses. Another newly added defendant to the case, Edgar Manuel Valencia Ortega, has not admitted guilt.
On the Beltran-Leyva side, while the Government praises the twins' cooperation, the lead defendant is dead, another is contesting his guilt, and the third person is a fugitive. So their cooperation against those cartel members has not resulted in convictions.
The Flores twins were never called to testify at any pre-trial hearing or trial. From the time they were whisked to the U.S. from Mexico in November, 2008, all of their cooperation was done while in custody, through telephone calls and visits with government agents or prosecutors.
What did the twins accomplish other than the destruction of their own organization and convictions and jail sentences for their underlings and customers?
The only Sinaloa cartel conviction of any note that resulted from their cooperation was that of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, son of Sinaloa co-leader Ismael Zambada-Garcia. The Government got an extra bonus when Jesus Vicente agreed to cooperate. He's getting a deal as favorable as the Flores twins. His sentencing guidelines also called for life in prison. The Government has agreed he can request a departure to a term of 10 years. Jesus Vicente, like the Flores twins, will likely go into witness protection with his family when his sentence is finished. And he won't be deported back to Mexico if he's still in danger of retaliation.
The second conviction -- Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez -- shows what happens when you don't get a gold star from the DEA. He was sentenced to 22 years after pleading guilty without a cooperation agreement. He was recorded by the Flores twins doing a single 276 kilo deal. (Transcripts of the barely comprehensible recordings are here.) No drugs were ever seized in connection with this or any other transaction he was alleged by the Twins to have engaged in. The Government now admits the twins failed to tell the Government that the 276 kilograms arrived in Chicago, and worse, that they instructed their workers to pick them up, they sold the drugs and kept the proceeds hidden from the Government, in violation of their cooperation agreement. The twins claimed Vasquez-Hernandez told them about other large deals he had done with El Chapo, including multi-ton quantities. Vasquez-Herandez denied this. The twins also claimed they used Vasquez-Hernandez' train system to move their drugs from California to Chicago (again, no drugs were seized to support their claim.) They claimed Vasquez-Hernandez and his wife also moved large amounts of money for the Sinaloa cartel. The judge accepted their allegations and sentenced Vasquez-Herandez to 22 years.
The third cartel conviction is Tomas Arevalo Renteria, who mostly sold heroin to the Flores twins. He has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. He did not have a cooperation agreement when he pleaded guilty.
The Government acknowledges that for the most part, the Flores twins ratted down, rather than up. In other words, they turned on their workers, 16 of whom were charged in this Indictment with transporting and distributing their drugs and moving their money. The sentencing pleadings in the cases of the underlings show just how huge the Flores’ operation really was and how many millions of dollars they handled on a daily basis. They also show the value of a gold star from the DEA, and what happens when you turn one down.
The Government requested extraordinary sentence reductions (66% reductions in some cases) for several of their workers who cooperated, including their most senior worker, Cesar Perez, who worked for them for 7 years, from 2001 to 2008 and was paid more than $1 million. He also supplied the Flores' customers with guns, at their direction. He got a 66% sentence reduction for his cooperation and was sentenced to 10 years.
Jorge Llamas, a drug courier, distributed 9 tons of cocaine for the Flores twins during the several years he worked for them. He agreed to forfeit $800,000. He was sentenced to time served in pre-trial detention.
At the other end of the spectrum, consider the 108 month sentence of the Flores twins' physically disabled, menial wo
