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A Mexican cartel leader has been accused of faking his death and using a fake identity to live a luxurious lifestyle in California.
Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa, 37, a high-ranking member of Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, was charged with international drug trafficking and money laundering offenses this week.
He was taken into custody in Riverside, California on November 19. Gutierrez-Ochoa is the son-in-law of the cartel’s leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho. Federal investigators believe the man’s father-in-law may have helped him by telling associates he murdered him for lying, allowing him to sneak into the US with the drug lord’s daughter.
The cartel, based in Jalisco, Mexico, is considered one of the world’s most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations. Federal investigators say Gutierrez-Ochoa, who went by the alias Luis Miguel Martinez, started working for the organization around 2014 and coordinated the distribution of 40,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and 2,000 kilograms of cocaine into the US.
Investigators also accused him of violent crimes. In November 2021, they say he kidnapped two members of the Mexican Navy to secure the release of Cervantes’ wife who was in Mexican custody. Gutierrez-Ochoa then fled to the US and lived in a luxury home in Riverside, purchased with the cartel’s money, federal investigators say.
If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
The Justice Department indicted Cervantes in 2022, charging him with leading a criminal enterprise to manufacture and distribute fentanyl into the US. Federal officials are offering a $10m reward for information leading to the cartel leader’s arrest and/or conviction.
Cervantes remains a fugitive.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a news release: “The Jalisco Cartel is responsible for unprecedented violence in Mexico and helping to fuel the deadly drug crisis in the United States. The DEA is relentlessly committed to defeating the Jalisco Cartel, and we will exhaust every tool in the justice system to fight back, to save American lives, and to bring this cartel to justice.”
