A longtime Mexican drug trafficker who was allegedly responsible for moving nearly a quarter-million pounds of cocaine while navigating alliances with Mexico’s most infamous cartels and narcotics kingpins was sentenced Friday to nearly 22 years in federal prison.
Raúl Flores Hernández
(U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control)
Raúl “El Tio” Flores Hernández, 71, admitted last year that he was an intermediary between cocaine suppliers in South America and the Mexican trafficking organizations that ultimately moved the drugs into the United States. His guilty plea and sentencing came in a case in Washington, D.C., though he was also under indictment in two cases in San Diego.
Federal authorities in San Diego were also largely responsible for investigating and building the case against him.
Despite his guilty plea, Flores continued to dispute many of the government’s claims against him, which led to a split sentencing hearing that included three days of evidence and testimony in September. On Friday, based on that hearing and other written arguments by prosecutors and Flores’ defense, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sentenced him to 21 years and 10 months in prison and ordered him to forfeit $280 million in drug proceeds.
“The Defendant and his (drug-trafficking organization) were closely aligned with leaders of the most prolific and violent cartels of their time, including the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltran Leyva Organization, the Milenio Cartel, and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion,” federal prosecutors wrote in sentencing papers. “The Defendant was able to navigate these alliances, shifting over time, for more than three decades to benefit from their patronage, powerful protection, and sources of supply.”
Prosecutors said evidence from the testimony of four witnesses during the initial sentencing hearing showed Flores was responsible for trafficking about 247,909 pounds of cocaine from South America to Mexico in oil tanks. They said about half of that “belonged to him personally,” while the other half belonged to his partners.
Prosecutors said that by a conservative estimate — not counting the value of drug shipments that were seized and using the low end of the estimated price of a kilogram of cocaine — Flores personally obtained at least $680 million in drug proceeds during four distinct periods from 1983 to 2008.
“It may be impossible to quantify the destruction wrought by this defendant channeling vast quantities of cocaine across the globe,” San Diego-area U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath said in a statement.
Prosecutors said Flores became involved in cocaine trafficking through Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, one of the most infamous drug lords in Mexico’s history, and Héctor Beltrán Leyva, a longtime leader in the Sinaloa cartel until a bloody feud led to a split in 2008.
Despite the huge amounts of drugs he was trafficking and the kingpins with whom he was working, Flores remained relatively unknown in most of Mexico, except in Guadalajara, where he owned several businesses and a successful nightclub.
That low public profile changed just after his arrest in 2017, when the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated him a significant foreign narcotics trafficker under the Kingpin Act.
That designation allows Treasury officials to freeze a person’s U.S. assets and prohibits U.S. citizens and entities from doing business with him or her — but that wasn’t what drew public attention. Instead, it was two of the 21 other Mexican citizens who were also designated that day for allegedly providing support to Flores’ drug-trafficking organization: Rafael Marquez, an iconic soccer star who captained Mexico in five World Cups, and singer Julión Álvarez.
The Kingpin Act designation meant both men were barred from entering the U.S., which forced Marquez to miss a match played in Los Angeles in preparation for the 2018 World Cup and prompted Álvarez to cancel a U.S. music tour.
Treasury officials removed Marquez’s designation in 2021 and removed Álvarez’s designation in 2022.
Defense attorney Sandi Rhee wrote in sentencing papers that Flores contests that he was a drug kingpin. “And in sharp contrast to many other drug traffickers … it is undisputed that Mr. Flores has never engaged in violence,” Rhee wrote.
Flores and his attorney also argued that unlike other prolific drug traffickers, Flores had devoted much of his time to his legitimate businesses, which entailed importing generic brand electronics from the U.S. and selling them in Mexico.
But prosecutors countered that Flores worked with or for violent cartels and their leaders, led his own large trafficking organization and was involved in bribing public officials. According to testimony at the September hearing, one of the officials he bribed in the early 2000s is now a state governor in Mexico.
Flores and Rhee had asked the judge to discount the testimony of at least one witness, a former high-level drug world operative named Elpidio Mojarro Ramirez, who they said was captured on recorded jail phone calls asking family members and friends to scour news reports and pass him details about Flores.
According to Mexican news reports, Mojarro, alias “El Pilo,” is the “sworn enemy” of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, which has become one of Mexico’s most prolific and violent drug cartels. Mojarro apparently disappeared from the drug world several years ago, and his whereabouts remained a mystery until last summer, when he turned up in U.S. custody and testified against Flores and another drug trafficker in a separate case.
Flores and his attorney argued that the cooperating witnesses, including Mojarro, were not to be trusted when they testified Flores “was involved with drug trafficking with virtually every Mexican cartel in existence over the course of the last forty years.”
But Rhee said the judge did not discount the witnesses’ testimony in sentencing Flores.
According to prosecutors, Flores’ two San Diego indictments will be dismissed following his sentencing in the District of Columbia. The local indictments have remained under seal, though last year one of his co-defendants, an alleged Bolivian trafficker named Victor “Chi Chi” Hugo Anez Vaca Diez, was extradited to San Diego from Argentina.
An indictment unsealed against Anez Vaca showed there are likely 12 or more defendants in that case charged with drug trafficking and money laundering offenses that allegedly occurred in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico and Peru.
