A Mexican drug cartel leader is facing federal charges following years of allegedly trafficking narcotics into the country to sell to American citizens.
Jesus Ricardo Patron Sanchez, 39, was extradited from Mexico to face charges relating to drug trafficking in New York City, according to federal prosecutors.
Sanchez went by the nicknames “Diobolical,” “Xmen” and “James Bond” while allegedly working as the head of the “brutally violent” H-2 drug cartel.
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The H-2 drug trafficking organization operated out of Nayarit and Sinaloa, Mexico and originated from the Sinaloa drug cartel.
The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said last year that the U.S. is facing the “most dangerous and deadly drug crisis” in its history with fentanyl and methamphetamine flowing across the border — and that the “Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels are at the heart of this crisis.”
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Prosecutors allege that under the direction of Sanchez, H-2 transported cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine into the U.S. on a monthly basis from June 2013 to December 2016. The cartel used multiple distribution cells throughout the country, including New York, Las Vegas, North Carolina, Ohio and Los Angeles, to traffic “large quantities” of drugs, officials said.
“As alleged in the indictment and court filings, Sanchez was one of the principal leaders of the H-2 Drug Trafficking Organization, a brutally violent transnational criminal organization that flooded American streets with dangerous drugs and protected its operations through murder and corruption,” United States Attorney John Durham said.
Sanchez also directed members of the cartel to kill members of other drug trafficking organizations and additional perceived rivals, according to prosecutors.
To ensure the profits from their sales made their way back into Sanchez and other leaders’ pockets, Sanchez allegedly worked to orchestrate a money-laundering operation to transfer funds back to Mexico from the U.S.
The DEA estimates that H-2 distributed hundreds of kilograms of illicit drugs to American citizens, earning millions of dollars in revenue while committing numerous homicides from 2013 to 2017.
Sanchez, a Mexican citizen, was arrested in Mexico in February 2019 on a provisional arrest warrant issued by the U.S. He was extradited to Brooklyn, New York, six years later.
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Last week, Sanchez was arraigned on charges of leading a continuing criminal enterprise, participating in a large-scale narcotics distribution conspiracy and using one or more firearms in connection with narcotic offenses.
If convicted, Sanchez faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
“Our country is facing an unprecedented drug crisis,” DEA Special Agent in Charge Matthew Allen said. “Violent drug-trafficking organizations, like H-2, fueled by unrelenting and callous greed have been saturating our communities with poison, death and chronic devastation.”
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