Mexican cartel member brought to Chicago to face drug charges
A former lieutenant in one of Mexico’s notorious drug cartels has been extradited to Chicago to face narcotics conspiracy charges alleging he helped manufacture and import massive amounts of cocaine into the United States.
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Geronimo Gamez-Garcia, a member of the Beltran-Leyva cartel who also goes by the name “Geremias,” was charged in a four-count indictment in 2016 that was made public Monday. He had been in custody in Mexico since 2017 and was flown last week to Chicago, where he appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sunil Harjani last Thursday, court records show.
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The indictment includes a forfeiture allegation seeking $20 million from Gamez-Garcia if he’s convicted.
Gamez-Garcia is a cousin of former cartel kingpin Arturo Beltran-Leyva and had acted as the organization’s logistics chief after a violent split with Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel, according to court records and multiple accounts in Mexican media.
He’s likely the highest-ranking cartel member to face charges in Chicago since Guzman’s right-hand man, Vicente Zambada-Niebla, was extradited in 2009 and agreed to cooperate against his boss.
News reports in Mexico stated Gamez-Garcia was originally arrested in 2009. During an attempt that year to transfer him to a federal facility in the Mexican state of Nayarit, cartel gunmen ambushed federal authorities as they were leaving the airport, killing six federal police officers and two prison guards in a failed attempt to free Gamez-Garcia, media reports stated.
Gamez-Garcia was released in 2015. The Chicago indictment alleged that from 2015 to 2017, he conspired with two others — identified only as Individual A and Individual B — to manufacture and import large quantities of cocaine into the United States from Mexico.
Gamez-Garcia was arrested on the Chicago charges in the Mexican state of Morelos in November 2017, and his legal effort to prevent his extradition was denied earlier this year.
The indictment marked the latest case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago against Mexico’s most notorious and violent cartels, which for years have used the city as a distribution hub for hundreds of tons of narcotics delivered across the United States.
Among those charged in Chicago was Beltran-Leyva, who was killed in a firefight with Mexican authorities in 2009 before he could be brought here to face sweeping narcotics trafficking charges.
Guzman was also indicted in Chicago but ultimately faced trial in New York, where he was sentenced to life in prison last year.
In 2018, a federal judge in Chicago sentenced former Mexican police Cmdr. Ivan Reyes Arzate to three years and four months behind bars for leaking sensitive information to the Beltran-Leyva cartel about U.S.-led drug investigations.
