Cartel Suspect Admits Plotting Cocaine Deal

A man identified by law enforcement authorities as a top lieutenant in the notorious Arellano Felix drug cartel--and who is wanted in Mexico on murder charges--pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Diego to arranging a cocaine deal from prison while he awaited extradition. The charge carries a mandatory 10-year sentence.

A member of a well-to-do Tijuana family who authorities say once threw flamboyant parties and introduced some of the border city’s socially prominent sons and daughters to drug traffickers, Emilio Valdez Mainero stood in a khaki prison jumpsuit and tennis shoes with his head bowed as he told the judge in Spanish, “I’m guilty.”

Valdez, 34, is wanted for allegedly gunning down Mexican boxer Jesus “Bebe” Gallardo at a Holiday Inn near Mexico City in April 1996, in what authorities believe was a drug-related killing. He was arrested that fall in the posh San Diego seaside community of Coronado, along with another alleged gunman for the Tijuana drug cartel, Alfredo Hodoyan. During the arrest, police found an AK-47 in a closet.

Valdez and Hodoyan were among a cadre of privileged Tijuana youths allegedly recruited by the Arellano Felix ring to run drugs across the border and eventually to kill enemies of the cartel, including at least eight prominent law enforcement officials, according to court documents.

Known as “juniors” in Mexico because they come from backgrounds of wealth and status, the young men have puzzled Tijuana society as well as law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.

“You’ve got to wonder why, when he [Valdez] had everything,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric M. Acker, who prosecuted Valdez on the cocaine charges.

A San Diego federal judge ordered Valdez extradited to Mexico in December. Before he was handed over, however, U.S. prosecutors produced tape recordings of conversations on prison telephones and in an informant’s cell showing that Valdez arranged cocaine and heroin deals and casually plotted to kill a U.S. prosecutor and other perceived enemies. At this point, he has not been charged in connection with the alleged plot.

Valdez used his wife and two girlfriends to help facilitate the deals, which were made with the help of small-time drug dealers he met in prison, according to court documents.

Attorneys for Valdez emphasized that there was no plea bargain reached with U.S. prosecutors, and said that Valdez merely decided he could not win a trial on the charges of conspiring to buy and sell 50 kilograms of cocaine.

“With the witnesses and the tape recordings, it would be a difficult case,” said Valdez’s attorney, Gretchen von Helms.

Sentencing is set for June 5.

The cocaine deal was arranged last spring through a fellow inmate at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego, who turned out to be a government informant. In letters and phone calls from the prison--which are routinely recorded--Valdez convinced two friends on the outside to pick up a trunkload of cocaine from sellers who were in fact federal drug enforcement agents. The two friends were arrested and have pleaded guilty.

Valdez also faces charges of arranging the sale of a kilogram of heroin to a fellow inmate through friends outside prison. But the deal fell apart when the other inmate couldn’t pay the promised $70,000. Although the heroin was returned, tape recordings showed Valdez later considered having the inmate killed, along with the U.S. prosecutor handling his extradition case.

Acker of the U.S. attorney’s office said the State Department would decide when Valdez will be returned to Mexico, but said Valdez would almost certainly “serve a substantial amount of time” in a U.S. prison.