Heroin Distributor for Mexican Ring Pleads Guilty

A Los Angeles-based distributor for a Mexican drug trafficking ring that flooded the United States with highly potent heroin has pleaded guilty to charges that could carry a penalty of more than 100 years in prison, federal authorities said Tuesday.

Oscar Hernandez, 36, of Panorama City, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Monday to drug trafficking and possessing pure heroin with the intent of distributing it, authorities said.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 22 by U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder. He faces up to 120 years in federal prison.

Hernandez was among nearly 200 people arrested nationwide in June 2000 after a yearlong investigation dubbed Operation Tar Pit, by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, authorities said. Fifteen of the suspects were arrested in Los Angeles, including nine from the San Fernando Valley.

Among those arrested was Hernandez’s wife, Marina Lopez, 40, also of Panorama City, who previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess and distribute heroin, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. She is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court on Oct. 29.

Lopez was believed to be responsible for recruiting drug couriers and arranging for their transportation, authorities said.

In addition, federal officials are seeking extradition of Hernandez’s brother, Isaias Hernandez, 37, and another defendant, Angel Hernandez, from the Mexican state of Nayarit. Angel Hernandez is not related to the Hernandez brothers.

“This organization quite literally distributed poison on our streets by peddling heroin of extraordinary potency,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Lisa Feldman, the lead attorney on the case, said Tuesday. “As a result of Operation Tar Pit, the Hernandez organization was completely dismantled from top to bottom and, like other drug traffickers, these defendants will be severely punished.”

Hernandez’s attorney, Nicholas De Pento of San Diego, said he believed Snyder would look favorably upon his client’s decision.

“I am hoping for a reduced sentence,” De Pento said. “I think a judge looks more fairly on a defendant when he accepts his responsibility.”

Operation Tar Pit was launched in 1998 after an upsurge in overdoses attributed to the powerful heroin in Chimayo, N.M., a community about 90 miles north of Albuquerque. The ring allegedly grew its own opium poppies in Nayarit, processing the black-tar heroin there and then smuggling it across the California and Arizona borders to Los Angeles, authorities said.

Using the Los Angeles-based distribution network run by Hernandez, authorities said the heroin was then sold in Southern California, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alaska and Hawaii.