Mexican Cartel Queen: Sandra Avila Beltran Pleads Guilty in U.S.

Sandra Avila Beltran, a Mexican woman known as the "drug cartel queen" has pleaded guilty in Miami to charges arising from a major cocaine trafficking case, the Associated Press reported. Beltran pleaded guilty Tuesday to being an accessory after the fact in an organization that included Juan Diego Espinosa Ramirez, a former liaison between Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and Colombia's Norte Valle cartel. Espinoza, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to cocaine trafficking charges, was Beltran's boyfriend at the time.

Beltran was also called the "Queen of the Pacific," providing money to Espinosa for travel and lodging so he could evade arrest by authorities between 2002 and 2004. She was handed over at the Toluca airport outside Mexico City to U.S. marshals who took her to Miami to face federal cocaine-trafficking charges, the attorney general's office said, as reported by the AP.

In June, a court granted the extradition in Mexico so she could face the charges pending in the U.S. where prosecutors allege she had links to cocaine seizures in Chicago.

In June, a court granted the extradition so she could face the charges pending in the U.S., where prosecutors allege she also had links to cocaine seizures in Chicago. In 2001, U.S. agents intercepted a telephone call in which Avila allegedly asked for payment for 220 pounds of cocaine delivered in Chicago.

Federal prosecutors said the extradition request indicated that Avila belonged to an organization that trafficked cocaine from Colombia to the United States. U.S. prosecutors alleged that she helped store and move shipments of the drug from Mexico to the United States.

Until Thursday, Avila was in prison had been held in a prison in Mexico's Pacific coast state of Nayarit, pending trial for a separate money-laundering charge. It was not immediately clear how Mexican prosecutors would proceed with that case.

Avila, who is 52, faces a maximum of 15 years in prison,  is scheduled for a July 25 sentencing hearing.  

Tags

Sandra Avila Beltran, Mexican Drug Cartel, U.S. Extradition, Guilty Plea

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