Laredo judge gives 30 years in prison to top-ranking Zeta

LAREDO — A federal judge here sentenced a member of the notorious Zetas drug cartel who played a key role during the gang’s rise in the early 2000s to 30 years in prison on Friday.

U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez told Iván Velázquez Caballero that even though he’s not accused of ordering any killings, he was an important figure in the Zetas during a time of violence on both sides of the border.

Before deciding the sentence, Alvarez heard from the stepfather of a young Laredo woman who went missing when Velázquez was in charge of the cartel’s operations in Nuevo Laredo, the Mexican city just across the Rio Grande. William Slemaker said in court that he believes the drug capo has information about her disappearance.

Velázquez, 47, came up through the ranks of the Zetas with Miguel Trevino Morales, a ruthless criminal from Nuevo Laredo who’s accused of ordering homicides in the U.S. and mass killings in Mexico. While Treviño went on to lead the Zetas before he was arrested in 2013, Velázquez became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, eventually testifying against a Mexican businessman who helped the Zetas launder money in the U.S.

Velázquez and Treviño are charged in a wide-ranging drug conspiracy case that targeted the Zetas leadership in Nuevo Laredo between 2001 and 2008. The indictment alleges that hit men working for Treviño carried out a number of killings on both sides of the border, but Velázquez is not accused in any of the violent crimes.

He had faced up to life in prison after pleading guilty to drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges in 2014. Alvarez ordered him to serve 30 years in prison on the drug charge and 20 years in prison on the money-laundering charge. In 2015, a federal judge in North Texas sentenced him to nearly 23 years in prison on another drug conspiracy charge. All the sentences will run concurrently.

Before giving the sentence, Alvarez listed the victims killed by Velázquez’s co-defendants in the case. In 2005 and 2006, sicarios, or hit men, working for Treviño carried out five killings in Laredo, according to the indictment he’s charged in. In one case, the sicarios shot and killed the half brother of their target. In another incident, they killed a rival trafficker along with his teenage nephew. In yet another case, the pregnant wife of the man they murdered was injured during the shooting.

The judge noted that she’d heard the pleas of more than a dozen of Velázquez’s co-defendants and sat through two trials in the case. She acknowledged that Velazquez wasn’t accused of ordering any of the homicides described by witnesses, and that the testimony showed he once saved an underling from execution, but Alvarez also said he bears responsibility for the atrocities carried out by the Zetas.

Some of the first sparks of the violence that has spread throughout Mexico began in Nuevo Laredo, when Velazquez was the plaza boss, or regional leader, Alvarez said.

The evidence in those other court proceedings shows, she said, that “the Zetas are responsible for creating this wave of violence.”

Slemaker, whose stepdaughter Yvette Martinez and a friend went missing in Nuevo Laredo in 2004, told Alvarez he believed Velazquez has information about his daughter’s disappearance.

He was told by the government and Velázquez’s attorney that Velázquez saw his stepdaughter in Mexico and that she was killed in Mexico, but denied involvement with her death, Slemaker said.

“He also says he had nothing to do with their murder, but that they were murdered,” Slemaker said. “I feel that at this time, for this court to sentence him with any kind of leniency … would be a miscarriage of justice.”

After Slemaker spoke, Alvarez recalled the mother of a teenage victim who’d testified when she sentenced one of Velázquez’s co-defendants. Zetas sicarios had kidnapped the teenager and a friend from a bar in Mexico, tortured and killed them, then burned their bodies. The mother was asking only for information about where to find her son’s remains, the judge said.

“I can recall clearly the pain and anguish in her voice over not knowing where he son’s remains could be found,” Alvarez said. “There are many who feel the same anguish, because they don’t know where their loved ones can be found.”

Douglas Mulder, Velázquez’s attorney, responded that his client also lost loved ones in the drug war.

“They’re also terrorizing him and his family,” Mulder said. “They killed his stepson and they killed his brother.”

After the hearing, Jim Reed, the assistant special agent in charge of the DEA office in Laredo, said he was pleased with the sentence.

“It’s a significant sentence and it basically reflects the amount of drugs involved and the violence, the destruction and the despair caused by this organization,” Reed said. “Although that’s little comfort for the families who’ve been affected by the violence and the drugs trafficked by this organization.”

Testifying during a 2015 trial in Austin, Velázquez, whose moniker “Taliban” is a reference to his name, Iván, said he grew up in the same Nuevo Laredo neighborhood as Treviño, but they didn’t get to know each other until the early 2000s. As the Zetas, at the time enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, expanded along Mexico’s border with Texas, local traffickers were forced to join them or take sides with their rival, the west coast Sinaloa Cartel.

The testimony came in the trial of Francisco Colorado Cessa, a Mexican businessman convicted of helping Treviño and his brother José launder drug money through a U.S. quarter horse ranch.

Velázquez testified that for a time he served as a sort of personal aide to Heriberto Lazcano, a former soldier in the Mexican army’s special forces who helped found the Zetas and eventually took over as the gang’s leader after they split from the Gulf Cartel in 2010. In 2003, Velázquez became the plaza boss, or regional leader, in Nuevo Laredo, a lucrative piece of real estate because it’s home to four international bridges and a large amount of commercial traffic.

Velázquez’s time as plaza boss was short-lived. By 2005, Velázquez testified, he’d lost a load of cocaine that belonged to Lazcano and was transferred out of Nuevo Laredo to undergo training. Meanwhile, Treviño’s star rose.

The investigation that finally brought down Velázquez, Tovar and more than a dozen other Zetas operatives involved more than 30 agents from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, an informant embedded in the Zetas’ U.S. operations, wire taps, hidden cameras and round-the-clock surveillance on Zetas operatives to ensure they didn’t kill again, DEA Agent J.J. Gomez testified in 2012.

Laredo police have tied Velázquez to a 2006 homicide in Texas. Authorities accused members of the Texas Syndicate, a U.S. prison gang, of accidentally shooting and killing 19-year-old Julio A. Serrano while trying to kidnap him for the Zetas. Both Treviño and Velázquez were hunting for Serrano, who worked for the Sinaloa Cartel, according to an arrest affidavit for a dozen people accused in that case, but neither of the Zetas has been charged in connection to the killing.

During his 2015 testimony, Velázquez insisted that he’d never taken part in any homicides.

In 2007 Velázquez was back in the Zetas’ good graces and ascended to the regional leadership of the central Mexican state of Zacatecas. Near the end of 2011, however, he testified that he reached out to the DEA and offered his services as an informant. Velázquez worked for the U.S. government for about eight months before he was arrested by the Mexican military. In 2013, Mexico extradited him to the U.S.

“Before he was arrested, he ran his own little group, but he fought Cuarenta and Lazcano,” former FBI agent Arturo Fontes said of Velázquez. “He was moving a lot of dope. He was a significant figure. He was responsible for permitting the Zetas into Nuevo Laredo. He played a major role in that.”

Miguel Treviño took over as the Zetas’ leader after Lazcano’s death in 2012. He’s in Mexico awaiting extradition to the U.S. The Zetas have broken into warring factions, but Velázquez’s followers still invoke the name “Taliban” in their squabbles with those loyal to Treviño.