Cartel boss gets two life terms, plus 20 years at Texas sentencing

The man who led a splinter group of the infamous Zetas after the cartel’s leaders were sent to prison in Mexico, was himself sentenced Thursday in Texas to two consecutive life terms, plus 20 years in federal prison — all without parole.

Juan Francisco “Kiko” Treviño Jr., 38, was convicted at a trial in Waco in July of all seven charges related to drug-trafficking that he faced, and which alleged he led or helped smuggle hundreds of thousands of kilos of cocaine and marijuana into the United States.

In addition to the prison terms, U.S. District Judge Alia Moses ordered Treviño to pay a $2 million fine and another $2 million as part of a forfeiture judgment.

Officials with Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lauded the sentence as a result of their collaborative effort with other law enforcement agencies.

Treviño is a U.S. citizen and a nephew of Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, known as “Z-40,” and Oscar Omar Treviño Morales, “Z-42.” The brothers led the Zetas, which began as an enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel but later became its own cartel and controlled the east and northeastern parts of Mexico. Kiko Treviño took over the Zetas after his uncles were caught in 2013 and 2015 and imprisoned in Mexico, and he later led one of the two groups that splintered from the Zetas, called the Cartel del Noreste (Northeast Cartel).

Jurors heard testimony that Kiko Treviño organized the source and distribution of large quantities of narcotics, laundered drug proceeds and controlled cells of traffickers and a group of armed sicarios in the Nueva Laredo area. He participated in the trafficking of more than 250,000 kilos of cocaine, hundreds of thousands of kilos of marijuana and hundreds of firearms. The evidence further described the laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds.

One of the prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Russell Leachman, said in opening arguments that the cartel controlled important smuggling corridors, called plazas, along the border states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila and Tamaulipas, which border Texas.

“They control and exclude all other cartels within that plaza,” Leachman said, according to trial transcripts. “They control law enforcement within that plaza.”

Even political subdivisions in Mexico were under Zetas control for several years, Leachman said.

But the Zetas’ reach also crossed the border. A former Laredo police officer turned trafficker for the Zetas was among the government’s witnesses who testified at the trial.

From the Zetas’ home base of Nuevo Laredo, the cartel smuggled drugs across the border into Laredo and to cities along the way north, including San Antonio, Waco and Dallas. Associates in north Texas who worked with or for Kiko Treviño testified they shipped the drugs to the eastern seaboard, including in Boston, New York and even into Canada.

The trial also revealed that after the arrests of Kiko Treviño’s uncles, the Zetas splintered into two groups, and Kiko Treviño took over leadership of the faction loyal to his family with younger members on his side.

“Some of the older Zetas didn’t take well to being basically led by these guys who were coming up because of their (family) connections,” Leachman said. “So it basically begins to fracture, and then the Zeta cartel, at least the Treviño wing ... is rebranded as the Cartel del Noreste, or the CDN cartel.”

Treviño led the CDN from spring 2015 until he was arrested in September 2016 in Baytown near Houston.