Zetas enforcers sentenced for roles in 2008 Rio Grande Valley abduction ring
McALLEN — Imurias Machado Treviño pleaded guilty to leading a crew that abducted, beat and — at least in one case — murdered drug dealers in Hidalgo County.
The group, which took its orders from a convicted Zetas lieutenant in Reynosa, has been linked to seven abductions across the area, a weapons cache uncovered in Mission and a broad-daylight shootout at a San Juan medical plaza in 2008.
Known within the ring as “Comandante Tomate,” Machado, 30, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison Tuesday in U.S. District Court.
One of his accomplices, Leovaldo “Malacara” Osvaldo Herrera Alvarez, 38, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal attempted kidnapping charges.
Five other men’s cases in the kidnapping ring remain pending in U.S. District Court.
KIDNAPPED AND RECRUITED
The kidnapping case hails back to when the Gulf Cartel and Zetas, the two drug trafficking organizations that dominate Tamaulipas state, were close allies that controlled smuggling routes across northeast Mexico.
The two split in early 2010, and security across Tamaulipas has largely eroded since, with street battles ensuing across the state and mass graves uncovered on remote ranchlands.
Machado admitted to the September 2008 abduction of a McAllen used car salesman and drug smuggler under pressure to work with the Zetas.
Machado and his accomplices took him to a house in Mission and injected him with sedatives before moving him to Reynosa, court records state. The victim was then taken to another house, bound, blindfolded and held for a $20,000 ransom. About 20 other kidnapping victims were held in the building, as well, the victim told investigators.
The salesman eventually caved and said he’d help the Zetas, giving the cartel three vehicles from his lot rather than the ransom payment, court records state. He agreed to help the cartel only after surviving a severe beating at the hands of his captors, according to 2008 indictment handed down against eight others named in the crime.
Similar abductions occurred at least six other times in the months leading to the salesman’s kidnapping, court records state.
In six abductions, including the car salesman’s, the victims had been freed after settling their ransoms with the cartel kidnappers.
But Daniel Ramirez Jr.’s case ended another way.
Herrera, the other man sentenced this week, pleaded guilty to his role in attempting to lure the 29-year-old Weslaco man into the hands of a Gulf Cartel kidnapping cell that was upset for his refusal to work with the drug trafficking group.
Herrera had told investigators he overheard kidnappers discussing Ramirez at a ranch in rural Mission, court records state.
Ramirez’s father had contacted authorities after his son’s kidnapping and later recorded telephone conversations he had with the abductors.
That decision meant Ramirez’s kidnappers would have to kill him, one co-conspirator testified in court. Gerardo “Gera” Zamora Espinoza testified the group killed Ramirez and “cooked” — code for destroying a corpse in acid or burning it in a barrel — his body on a remote ranch in Mexico. Zamora pleaded guilty in the case and received a 24-year prison sentence in December.
Others already sentenced in the case have received prison terms between 12 years and life, given in April 2010 to 27-year-old Luis Alberto “Comandante Cua Cua” Avila Hernandez — the only defendant to take his case to trial.
The kidnappers purportedly took their orders from Jaime “El Hummer” González Durán, the Zetas lieutenant who headed the Reynosa plaza until his arrest by Mexican army soldiers in November 2008.
Authorities moved him to Mexico City after his capture. He was later sentenced to 16 years in prison in a separate case.
González still faces federal indictments in the United States on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to manufacture and import drugs, but he likely will serve his prison sentence in Mexico before facing extradition.
A UNIQUE CASE?
Prior to El Hummer’s kidnapping campaign across the Rio Grande Valley nearly three years ago, Mexican drug traffickers largely steered clear of outright violence in the United States.
That modus operandi seems to have largely returned after federal authorities busted the kidnapping ring, with no similar operations exposed in the years since.
Instead, the Zetas’ brutality has expanded across northern Mexico in the cartel’s ongoing fight against its former allies, the Gulf Cartel, raising questions about whether the government still controls Tamaulipas.
Mexican authorities have identified and arrested dozens of suspected Zetas members in the weeks after mass graves were discovered in early April on ranches outside San Fernando, Tamps., some 80 miles south of Brownsville. Since the initial discovery, authorities have pulled a total of 183 bodies from dozens of the shallow graves. Similar so-called narcofosas were discovered in August 2010 in the same area, with the bodies of 72 slain migrants found after they refused to join the Zetas’ ranks.
The mass graves raised the attention toward security in Tamaulipas and whether state and federal leaders still have control over drug traffickers. Government leaders have fought the negative publicity, saying they maintain control of the state.
U.S. and Mexican authorities say the Zetas also were behind the slaying of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Jaime Zapata, who was ambushed and gunned down beside his partner in rural San Luis Potosi state in February.
The violent tactics employed by the Zetas contrast with those of the Gulf Cartel, which has claimed to shy away from attacking those uninvolved in the drug trade.
But Mexican federal police blame the Cartel del Golfo, as the group is known in Spanish, for kidnapping 119 migrants found in Reynosa stash houses in a pair of incidents since April 20.
Such tactics could be seen as a departure for the Gulf Cartel, which has claimed it split from the Zetas to avoid attacks on innocent civilians.
“In our ranks we don’t want kidnappers, terrorists, bank robbers, rapists, child-killers and traitors,” a series of banners posted in Reynosa stated in March 2010, when the two groups split. “Signed CDG.”
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Jared Taylor covers courts and general assignments The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4439.
