LOS ANGELES (CNS) – A Mexican nationwide who as soon as lived in Riverside County was sentenced immediately to 63 months in federal jail for conspiring to distribute almost 120 kilos of methamphetamine that was dropped within the desert by an airplane that had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
Juan Carlos Iturriaga-Centeno, 34, a one-time resident of Mecca, pleaded responsible in Los Angeles in April to 1 rely of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.
In December 2019, Iturriaga-Centeno and his co-conspirators drove off-road utility automobiles into the desert close to North Shore, a Riverside County group situated close to the Salton Sea. There, they waited for an ultralight aircraft, which had crossed the United States-Mexico border, to drop the drug packages, which had been hooked up to a parachute.
The packages had GPS monitoring gadgets hooked up, and Iturriaga-Centeno and the co-conspirators used a mobile phone to find the GPS trackers and retrieve the 116.4 kilos of meth, in line with paperwork filed in Los Angeles federal courtroom.
Border Patrol and the Air and Marine Operations Middle in Riverside tracked the ultralight aircraft because it crossed the worldwide border close to Calexico. After radar surveillance indicated that the plane descended after which headed again to Mexico, a California Freeway Patrol plane noticed two automobiles that left the world and had been intercepted by a marked Border Patrol car.
A Polaris off-road car occupied by Iturriaga-Centeno and his brother, Leonardo Iturriago-Centeno, 30, stopped, however a Can-Am car with two different males sped away and was pushed into the Coachella Canal.
The Border Patrol rescued Victor Efren Bugarin-Perez, 30, of Mecca, and Juan Favela-Paredez, a 26- year-old Mexican nationwide, once they had been unable to exit the canal.
Favela-Paredez and Leonardo Iturriaga-Centeno — who every pleaded responsible to 1 rely of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine — had been every sentenced to 57 months in federal jail.
Bugarin-Perez, the lead defendant, fled after being freed on bond, in line with the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace.
