Two brothers with ties to a notorious Mexican cartel have been sentenced to a combined 70 years in federal prison for methamphetamine and money laundering offenses.
Pedro Hernandez Zarate, a 45-year-old Mexican national in the U.S. illegally, and his brother Ricardo Hernandez Zarate, a 33-year-old legal resident, were charged via criminal complaint in March 2021.
Ricardo pleaded guilty in February 2022 to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and money laundering, and was sentenced in November 2022 to 40 years in federal prison (40 years on the drug charges and 20 years on the money laundering charges, to run concurrently).
Pedro pleaded guilty in November 2021 to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in federal prison.
The investigation linked the meth shipment to the Cartel de Jalisco Nuevo Generación (CJNG) Transnational Criminal Organization, one of the two largest and most dangerous drug cartels in Mexico.
According to court testimony, Pedro helped coordinate the transfer of approximately 112 liquid gallons of methamphetamine – a quantity with a street value of more than $9.9 million dollars — to codefendants who planned to transport it from Texas to Oklahoma.
The case is an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) case, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office, with special assistance provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Gainesville Police Department, Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation, the Dallas Police Department, the Fort Worth Police Department, the Williamson County, Texas Sheriff’s Department, the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Department in Tennessee, the FBI’s Knoxville Field Office (Tennessee Resident Agency Office), and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Dallas Strike Force 1.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys George Leal and John Kull are prosecuting the case.
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Key Facts
- State: Texas
- Category: Drug Trafficking|Organized Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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