By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The tentacles of the Mexican cartels can be found throughout the U.S. The latest: 20 defendants — five of them suspected members of a Chicago cell of the violent Zetas Mexican drug cartel — were charged in major drug indictment in Chicago following a joint FBI-DEA investigation, Chicago’s US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com And now stay tuned for a federal prosecutorial nightmare. The Chicago Tribune is reporting that “court officials acknowledged Thursday that information revealed by the Tribune appears to show that a member of the federal jury that convicted Springfield power broker William Cellini concealed two felony convictions.” Generally, a convicted felon cannot…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Three years after expelling US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg and the DEA, Bolivia’s populist president Evo Morales has made moves to warm ties with the US. But not so fast for the DEA, says a report from the Associated Press. Morales kicked US diplomats and law enforcement officias out of the country…
Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A wave of prisoners could be released this week as a result of a change in sentencing for crack cocaine violations. The Associated Press reports that nearly 2,000 federal prisoners will be eligible for early release Tuesday as a result of a bill signed into law by President Obama last year that…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com A top lieutenant to a Colombian drug kingpin was convicted in a Manhattan court this week of conspiring to import and distribute cocaine and heroine, according to a Justice Department press release. Jose Mosquera-Prado, 36, was a top lieutenant in Francisco Gonzalez Uribe’s international narcotics-trafficking organization, says the Justice Department, and…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com If a counternarcotics official from another nation profits from trafficking cocaine into the United States, but has a clean criminal record otherwise, should a judge go lenient at sentencing? That’s what Rene Sanabria is hoping. Sanabria headed a Bolivian drug intelligence unit, but was arrested earlier this year by the DEA…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The DEA on Thursday announced the arrests of 1,985 persons as part of a 20-month crackdown on the La Familia Michoacana Mexican drug cartel’s operations in the U.S. DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart said authorities said the crackdown, known as “Project Delirium”, also seized $62 million in U.S. currency, plus approximately…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Brooklyn U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein — some times known as a maverick — did something fairly unorthox for a federal judge, but maybe not so unorthodox for Weinstein: he went to visit the neighborhood where a crack cocaine crew ruled, the Associated Press reported. AP reported that Weinstein, 89,…
