Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, Former Leader of the Juarez Cartel Sentenced to 28 Years in Prison

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, alias El Viceroy, was sentenced this Tuesday to 28 years in prison.

The brother of Amado Carrillo, the Lord of the Skies, and considered the last heir of the Juarez Cartel, is accused of crimes against health and organized crime with the purpose of committing the crimes of operations with resources of illicit origin and collection of weapons of fire.

In 2015, Vicente Carrillo obtained a formal prison order for the crime of drug trafficking. Subsequently, in 2016, the criminal leader won an amparo, for which the reinstatement of the procedure was ordered. The following year, a judge returned to formally imprison the kingpin as reported by Borderland Beat.

El Viceroy was arrested in October 2014, by federal police who cornered him in Torreón, Coahuila. He was captured along with his bodyguard Jesús Dimas Contreras Sánchez, to whom they secured two vehicles, a long firearm and a short firearm, radio communication equipment, and various documentation.

The version of the Mexican authorities indicates that the team of federal agents in charge of his arrest followed the activities of the capo for at least six months, tracked the vehicle he used to get around, and monitored the residences that he discreetly visited. Upon being intercepted by his captors, the leader of the Juarez Cartel claimed a different name from his but ended up accepting his true identity.

El Viceroy is the brother and successor in the Juarez Cartel of Amado Carrillo Fuentes the "Lord of the Skies," who died in 1997, during a plastic surgery that was performed in a private sanatorium in Mexico City. In August 2000, the United States government issued an extradition order against the kingpin. In that country, he faces charges of drug trafficking in the form of possession of cocaine and marijuana for distribution purposes, money laundering, manipulation of a witness, nine counts of homicide against US agents, and ten different murders. The North American authorities offered a reward of USD $5 million for information that gave the whereabouts of the Viceroy .

The Lord of the Skies and his brother the Viceroy led the Juarez Cartel, a pioneering criminal organization in drug trafficking in Mexico. They were the first to establish contacts with the Colombian cartels to transport cocaine to the United States and consolidated the corridor between Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua) and El Paso (Texas) as the main point of entry for drugs to the largest cocaine consumer in the world.

But the Lord of the Skies, a feared drug lord whose ghoulish legend has inspired a television series, died on an operating table in 1997 in Mexico City. He was succeeded by his brother, Vicente, arrested on October 9, 2014, in Torreón (Coahuila), more than 800 kilometers south of Juárez, the place that gave the name to the Carrillo Fuentes cartel and who has paid for the cost of being the largest drug entry into the United States.