San Diego: Serafin Zambada Ortiz sentenced to 66 months

Serafin Zambada-Ortiz sentenced to 66 months

Years after his arrest, after the press conferences and seizures, some of the lead defendants, and most high profile names in Operation Narco Polo are being sentenced.  In San Diego Federal court, in front of District Judge Dana Sabraw, Serafin Zambada Ortiz was sentenced to roughly 66 months in prison, or 5 1/2 years.

He will released in September, having already served the majority of his sentence in the San Diego MCC, since his extradition from Nogales in September 2013, when he was detained with his wife, who was later released, on a warrant from San Diego, alleging drug conspiracy and distribution charges. 

Operation Narco Polo concluded in 2015, with a press release detailing the infiltration and indictment of all the major traffickers in the Culiaican/Tijuana corridor, and internationally. It is the single most impactful indictment targeting the Sinaloa Cartel, out of San Diego, which has become, in my opinion the center of major narcotics related activity in Southern California.  

Narco Polo's after shock also ensnared the ill fated Los Damasos, and intelligence gathered Narco Polo, led to the indictment, and eventual arrests and surrenders of Mini Lic, his uncle, and their top ranking members last summer.  Damaso Lopez Serrano pleaded guilty to a 5 count drug trafficking indictment, and another one filed in the district of Virginia, which also included his father. Damaso Lopez Sr. is awaiting extradition in Mexico, in the same Juarez prison where his compadre and godfather to his son, Chapo Guzman, waited.  

Indictment after indictment has targeted the Sinaloa traffickers, since 2011, when Narco Polo began.  Among the list of fugitive defendants, are Alfonso Areteaga Azarte "Aquiles", and his brother Rene Azarte, "La Rana", Ivan Archivaldo Guzman, Mayito Flaco, and Ismael Zambada, among others.  All the Tijuana plaza bosses, with exception of Jose Soto Gastelum, were named, and many of the Culiacan based Los Antrax cell, including Cheyo Antrax, and Changuito Antrax, who escaped last year from a Culiacan prison, along with another defendant in Narco Polo, Alfonso Limon-Sanchez.  

Zambada-Ortiz, after his arrest and a round of media stories with instagram accounts and tweets, many of which were not his, pleaded guilty in September 20145, to conspiracy to distribute 100 kilos of cocaine from Culiacan to Tijuana, and into the United States.  And then, nothing. His sentencing was pushed bac year after year, as speculation grew, he was being held somewhere else, he had been released, he was in Wit-Sec, or custody of the US Marshals.  

As of March 2018 he was in the San Diego MCC, and will serve another 6 months or so, before his release.  The judge, the assistant US Attorney, and his defense attorney, Saji Vettyia, all agreed upon the sentence.  The judge stated he was receiving and extremely favorable outcome, and credited his "genuine remorse", youth, and relative inexperience in the drug business for the reduction in his sentence. 

Many letters from family members spoke of his character and intelligence.  He told the judge, through a translator, he would "raise his two children in the best way possible".   He had evidently only begun to be involved a few years before his abrupt arrest.  His family members filled the courtroom in support.  Jose Rodrigo Gamboa aka "Chino Antrax", is scheduled to be sentenced in the upcoming months, in front of the same judge.  He too, has been in the MCC, since his extradition and guilty plea in 2014, and 2015. 

Sources: San Diego Union Tribune, http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/sd-me-zambada-sentence-20180320-story.html