Wives of Chicago Twins Who Helped Convict El Chapo Charged in Money Laundering Case

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Pedro Flores (left) and his twin brother Margarito Flores, once Chicago’s biggest drug traffickers, rose from street-level Chicago drug dealers to the top of the cartel world — and, when they got caught, helped bring down Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, the Mexican drug kingpin who headed the Sinaloa Cartel.

At their sentencing in 2015, a federal judge told the brothers they’d always have to worry about being hunted down by cartel hit men after cooperating with prosecutors against Sinaloa drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera.

The wives of the Flores brothers — the most significant drug informants in U.S. history — have been named as defendants in a money-laundering case in Chicago, according to federal prosecutors.

Vivianna Lopez, also known as Mia Flores, 40, and Valerie Gaytan, also known as Olivia Flores, 45, have been charged with conspiring to launder illicit drug proceeds for more than a decade, U.S. Attorney John Lausch’s office announced.

Their husbands are Pedro and Margarito Flores, known as the Twins, who were each sentenced to 14 years in prison for their roles in international drug trafficking.

The charges allege that, after the Twins surrendered to authorities in December 2008, the two women and others spent the next dozen years hiding drug money at multiple locations — including a home in Chicago and another in Texas — and spent it on themselves and the imprisoned brothers.

“These two nitwits have played innocent for years now and they were very much involved in the movement and hiding of money,” Jack Riley, the former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Chicago, said of the Twins’ wives. “We knew that early on, but it was very difficult to prove.”

Riley says the women have betrayed the U.S. government, which got them out of Mexico after their husbands agreed to cooperate with prosecutors here against Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.

“We bent over backwards, more so than I have ever seen, to safeguard them and get them out of Mexico,” Riley said of the women and their family members.

Also charged are Armando Flores, 52, of Texas; Laura Lopez, 58, of Chicago; and Bianca Finnigan, 32, of Sycamore northwest of Chicago.

They and the Twins’ wives are accused of spending more than $165,000 of laundered money on private school tuition, more than $99,000 on international and domestic travel, more than $80,000 on rent and $11,000 on child support.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this year that Pedro and Margarito Flores were once again under federal investigation. That news came six years after a federal judge in Chicago rewarded them with relatively light 14-year prison sentences in exchange for their extraordinary cooperation against Guzman.

The Flores brothers have admitted they smuggled at least 1,500 kilograms of Sinaloa cartel cocaine into the United States every month between 2005 and 2008. And, according to their guilty pleas, they sent more than $930 million in “bulk cash” back to the cartel in Mexico.

A court filing last year revealed that “the government no longer holds the view that all recoverable proceeds were turned over to the government.”

The women previously published a book, “Cartel Wives,” in which they wrote under pseudonyms and described having had access to unimaginable riches in Mexico. They said the Twins showered them with red roses by the dozens, 10-carat diamond wedding rings and getaways at luxury resorts in Puerto Vallarta. 

They lived in a mountaintop estate with a private zoo including horses, monkeys and a tiger cub.

In the book, the wives said their husbands amassed a fortune made of “dirty money with a trail of bodies behind it.”

Chicago Sun Times