Sinaloa Cartel Gunman Arrested for 2022 Miami Hotel Murder Allegedly Ordered by Former DEA Informant

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

An arrest affidavit for a suspected Sinaloa cartel hitman unsealed last week suggests that had a meth distributor working for federal authorities had been in custody sooner, she could not have allegedly lured a Hialeah man to his execution. Weeks prior, she had been indicted on charges after her cooperation deal as an informant went south.

The affidavit, by Miami-Dade homicide Det. Paulo Klimick Pereira, says Tsvia Kol lured 46-year-old Julio Gonzalez to the Aladdin Hotel in Miami Springs on Nov. 29, 2022, then summoned to the room suspected hitman Jimmy Sanchez, whose flight to Miami from San Diego that afternoon had been arranged by Kol.

Intercepted Meth Package

Julio Gonzalez’s mother recalled to NBC6 her worry that day.

“What can I tell you?” she said in Spanish. “I thought I was going to die that day… I kept calling him and he wouldn’t answer. I knew in my heart something wasn’t good.”

Gonzalez was a valet at Casino Miami who neighbors say often offered to help protect their packages from porch pirates.

“He was an excellent son,” his mother said. “With me, he was good, loving, special.”

But investigators say they found another reason Gonzalez would gather packages from neighbors: to help the Sinaloa cartel ship kilos of methamphetamine into the Miami market.

And, based on evidence laid out in that arrest affidavit, that’s what got him killed.

According to investigators, Julio Gonzalez was expecting 11 pounds of methamphetamine to be delivered on Nov. 16, 2022, to his apartment complex in Hialeah, but to a next-door neighbor’s apartment, not his.

The DEA detected the UPS parcel, intercepted it, and surveilled Gonzalez searching for the package he never received, Sanchez’s arrest affidavit states, and then [the DEA/Hialeah Police] questioned Gonzalez and neighbors but made no arrests.

Soon, Gonzalez learned he was being targeted by the Mexican drug cartel he was allegedly assisting, telling a Hialeah Police Detective a homeless man who frequented Casino Miami told him “4 Mexican-looking men were looking for him at the casino because he had a package for them.”

Jimmy Sanchez, Julio Gonzalez, Tsvia Kol

On November 24, Gonzalez also posted a photo of “Sapir Kol’ – later determined to be Tsvia Kol" and her Facebook page on his account with the caption, “If something happens to me, it’s her,” according to the arrest affidavit, which also states he told a former girlfriend Kol threatened to kill him.

5 days later, he was dead.

“My son, no one is going to bring him back to life – no one other than the creator,” Gonzalez’s mother said.

Aladdin Hotel Murder

At around 8:15 p.m. on November 29. 2022, Kol arrived at the hotel in a black Kia sedan with a red SUV following her, according to police. She rented room 304 for 12 hours, leaving her Florida driver’s license at the front desk. The Aladdin Hotel is an "adults-only" swinger hotel that caters to groups and couples.

The SUV, according to the warrant, was driven by someone identified as “Torres;” Sanchez was in the passenger seat.

Kol and Sanchez started communicating three days before, with Kol coordinating Sanchez’s travel from San Diego, according to a digital extraction of her cellphone. When Sanchez arrived in Miami, he rented the red SUV from Hertz and drove to Hallandale Beach, where he linked up with Kol.

Shortly after, the group got back in their cars and left the hotel. But that wasn’t the last time surveillance cameras captured them there.

Throughout the night, Kol exchanged a string of Instagram messages with Gonzalez, the warrant states. Right before 10 p.m., the pair planned how Gonzalez would enter the hotel for them to meet.

“I don’t want them to see me,” Kol said in one of the messages, as per the warrant. “Ring the bell.”

Footage places Gonzalez arriving at the front of the hotel at about 10:30 p.m., according to the warrant. Kol then got in her vehicle and headed to pick him up. Gonzalez was in the front passenger seat, though the seat was leaned back to hide him from the hotel employee at the drive-thru window.

The duo entered the lobby through the back door at about 10:45 p.m., the warrant says. 15 minutes later, Kol made a brief 30-second call to Sanchez.

Cameras caught Sanchez entering the lobby and heading toward room 304 by 11:20 p.m.

Final 911 Call

One minute after Sanchez entered room 304, Gonzalez called 911 and announced, “In Alladin Hotel,” the affidavit states. Asked if he needed police, Gonzalez said, “Yes. Urgent.”

The call dropped and when 911 called back, the affidavit says, Gonzalez was heard pleading for his life – “no, no, no” -- and then a gunshot.

Miami Springs Police responded to the 911 call that night but found nothing until the next morning when a hotel manager found Gonzalez’s body in the room, with two bullets in his head.

Based on that 911 call, video evidence, and cellphone forensics, the warrant states, “It is clear that (Kol and Sanchez) were alone with the victim at the time of his execution.”

Kol, now 35, was arrested the next day by the DEA on the federal drug trafficking charges from 2020. Her indictment was filed on Nov. 8, 2022, but remained sealed until her arrest more than 3 weeks later, the same day as the discovery of the body of Julio Gonzalez. 

She pleaded guilty on Aug. 30, 2023, to conspiring and distributing the nearly two kilos of methamphetamine she had in her possession in 2020. 

But nowhere in that hearing or in the plea agreement, factual proffer, or other court records that followed is there mention of Kol’s possible involvement in the murder of Julio Gonzalez.

The U.S. Attorney’s office didn’t answer to NBC6 why she was allowed to remain free even after she admitted distributing 15 pounds of meth in July 2021.

In her detention hearing on Dec. 2, 2022, the federal agent mentioned COVID and changes in prosecutors were two factors in the delay, but Kol’s defense attorney noted the government had charged and detained many other suspects during that period.

A judge ordered her held without bond, saying she was a possible flight risk because, as a legal permanent resident, she could flee to her homeland, Israel, which does not always extradite drug suspects to the United States.

Jimmy Sanchez was arrested by authorities in San Diego last week and extradited to Florida on the murder charge.

Out of Town Gunman Jimmy Sanchez

So far only Jimmy Sanchez has been charged in the murder of Julio Gonzalez. He was arrested in San Diego last Thursday and appeared in Miami-Dade bond court last Friday, in connection to the 2022 execution-style murder at a Miami Springs hotel.

Sanchez, whose attorney didn’t respond to our request for comment, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

But conspiracy with whom?

Kol pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute, and possession with intent to distribute, methamphetamine. She faces a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and up to life at her sentencing, now set for May 2. Her relatives and attorneys declined to comment to NBC6.

Neither the U.S. Attorney nor the Miami-Dade State Attorney have provided an answer as to why Kol has not been charged in connection with Gonzalez’s death, leaving his mother bewildered.

“That justice is done is very important,” she said, “because one must have confidence in the authorities that we have.”

Tsvia Kol’s 2020 Meth Arrest

Tsvia Kol’s methamphetamine distribution operation – allegedly on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel – could have ended in November 2020.

That’s when federal agents say they detained her in possession of three pounds of meth from an overnight mail shipment and found another half-kilo of the drug and dozens of fentanyl pills in her Broward County apartment.

Instead, Kol was offered a deal, according to a transcript of a court hearing: avoid arrest, at least for the time being, and become an “informal cooperator,” providing information on shipments and coconspirators.

There was one caveat, an assistant U.S. Attorney said at that hearing: “She was told specifically to stop engaging in illegal activity outside of her cooperation with law enforcement.”

But 8 months after cutting that deal, a federal agent would later testify in court, she resumed receiving methamphetamine, distributing 15 pounds of it to her coconspirators.

That was July 2021, and at that point, the agent said they were done with Kol – noting she had provided “bad intel” anyway and violated her agreement by breaking the law.

“Ultimately, she did the deal on her own. She lied to us, and we were out of it,” he testified.

But she was not arrested then, either.

“We decided not to charge that,” assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Comolli told U.S. District Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley at that hearing in December 2022, after Kol was finally arrested on federal drug trafficking charges related to the November 2020 shipment and seizures.

Kol was jailed in Broward on a U.S. Marshals Service hold pending sentencing in an unrelated federal drug trafficking case. She was indicted for it 21 days before the murder, court records show.

Kol's November 2022 indictment, filed and sealed weeks prior to the murder.

Kol would tell investigators she distributed more than 30 kilos of methamphetamine in South Florida, U.S. Postal Inspection Service agent Daniel Borja testified.

Not much is publicly known about what Kol did during the time federal authorities allowed her to roam free in the 16 months after she violated her agreement by running drugs. Clearly, according to the recent court filings, she kept trafficking meth and set up the killing of Julio Gonzalez. 

Kol's ex-husband, Sinaloa Cartel meth trafficker Wilfredo Nunes Gallardo, was arrested in 2023.

Sinaloa Cartel Connections

Hialeah Police detective informed MDPD that Tsvia Kol is a known high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel member with a history of international organized crime that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering and that her ex-husband, Wilfredo Nunes Gallardo, is also a high-ranking member of the cartel, the arrest warrant said.

Before her arrest, Kol admitted to her involvement in the cartel and agreed to stop trafficking drugs and cooperate with federal agents, according to court records. She was detained after being dropped as an informant, with prosecutors arguing that the Israeli national would flee the country. Israel doesn’t extradite their citizens.

Kol, described by a judge as having a “long-standing and serious dependence on meth,” had her sentencing postponed due to defense attorneys aiming to “resolve an unrelated matter that could have a significant effect” on the case, records indicate.

According to BOP inmate records. She was released from federal custody a little over a month after her 2022 arrest. 

Sources NBC6, NBC6, Miami Herald