2 Mexican drug cartel members plead guilty

By JUAN A. LOZANO, The Associated Press
1:14 p.m. March 31, 2009

HOUSTON — A member of one of Mexico's most notorious drug operations pleaded guilty Tuesday to threatening to kill two U.S. federal agents who were cornered and held at gunpoint by members of the Gulf cartel.

Juan Carlos de La Cruz Reyna pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening to assault and murder a federal officer.

De La Cruz Reyna was one of 10 alleged members of various cartels extradited to the U.S. from Mexico late last year. Another alleged Gulf cartel member, Ruben Sauceda-Rivera, pleaded guilty Tuesday to money laundering. Both are to be sentenced July 3.

Sauceda-Rivera, 42, and de La Cruz Reyna, 34, were indicted in 2002 in Brownsville. Sauceda-Rivera originally faced 11 drug trafficking counts and one count of money laundering. The drug trafficking charges will be dropped in exchange for the plea on the money laundering charge, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

De La Cruz Reyna's attorney, Reynaldo Garza, said his client was unable to reach an agreement with prosecutors. Each count of threatening to assault and murder a federal officer carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison.

Federal prosecutor Toni Trevino said de La Cruz Reyna was among a group of armed drug traffickers who cornered Drug Enforcement Administration agent Joe Dubois and FBI agent Daniel Fuentes in their car in 1999 in the border city of Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville.

Both agents, who were assigned to the U.S. consulate in Monterrey, were in Matamoros to talk with an informant about the cartel's operations. As they drove, they were boxed in and confronted by the traffickers.

Among them was Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, the alleged kingpin of the cartel at the time who was extradited from Mexico in 2007 and is to be tried in Houston in September.

The agents identified themselves but continued to be threatened by the men, including de La Cruz Reyna, who had an assault rifle, Trevino said.

"At one point during the assault, de La Cruz Reyna tried to open the (agents' car) door," she said. "Dubois struggled with de La Cruz Reyna."

The federal agents managed to talk their way out of the confrontation and escape with the informant.

De La Cruz Reyna disputed Trevino's claim that he struggled with the DEA agent.

"That's not true," he said through an interpreter. "I didn't know they were federal agents."

Trevino said Sauceda-Rivera was an assistant to the cartel's main bookkeeper and helped collect and account for millions of dollars in drug trafficking proceeds as they made their way from U.S. cities such as Atlanta and Houston into Texas and ultimately Mexico.

When Sauceda-Rivera was arrested in Matamoros in 2002, he had more than $4.1 million in drug proceeds in his possession, Trevino said. He also helped deliver cocaine and marijuana for the cartel, she said.
Sauceda-Rivera's attorney, Irvin Weisfeld, declined to comment.

The Gulf cartel, based in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, along the Texas border, operates a bloody gang of enforcers, known as the Zetas, led by ex-Mexican army operatives-turned-hit men.

U.S. investigators say that at its height, the Gulf cartel had cells in Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and other U.S. cities and moved tons of cocaine per month into the United States.

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