Alleged kingpin to plead guilty

Reputed Juárez Cartel co-founder to get 18-year term in S.A court.

By Guillermo Contreras
gcontreras@express-news.net
Updated 02:59 a.m., Sunday, June 19, 2011

A purported co-founder of the Juárez Cartel is to plead guilty in San Antonio to federal racketeering conspiracy charges that will send him to prison for more than 18 years.

Juan José Quintero Payán signed a plea deal last week that lays out a three-decade biography of his drug trafficking activities as well as that of several associates in his well-known crime family.

The agreement never calls Quintero, 69, a boss of one of Mexico's most powerful cartels — as Mexican officials repeatedly have — but it paints him as a principal force in a criminal enterprise whose operations stretched from South America to Mexico, the Cayman Islands and the United States. It says he was involved in trafficking activity from 1978 to 2002, even after he was captured by Mexican authorities in 1999.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration calls him the head of the “Quintero Drug Trafficking Enterprise.â€