A Chula Vista woman who prosecutors say held a leadership role in a drug trafficking organization with ties to the Sinaloa Cartel was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years and three months in prison.
Prosecutors said Wuendi Valenzuela Valenzeula led a trafficking operation originally ran by her brother, Jorge Valenzuela, after he was arrested in 2020.
The defendant pleaded guilty to conspiracy counts related to money laundering and the distribution and importation of cocaine. According to her plea agreement, she worked with co-conspirators to import “thousands of kilograms of cocaine” from Mexico into the United States through San Diego County ports of entry, where it was then distributed throughout San Diego County and the U.S.
She also admitted to helping move cash proceeds from drug sales back into Mexico, the plea agreement states.
A grand jury indictment returned against Valenzuela Valenzuela and her co-defendants says the organization also obtained firearms and ammunition in the U.S. and transported them into Mexico.
To that end, the indictment references a specific incident in which 20,000 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition were purchased in Oregon, then transported to an Otay Mesa truck yard, where the ammo was loaded onto a truck bound for Mexico.
Federal authorities seized the ammo in November of 2020, and also found 685 kilograms of cocaine, 24 kilograms of fentanyl, and $3.5 million in cash, in what was described by the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the time as “the largest single seizure of cash, narcotics and ammunition in (the Southern District of California).”
Valenzuela Valenzuela’s attorney, Maxine Dobro, argued in sentencing papers that her client was not a leader within the organization, as alleged by prosecutors.
Though she “understood the scope of the conspiracy when she joined,” her duties were largely limited to collecting her brother’s assets and transporting some cash to Mexico, the attorney wrote.
Jorge Valenzuela pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering offenses and is slated to be sentenced in San Diego next month.
Others sentenced include Jorge Valenzuela’s wife, Claudia Patricia Alvarez Hernandez, who was sentenced last year to 14 years in prison. Prosecutors said she was “intimately involved in the operation of Jorge’s organization by exercising supervisory authorities over its remaining members and trying to locate and preserve its many illegal assets both in Mexico and the United States.”
Keith Octavio Rodriguez Padilla, who obtained the 20,000 rounds seized in Otay Mesa, was sentenced last year to over 19 years in prison.
