Photo: Ministry of the Interior of Guatemala / Courtesy
By: The opinion Posted Mar 18, 2023, 12:19 pm EDT
An operation by the National Civil Police in zone 10 of Guatemala City resulted in the capture of Sergio Antonio Duarte Friasalleged member of Sinaloa cartelas reported by the Ministry of the Interior.
The detainee, born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, is wanted by the United States authorities for drug trafficking, as well as for crimes related to firearms and money laundering.
The US authorities carried out an investigation that identified Duarte Frías as a money launderer and a drug trafficker based in Mexico, for which an indictment in the Court for the Southern District of New York.
According to a statement issued by the Ministry of the Interior, the detainee directed associates to collect money from various drug traffickers in the United States.
#Extradition
The Public Ministry coordinated with the National Civil Police the arrests for extradition purposes of Sergio Antonio Duarte Frías and Ana Gabriela Rubio Zea, also known as “Gaby”, who according to investigations belong to the Sinaloa cartel. pic.twitter.com/q03dmENpVI— Guatemalan MP (@MPguatemala) March 17, 2023
These associates converted the money, which represented the proceeds from the sale of drugs in the United States, from cash to cryptocurrency. Subsequently, the associates transferred the cryptocurrencies to the portfolios controlled by Sergio, who converted the transferred cryptocurrency back to cash, and delivered the money to traffickers in Mexico as payment for drug sales.
During the course of the investigation, Duarte Frías also sold fentanyl that was imported by associates into the United States.
It should be noted that, along with the Mexican, the Guatemalan was captured Gabriela Rubio Zeawho is also wanted by the United States Justice.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, since approximately 2014 and continuing to the present, the detainee has worked as a key supplier of fentanyl precursor chemicals from China to drug traffickers in Mexico, including members of the Sinaloa Cartel, knowing that such chemicals are used to manufacture fentanyl that is imported and distributed to the United States.
Finally, the Guatemalan authorities indicated that, with these arrests, There are seven arrests for the purpose of extradition to the United States so far in 2023 for crimes related to drug trafficking.
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