TWIN CHICAGO RATS WILL FOREVER HAVE TO LOOK OVER THEIR SHOULDERS

Pedro and Margarito Flores ratted out El Chapo and other top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel after the twins had helped smuggle 71 tons of cocaine and heroin to Chicago and $2 billion in cash to Mexico

The twins are due to get short prison sentences in return for ratting out El Chapo, the boss of the Sinaloa Cartel, and some of the cartel’s other top leaders. Pedro and Margarito Flores were facing life sentences for helping the cartel smuggle 71 tons of cocaine and heroin to Chicago and $2 billion in cash to Mexico. Their families have been placed in the federal witness protection program and the twins will forever have to look over their shoulders because Mexicans have a long memory when seeking revenge for a betrayal.

SENTENCING TODAY FOR TWINS WHO FLIPPED ON ‘EL CHAPO’
Pedro and Margarito Flores have been held in secret locations since working undercover for the last six years while helping to bring down El Chapo

By Jason Meisner

Chicago Tribune
January 27, 2015

For a couple of drug dealers from Chicago's West Side, twin brothers Pedro and Margarito Flores had hit the big time by November 2008, negotiating a heroin deal over the phone in Mexico with none other than Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the notorious Sinaloa cartel boss who at the time was the most wanted man in the world.

Pedro did the talking, convincing Guzman to drop the price on a freshly delivered shipment of heroin and also arranging a new deal that would bring about 40 kilograms a month of the cartel's narcotics into the Chicago area, court records show. Half an hour later, Flores' cellphone rang again. El Chapo handed his phone to an underling who gave instructions on how and where to make the $1 million cash payment.

What Guzman couldn't have fathomed was that U.S. federal agents were listening in on the calls that night. The heroin had been picked up in Chicago by an undercover officer posing as a courier. The Flores brothers had flipped.

Six years after they became arguably the most important informants in the U.S. government's decadeslong war on drugs, Pedro and Margarito Flores will make their first court appearance Tuesday for their sentencing at the federal courthouse in Chicago amid heightened security.

Prosecutors plan to ask U.S. District Chief Judge Ruben Castillo for as little as 10 years behind bars for the twins, who pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy in 2012 and have been in the witness protection program. It's an extraordinary break from what almost certainly would have been a life sentence given the staggering amount of drugs and money the Flores brothers helped smuggle — at least 71 tons of cocaine and heroin and nearly $2 billion in cash, according to one government estimate.

Prosecutors said in court papers the light sentence was earned because of the danger the twins put themselves in through undercover work that eventually led to indictments against Guzman, his top Sinaloa cartel leaders, and dozens of other drug wholesalers and middlemen from Chicago to Mexico.

Born and raised in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, the 34-year-old twins have been held in secret locations for more than six years. Their immediate family members were given new identities and set up with $300,000 to pay for living expenses for the foreseeable future. Even when they are released from custody, the brothers' lives will never be the same, prosecutors said.

"As two of the most well-known cooperating witnesses in the country, the Flores brothers (and their families) will live the rest of their lives in danger of being killed in retribution," prosecutors wrote. "The barbarism of the cartels is legend, with a special place reserved for those who cooperate."

The concerns over possible attempts at retribution extend to the brothers' Chicago attorney, whose identity has been kept secret for safety reasons in an extraordinary step. It's unclear whether the attorney will even be in court Tuesday for the sentencing. Extra metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs are expected to add another layer of security at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

The Flores brothers' cooperation has already had real repercussions. Shortly after word got out that the brothers were in DEA custody, their father, Margarito Flores Sr., returned to Mexico against his sons' wishes and despite stern warnings from their government handlers, according to prosecutors.

Within days, the father was kidnapped and presumed to be murdered, the filing said. A note found at the scene of the kidnapping said his sons were next.

Some of the brothers' double-dealing was the stuff of movies. The Flores brothers met with cartel leaders in mountaintop compounds, captured conversations with Guzman's lieutenants with a voice recorder hidden in a coat pocket and even helped prosecutors by cutting deals with a rival faction of the cartel that would have meant certain death if discovered by either side, court records show.

"It was incredibly daring," said Joseph Lopez, a Chicago attorney who has represented many cartel clients. "These guys were allegedly able to get Chapo on tape talking about heroin. He trusted them that much."

The Flores brothers' sentencing marks the end of one of the more remarkable stories of Chicago's cut-throat drug underworld, where in a few short years the twins rose through the ranks of the Latin Kings street gang to eventually run a drug distribution ring that shipped thousands of pounds of narcotics to wholesale customers in New York, Washington, Cincinnati and other cities.

By the time they flipped in 2008 and agreed to dismantle their operation, the twins had reached "the highest echelons of the cartel world," prosecutors said.

They built their mini-empire using a system of couriers and henchmen whom they trusted to drive loads in vehicles outfitted with secret compartments and hydraulic trap doors, court records show. The drugs were often picked up in broad daylight, in supermarket parking lots and outside of South Loop dollar stores, and kept in innocuous-looking stash houses from Chicago to Aurora. Through it all, the Floreses kept a low profile. Their associates mostly had clean records, and they were not known for the rampant violence that many associate with street-level dealing.

Their main supplier was Guzman, whose vast operations included a fleet of 747 jets that had all the seats removed, the brothers said in sworn statements to a federal grand jury.

According to their statements, Guzman would load the planes with clothes and other goods and fly bogus "humanitarian" missions to South America. On the return trip to Mexico City, the brothers said, the planes would be packed with as much as 12,000 kilograms — about 14 tons — of cocaine that was unloaded and driven out of the airport with the help of corrupt officials.

The brothers said Guzman's various lieutenants helped the cartel coordinate shipments of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico using submarines, speedboats and amphibious vessels to avoid law enforcement at sea.

In 2007, the brothers agreed to invest $600,000 with Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez, Guzman's boyhood friend, to open a furniture exporting company that would act as a front to ship cocaine by rail, with loads hidden behind false walls in the boxcars, according to the statements. Vasquez-Hernandez, a trusted lieutenant of El Chapo and one of the main contacts between the cartel and the Flores twins, pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy and was sentenced in November to 22 years in prison.

In all, the Flores twins pleaded guilty to distributing more than 64,500 kilograms of cocaine, an "almost incomprehensible quantity ... with resulting harm that is incalculable but without question horrific," prosecutors said.

Their testimony led to sweeping indictments in 2009 against 54 defendants, including Guzman, who remained a fugitive until his sensational arrest in Mexico last February. It's unclear whether he'll ever be extradited to face charges in the U.S., where he is also under indictment in New York and Texas.

The Floreses' cooperation also led to the flipping of another key witness, Sinaloa underboss Vincente Zambada-Niebla, who in 2013 secretly pleaded guilty to acting as the key coordinator of a billion-dollar cocaine and heroin operation on behalf of a faction of the cartel run by his father, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. Zambada-Niebla is awaiting sentencing.

At the same time they were cooperating against the cartel, the Flores twins also assisted in the dismantling of their organization in 2009, creating a highly unusual situation where the bosses were cooperating against underlings. The arrests occurred after the Floreses were flown back to the U.S. by the Drug Enforcement Administration and instructed to set up a series of phony transactions to catch the couriers in the act.

"They set up their own customers," Lopez said.

As those cases moved forward, many defense attorneys questioned why the government allowed the twins to continue to import massive amounts of narcotics into the U.S. while their cooperation was ongoing.

At least one shipment — a 276-kilogram load of cocaine that was part of a deal with Vasquez-Hernandez — made it to Chicago and was distributed on the streets without the knowledge of federal investigators. The brothers later told prosecutors they needed the proceeds from the sale to avoid falling behind on payments to the cartel, which would have made their continued cooperation impossible, court records show.

There were also questions of whether the feds were willing to look the other way on alleged violence committed by the Flores brothers, including two killings.

One involved the cartel-related slaying of Guadalupe Ledesma in Mexico. A cooperating witness had told investigators the Flores brothers were "directly responsible" for the killing, prosecutors said. That information was never verified, however, and several others were eventually convicted of murder in Mexico without implicating the brothers.

Meanwhile, there were accusations that the Flores twins were still accumulating wealth while they were cooperating. In court papers, prosecutors acknowledged that some of their flamboyant purchases were "wholly inappropriate" for informants living in protective custody, including a Bentley that was given to Pedro Flores' wife as a gift. There were rumors the brothers had buried millions of dollars in drug proceeds in backyards in Chicago and other locations.

In all, the government seized more than $4 million in drug proceeds from the Flores twins, and prosecutors wrote in a court filing that after an exhaustive investigation they do "not believe that the Flores brothers are hiding assets."