SAN DIEGO — Attacking a vast cocaine trafficking network that was allegedly camouflaged by U.S. and Mexican import-export companies, federal prosecutors charged the owners of a prominent Mexican foods business Thursday with conspiring to use a cross-border tunnel to smuggle drugs into California.
Discovered in Tijuana in 1993, the unfinished "narco-tunnel" was allegedly commissioned by Mexican drug lord Joaquin (Chapo) Guzman and the owners of a number of prosperous grocery companies in Southern California and northern Mexico, according to a sweeping indictment against 22 suspects filed Thursday.
Prosecutors charged brothers Jose, Antonio and Jesus Reynoso, executives of Reynoso Bros. in the City of Industry, with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and money laundering. Drug agents arrested Jose Reynoso, 63, Thursday morning at his Rowland Heights home, officials said. He pleaded not guilty Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, officials said. His attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Antonio Reynoso, 51, and Jesus Reynoso, 58, live in Tijuana and Mexican authorities will be asked to arrest them and other suspects pending extradition requests, prosecutors said.
The indictment explains the lingering mystery of the tunnel, discovered in May, 1993, by Mexican federal police hunting the killers of the Roman Catholic cardinal of Guadalajara. The cardinal died in a shootout that authorities believe involved Guzman and Tijuana-based rivals. U.S. investigators had linked the now-imprisoned Guzman to the sophisticated, 1,416-foot tunnel near the Otay Mesa commercial border crossing, but said little until now about the intended destination--an unfinished cannery on the San Diego side allegedly financed by the Reynoso brothers.
The indictment paints a detailed picture of how the so-called Sinaloa cartel built a criminal partnership with the Los Angeles businessmen, who seemed to epitomize an immigrant success story and lent "an air of legitimacy to the Guzman organization's importation of cocaine," authorities said.
Traffickers allegedly used Lear jets, warehouses, machinery and cashier's checks linked to the Reynosos to move cocaine and money. The operation was part of a cross-border pipeline of food products and transportation companies in Mexico, California, Texas, Chicago and New Jersey that served as an elaborate front, according to the indictment.
