Ex-mayor of Sonoran town sentenced for drug smuggling
The former mayor of a town just south of the Mexican border has been sentenced to 21 years in a U.S. prison for heading up a cocaine smuggling ring. Arturo Reyes Trujillo, ex-municipal president of Fronteras, Son., south of Agua Prieta, had pleaded guilty to smuggling and money laundering charges and was sentenced Monday.
Trujillo was elected mayor of the small town in 2012, and arrested in September of that year for carrying on smuggling activities while living in Tucson between 2003 and 2007.
He earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Trujillo was involved in sending about 1,000 kilograms of cocaine throughout the United States, and laundered about $20 million, officials said. He was sentenced to 262 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake.
According to the plea deal, from about Jan. 1, 2003, to July 28, 2007, Trujillo was the head of the drug trafficking organization that hired a network of drivers to deliver multi-hundred kilogram shipments of cocaine, using passenger cars and tractor-trailer trucks, throughout the United States.
At the time, Trujillo was living in Tucson, authorities said.
The organization also brought back to Arizona millions of dollars from cocaine sales. Authorities seized more than 77 kilograms of cocaine and more than $490,000 in drug proceeds.
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