He procured guns from the US, then sent them to Mexico to fight ‘El Chapo’ loyalists in cartel civil war

A bloody power struggle between Guzmán’s sons and his longtime business partner has unleashed brutal violence across Mexico in the years since the 2016 arrest of Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaqun “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Authorities claim that one of the factions fighting Guzmán’s sons, known as Los Chapitos, was a prolific drug-trafficking cell with strong ties to San Diego. Alfredo Lomas Navarrete, a Culiacán cellphone store owner who helped coordinate the southbound flow of weaponry, some of it purchased in San Diego, through border crossings in San Diego and Arizona, was one of their main suppliers of the guns and other weapons they used to fight Los Chapitos.

Lomas was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison by a federal judge in San Diego last week. Prosecutors claim he supplied “hundreds of weapons and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition” to the Valenzuela Drug Trafficking Organization cartel cell. Many of the weapons, including.50-caliber rifles, machine guns, and grenade launchers, were obtained in California, Arizona, and Nevada, according to prosecutors.

“The majority of firearms trafficked into Mexico — including high caliber and assault weapons — are shipped from the United States,” wrote Assistant United States Attorney Matthew Sutton in sentencing documents. “The rise of privately made firearms, or ‘ghost guns,’ has only exacerbated the problem.” These weapons enable drug cartels to intimidate local communities, challenge state authority, and reintroduce their lethal drug trade into the United States.”

According to a 2013 paper by researchers at the University of San Diego, more than 250,000 firearms are illegally transferred from the United States to Mexico, where guns are essentially illegal for most people to own. According to a more recent proclamation by a Mexican government official, approximately 500,000 guns are illegally trafficked south of the border each year. Moving the guns south is also easier because travelers entering Mexico face a fraction of the scrutiny that those crossing northbound face.

The Mexican government filed a $10 billion lawsuit against ten US gun manufacturers in 2021, seeking accountability for the lethal southbound flow of firearms. The lawsuit was dismissed; however, a federal appeals court in Boston is considering Mexico’s request to reopen the case.

Lomas, 33, was charged as part of a decade-long investigation into the Sinaloa cartel and its ties to San Diego. Operation Baja Metro specifically targeted the Valenzuela drug-trafficking cell, which prosecutors claim is “a significant component of the Sinaloa Cartel and… currently one of the largest importers of cocaine into the (US).”

Prosecutors say the group was led by Jorge Alberto Valenzuela Valenzuela, who pleaded guilty to a trio of conspiracy charges involving cocaine trafficking and money laundering in a related case. In his plea agreement, Valenzuela admitted to being a “leader in a drug trafficking organization associated with the Sinaloa Cartel” and ordering acts of violence on behalf of the organization.

Authorities say Jorge Valenzuela and his sister, Chula Vista restaurateur Wuendi Valenzuela Valenzuela, filled a void left by the death of another brother, Luis Gabriel Valenzuela Valenzuela, who was the logistics and financial operator of a money laundering network for Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, El Chapo’s longtime partner who has been at odds with Los Chapitos.

Since arresting Jorge Valenzuela in late 2020 on a private plane flying from San Diego to Boston, federal authorities have been attempting to dismantle the Valenzuela trafficking cell. Prosecutors said dozens of cellphones seized during his arrest and a massive bust at an Otay Mesa trucking yard a short time later revealed the scope of the family’s operation — huge stashes of guns, drugs, and cash were discovered at San Diego warehouses and other locations. Wuendi Valenzuela was also identified as Jorge’s “right-hand” woman, according to the evidence.

She pleaded guilty to the same three conspiracy charges as her brother earlier this month, admitting to playing a leadership role. According to prosecutors, Wuendi’s role was to oversee drug trafficking proceeds moving from the United States to Mexico.

According to his plea agreement and sentencing documents, Lomas was moving guns, other weapons, and ammunition in that direction. The Valenzuela cell occasionally used its own trafficking networks and cross-border trucking companies to smuggle firearms into Mexico, but it mostly relied on Lomas and other arms dealers.

The sentencing documents provide little information about where or how Lomas and his co-conspirators obtained the weapons, but they do claim that many of the “weapons and ammunition were acquired in the United States, including in California, Arizona, and Nevada.”

The prosecution’s sentencing memorandum includes dozens of alleged messages between Lomas and Jorge Valenzuela about the acquisition of AK-47 rifles, grenade launchers, other high-powered weapons, ballistic vests, and helmets.

“You’ve been good to me,” Valenzuela said in a written message to Lomas in May 2020. “In any way that I can, you can count on my friendship.”

The attorney for Lomas did not respond to a request for comment. The defense attorney wrote in a sentencing memorandum that his client had lived a law-abiding life as the owner of a cellphone store in Culiacán until drug traffickers began using his services.

“They purchased phones from him, and he programmed and repaired their phones, providing a large scale of business,” the defense attorney said in a statement. “After some time the traffickers began to ask him to do things for them and Mr. Navarrete agreed.”

The defense argued that Lomas was never a member of the Valenzuela organization, but that he was aware that the tasks he was performing aided their drug-trafficking efforts.

Lomas wrote the judge a letter before his sentencing “as a desperate call for help, forgiveness, and repentance,” in which he described his two young daughters. “I apologize from the bottom of my heart for what I did and what I caused, there is not a day that goes by that I do not regret it,” he said.

Lomas and his attorney requested a sentence of less than six years in pre-sentence papers, while prosecutors recommended a sentence of more than 17 years.