Two males linked to a Downey residence that authorities say was a smuggling hub for Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel confronted sentencing this yr earlier than a federal decide.
One appeared final week in a Sacramento courtroom to study his destiny.
The opposite has been lacking for months.
Julio Cesar Nevarez-Erunez, 24, was sentenced to almost six years in jail on Dec. 4 after pleading responsible to a methamphetamine distribution conspiracy cost.
His co-conspirator, Juan Niebla-Osuna, 28, struck a plea settlement with U.S. attorneys for a similar cost and was out on bond, however was reported lacking in late August, in response to a pretrial companies violation petition.
Based on the petition, Niebla-Osuna left his Downey residence after his court-approved curfew on Aug. 25 — the day of his scheduled sentencing within the Japanese District of California.
His supervising officer hadn’t seen him in weeks; his spouse advised authorities she was in Mexico and hadn’t spoken along with her husband because the day earlier than he went lacking; his mom famous that there have been “suitcases close to his bed room” at his dwelling, in response to the petition.
His whereabouts since are a thriller.
Attorneys for Niebla-Osuna didn’t reply to a request for remark from The Occasions.
The Downey house complicated the place he and Nevarez-Erunez each lived sits on a quiet suburban avenue nook. Based on a legal grievance filed by federal prosecutors in Sacramento, in 2022 brokers from Homeland Safety Investigations photographed the pair carrying duffel baggage and containers suspected to include kilos of meth.
In April 2022, in response to the legal grievance, federal investigators recognized the boys as as distributors of heroin and methamphetamine “believed to be” sourced from the Sinaloa cartel. Brokers arrange a sting with a confidential informant three months later, wherein the boys offered 15 kilos of methamphetamine for almost $20,000.
Months of surveillance on the boys outdoors of their house led to sightings of them carrying “white containers” crammed with kilos of meth to ship to the informant, an affidavit from a Homeland Safety Investigations agent mentioned.
In Oct. 2022, Nevarez-Erunez was arrested throughout one of many deliveries by brokers in Sacramento with 40 kilos of meth and greater than 5,000 drugs of the artificial painkiller oxycodone in his automobile, a number of court docket paperwork mentioned.
Niebla-Osuna was arrested days later through the search of the Downey residence, in response to the legal grievance filed in opposition to him. The grievance mentioned Niebla-Osuna advised brokers he took orders from a “girl” and had solely been concerned within the drug enterprise for roughly six months.
Brokers discovered seven kilos of methamphetamine and greater than two kilos of fentanyl with Niebla-Osuna’s spouse and baby within the dwelling, in response to court docket paperwork and a U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace for the Japanese District of California information launch Tuesday.
On Wednesday, one Downey neighbor — who didn’t need to be named for concern of retaliation — recalled the search of the house as “principally peaceable.” He didn’t imagine on the time that the inflow of police across the complicated had something to do with medication, however mentioned he was “not stunned.”
The arrests of Niebla-Osuna and Nevarez-Erunez weren’t the primary of their type in Downey. L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman introduced in March that one other three alleged “cartel associates” within the space have been busted with over 50 kilos of fentanyl and 12 kilos of opium in a small house complicated.
U.S. attorneys initially advisable that Niebla-Osuna be sentenced to 9 years in jail on one depend of drug conspiracy for his plea deal. Nevertheless, his plea settlement stipulated that if he fled, he could possibly be tried once more for the counts he didn’t comply with and extra costs.
Based on the discharge, a bench warrant was issued for Niebla-Osuna’s arrest. The federal prosecutor’s workplace in Sacramento declined a request for added remark.
