A personal assistant of Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán, whose testimony to the authorities was essential to send the former head of the Sinaloa cartel to a maximum security prison in the United States for the rest of his life, was sentenced this Monday to seven years in prison for a San Diego court charged with marijuana smuggling.
Mario Hidalgo Argüello, known by the alias
El Nariz,
had been extradited to California along with five other drug traffickers in January 2020.
In September, he pleaded guilty to the charges against which he was accused by the US Attorney's Office.
This Monday, a federal judge in San Diego sentenced Hidalgo to seven years in prison for importing marijuana on a San Diego yacht.
Judge William Hayes followed the joint recommendation of prosecutors and the defense to deliver that sentence, which deviates from the mandatory minimum 10-year sentence facing Hidalgo.
Mario Hidalgo Argüello.
Millennium
Investigators believe that Argüello was a key aide to the Sinaloa cartel, and one of
El Chapo's henchmen.
But it was precisely his revelations to the authorities that opened the door to his capture in Mexico six years ago and his subsequent extradition and sentence to life imprisonment in the United States.
According to the Los Angeles Times, before reading the sentence, Hidalgo shared his personal story and told the judge that he was one of seven children raised by poor, day laborers.
[The wife of 'El Chapo', Emma Coronel, may have the keys to dismantle the most dangerous cartel in the world]
"You grow up and don't stop thinking about what it is to have money," he said through a Spanish interpreter.
Sandra Lechman, Hidalgo's defense attorney, assured the judge that the events surrounding his arrest in Culiacán were "very traumatizing."
This was the message that Emma Coronel received from the judge who sentenced her
Nov. 30, 202104: 37
Both she and her client affirmed that
El Nariz's
wife
was attacked at the time of her capture.
Hidalgo was arrested on February 17, 2014 at his home in Culiacán, the capital and largest city of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, by a group of Mexican marines and United States federal agents, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper.
The alleged assistant to the narco at that moment turned against his bosses and led the Mexican authorities to Guzmán Loera's safe houses.
But the kingpin escaped through a tunnel before they could catch him on the first try.
Finally,
El Chapo
was arrested by Mexican authorities along with a lieutenant at a hotel in Mazatlán on February 21, 2014.
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Oct. 25, 202100: 26
At the time, Mexican officials described Hidalgo as "the errand boy" and El Chapo's messenger.
El Nariz
reportedly made known to the authorities that the cartel equipped its hiding places with steel doors and secret tunnels under the bathtubs that led to the sewage systems.
The capture of Hidalgo was considered a great step by the investigators.
"I knew absolutely everything about Guzmán Loera," said Víctor Vázquez, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), who participated in the persecution of El Chapo, when testifying in the federal trial of the drug lord. of drugs in Brooklyn in January 2019.
[Emma Coronel's conviction will not affect the Sinaloa Cartel, says an expert]
As reported by the Los Angeles Times,
El Nariz
is not a US citizen and is likely to be deported to Mexico when he has served his sentence.
While Hidalgo Argüello's cooperation did not directly lead to El Chapo's arrest, it did provide information that led to more arrests.
This is what the house of 'El Chapo' looks like, which will go up for auction and from where he escaped through a tunnel of the Mexican Navy
Sept.
15, 202101: 46
In 2015,
El Nariz
, while in Mexican custody, was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego for marijuana trafficking.
During the trial of the century in which Joaquín Guzmán Loera was sentenced to life imprisonment, the nickname of Hidalgo Argüello came to light at various times, in one of them as one of the capo's private secretaries and confidants.
