“When one is in the drug business, one is afraid of many things,” he said in Spanish. “Most of all … death.”
Landín-Martinez and 13 co-defendants face criminal charges specifically linked to several drug- and currency-smuggling busts between January 2005 and January 2007.
Of those in custody, six have pleaded guilty and are cooperating in the government’s case. Three, including Landín-Martinez, have pleaded not guilty.
McAllen police arrested Landín-Martinez on July 14, when an off-duty agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spotted him shopping for watermelon at an H.E.B. supermarket on North 10th Street, south of Nolana in McAllen.
Tuesday’s testimony outlined a complex criminal organization that kept its low-level members in the dark about the overall scope of operations even as it insulated those at the top from direct links to drug trafficking.
“The money works in a chain of command,” said Ricardo Garza, a low-level smuggler in the organization. “You’ve got to pay for your services; you’ve got to pay for your supply. It works like that all the way to the top.”
The group relied on middle-men like Jose Moncerrat Narvaez, 43, who testified Tuesday that he received drug shipments sent across the Rio Grande by a man named Juan Oscar Garza-Alanis.
Using rafts, cars and even an underground drainage pipe connecting the river to a 23rd Street manhole in Hidalgo, men like Narvaez were responsible for guiding the drugs to a designated drop-off point.
His employees usually took drug shipments from the river to the parking lots of McAllen businesses like McDonald’s, H.E.B. and Delia’s Tamales.
From there, another organization under Landín-Martinez’s alleged umbrella would pick up the drugs and take them to stash houses across the city.
Ricardo Muñiz, of Edinburg, ran one such operation. He told jurors Tuesday that he managed a group of smugglers that would then take the drugs past checkpoints in Falfurrias and Sarita in hopes of selling them to markets in the interior United States.
Once the sales were made, his couriers would return with money that would be paid to Garza-Alanis, who worked directly for Landín-Martinez, in Reynosa, Muñiz said.
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