Tight security at drug dealers' sentencing extends to lawyers, whose names remain a secret
Twin brothers from Chicago were each sentenced to 14 years in prison on Tuesday for drug smuggling in a case so fraught with security concerns that their lawyers’ names remained a secret.
Prosecutors had asked for sentences as low as 10 years in prison for the 33-year-old defendants, Pedro and Margarito Flores, because of their extraordinary cooperation. Their undercover work led to the indictments of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman as well as Guzman’s top operatives, the Chicago Tribune reports.
A prior Tribune story calls the brothers “arguably the most important informants in the U.S. government’s decades-long war on drugs.” Without their cooperation, the brothers likely would have received life sentences for smuggling an estimated 71 tons of cocaine and heroin.
Security included bomb-sniffing dogs and a metal detector outside the courtroom of the sentencing judge, U.S. District Chief Judge Ruben Castillo, the Tribune says. Lawyers for the brothers appeared in court, but their names were not entered into the record to help protect them.
The Flores brothers and their families are in the witness protection program, but their father failed to heed warnings and returned to Mexico. He was kidnapped and presumed dead, prosecutors said. A note found at the kidnapping scene said the brothers were next.
