A Mexican national has been sentenced to 300 months in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release in a drug trafficking conspiracy that distributed methamphetamine throughout Minnesota and the surrounding region, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick.
Court documents say that Charly Cruz-Jimenez, 40, was previously deported from the United States to Mexico in 2018 after serving a 74-month sentence for a first-degree controlled substance violation imposed by the Hennepin County District Court.
Beginning in at least October 2021—following his deportation to Mexico—Cruz-Jimenez organized and led a drug trafficking organization that distributed mass amounts of methamphetamine in Minnesota, while remaining safely outside of the jurisdiction of the United States in Matamoros, Mexico. Specifically, drug customers inside the United States contacted Cruz-Jimenez by electronic messaging applications and placed orders for illicit drugs. Cruz-Jimenez then used a large network of “runners” inside the United States to store the drugs, make deliveries to his customers, and funnel money back to Mexico.
Law enforcement began investigating Cruz-Jimenez after arresting one of his customers, Nicholas Horak. Investigators learned that Cruz-Jimenez had sold approximately 32-34 pounds of methamphetamine to Horak between October 2021 and March 2022. Officers obtained Cruz-Jimenez’s phone number from Horak’s phone and used his number to introduce an undercover (UC) police officer to him.
Over the course of the next 16 months, the UC had repeated contact with Cruz-Jimenez and ordered drugs from him on 15 different occasions. In his communications with the UC, Cruz-Jimenez admitted that he was a member of the Sureños, a national prison gang with connections to organized crime in Mexico. He also admitted to being a member of the Gulf Cartel (Cartel del Golfo or CDG), a major drug trafficking cartel in Mexico.
Cruz-Jimenez sent the UC photographs of himself fighting a war over territory with a rival cartel (Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación or CJNG). Included among the photographs was a photo of Cruz-Jimenez posing with a rifle in front of a bound and blindfolded captured member of the rival cartel. Cruz-Jimenez stated that he and his team had captured the man, that he was the “enemy,” and he was “confessing.” In another photo, Cruz-Jimenez posed with a gun in front of an unidentified man, who was lying in the bed of a pick-up truck with his eyes blindfolded and his hands tied.
In August 2023, Cruz-Jimenez illegally reentered the United States by crossing the Rio Grande into Texas. From Texas, Cruz-Jimenez continued to discuss methamphetamine deals with the UC and informed them that they would need to increase the quantity of purchases to multiple pounds in order to keep working together. Given Cruz-Jimenez’s return to the United States, investigators arrested him on the current indictment. Before his removal to the District of Minnesota, Cruz-Jimenez was charged and pleaded guilty to illegal reentry into the United States in the Southern District of Texas.
Cruz-Jimenez was sentenced this week in U.S. District Court by Judge Eric C. Tostrud on one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.
A statement regarding the lengthy sentence made by the prosecutor in the federal sentencing document read, in part:
“…I have seen dozens of conspiracies (investigated by myself and my colleagues) in which customers contact anonymous brokers in Mexico to order drugs and receive the deliveries from local runners. Despite the prevalence of this arrangement, the number of cases in which a foreign national broker located in Mexico is actually brought to justice in our district is vanishingly rare. Because people like the defendant are so seldom held accountable for their actions, a lengthy sentence is necessary to provide any meaningful measure of discouragement to other similarly-situated traffickers. Similarly, a lengthy sentence is also necessary to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant because, once the defendant is released, he is likely to be promptly deported to Mexico and put right back into a situation where he could resume trafficking drugs with impunity.”
Horak, now 45, was also convicted in federal court on a charge of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, but is serving the sentence concurrently in Minnesota along with a separate state court drug conviction that stemmed from a 2020 traffic stop in Todd County, Minn., where Horak was found in possession of 234 grams of methamphetamine. Horak had been free on bail in that case during the time frame of his involvement with Cruz-Jimenez, according to court records.
The Cruz-Jimenez federal case was the result of an investigation conducted by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, the Ramsey County Violent Crime Enforcement Team (VCET), the Maplewood Police Department, the Mounds View Police Department, the New Brighton Police Department, the Roseville Police Department, the Saint Paul Police Department, and the White Bear Lake Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nathan H. Nelson and Bradley M. Endicott are prosecuting the case.
– – –
Minnesota Crime Watch & Information publishes news, info and commentary about crime, public safety and livability issues in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota.
Crime Watch MN
Minnesota Crime Watch & Information publishes news, info and commentary about crime, public safety and livability issues in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota.
