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Drug Trafficker Pleads Guilty to Murder of Member
of Mexican Cocaine Trafficking Organization
LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for
the Southern District of New York, announced that CHRISTOPHER
PEREZ, a/k/a "Cross," pleaded guilty yesterday in Manhattan
federal court to the murder of a Mexico-based narcotics associate
MIGUEL ANGEL CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA, a/k/a "Noe Alfredo Castro-Loera."
According to the Indictment and statements made at
yesterday's plea proceeding before United States District Judge
NAOMI REICE BUCHWALD:
PEREZ and the murder victim, CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA, were
associates of a Mexico-based cocaine trafficking organization
that supplied bulk quantities of cocaine to distributors in New
York, Chicago, Detroit and California. On August 23, 2004, in
Detroit, PEREZ and co-conspirators met with CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA, and
kidnapped him to question him regarding a drug debt. During his
guilty plea, PEREZ admitted to kidnapping CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA so that
CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA could be murdered.
As a summary of the evidence provided at yesterday's
proceeding by the Government revealed, on August 23, 2004, PEREZ
and co-conspirators kidnapped CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA to question him
regarding 70 kilograms of cocaine that PEREZ believed had been
stolen from him. As a result of the interrogation that followed,
PEREZ came to believe that CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA and his superiors in
Mexico were plotting to have PEREZ murdered. PEREZ then
suffocated CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA with duct tape, and later burned his
body in an effort to destroy evidence and avoid identification of
the body. PEREZ later described the murder of CHAIDEZ-ESPARZA in
a covertly videotaped meeting with an informant acting on behalf
of law enforcement.
PEREZ pleaded guilty to one count of murder in
furtherance of a narcotics trafficking conspiracy. He is
scheduled to be sentenced by Judge BUCHWALD on July 22, 2009.
PEREZ, 40, faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in
prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Mr. DASSIN praised the investigative work of the DEA's
New York Drug Enforcement Task Force, which is comprised of
agents and officers of the DEA, New York City Police Department,
and New York State Police. Mr. DASSIN also thanked DEA offices
in Detroit, Michigan, and Monterrey, Mexico, as well as the
Federal Bureau of Investigation's Los Angeles Office for their
work in the investigation.
The prosecution is being conducted by the Office's
International Narcotics Trafficking Unit. Assistant United
States Attorneys ANIRUDH BANSAL and TODD W. BLANCHE are in charge
of the prosecution.
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