SAN JOSE — After years of litigation, 4 males have been sentenced for serving to function what prosecutors have known as “one of the South Bay’s largest trafficking operations.”
In late February, Jose Banuelos-Garcia was sentenced to 5 years and 10 months in federal jail after pleading responsible to methamphetamine distribution offenses. His sentencing ends the four-defendant prison case, with the three others receiving phrases starting from home arrest to seven years behind bars, courtroom data present.
The defendants have been charged in 2022, after drug brokers say they seized sufficient methamphetamine to tip over a grizzly bear on a seesaw. All advised, 650 kilos of the drug have been recovered, in addition to 15 kilos of heroin, courtroom data present.
Banuelos-Garcia’s co-defendants have been sentenced in 2022 and 2023. This features a seven-year time period for Raul Jimenez-Verduzco, an alleged “dispatcher” for the group, a four-and-a-half-year time period for Manuel Sanchez-Pedraza, and a six-month home arrest time period for Edgar Portillo, courtroom data present.
The 4 males, together with unnamed co-conspirators, helped be sure that medicine “remained cheap and plentiful on San Jose’s streets,” prosecutors wrote in courtroom filings. Whereas most of the courtroom data on this case have been filed below seal, together with Banuelos-Garcia’s, the attorneys for Jimenez-Verduzco stated he deserves extra consideration given the horrors he witnessed throughout his upbringing in Michoacan, Mexico.
“As a youngster, Mr. Jimenez Verduzco witnessed first hand the violence, extortions, kidnaping and killings that occurred in his hometown” of Zicuiran, a protection sentencing memo stated.
Initially Revealed: March 27, 2025 at 5:04 PM PDT
