Miami– A federal judge of the South District of Florida prevented 210 months, equivalent to 17 and a half years in prison, Mario Clifford Rivera, aka ‘Chuky’, for coordinating since 2022 the income and sale of fentanyl from Mexico, even while serving a prior sentence in the state prison of South Bay.
Rivera, 32, identified as a member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), used mobile smuggling phones and the prison telephone system to give orders to their distributors and demand the delivery of profits from the drug, according to official records.
Modus operandi
The accusation details that Rivera headed a drug trafficking organization that introduced the opioid through the Californian border and forwarded Florida by certified mail.
Federal researchers attributed to Rivera the management of more than three kilograms of fentanil, sufficient to cause death to about 1.5 million people, according to forensic calculations presented at the sentence hearing.
The scheme remained active during the brief period in which the accused obtained bail in 2023. In that period, according to the inquiries, he offered to sell two additional kilograms in Palm Beach County and bleached profits through bank accounts open for testaferros.
Research
The case, baptized as Operation ‘Phoenix’, was developed by agents of the FBI Miami, the DEA compliance division, the United States Postal Inspection Service, the National Security Research Office and the Palmbeach Sheriff’s Office.
The authorities intercepted 17 postal packages containing fentanil and documented the electronic transfers that connected the Rivera Network with suppliers known as ‘Losrojos’ in the Mexican state of Guerrero.
When announcing the sentence, federal prosecutor Hayden O’Byrne said that both in the street and after the prison walls the criminal networks that try to flood the communities with “poison” will be dismantled.
Actions and figures
This process is part of the operation Take Back Americaa national initiative that concentrates resources from the Department of Justice to repel illegal immigration, eradicate transnational criminal cartels and organizations and protect the communities of the authors of violent crimes.
The Rivera case, in addition, is part of an Ocdetf investigation, a federal program that identifies and seeks to dismantle high -level organizations that threaten the country through coordinated operations between local, state and federal authorities.
Rivera’s condemnation comes while Congress debates the classification of fentanil as a weapon of mass destruction. According to the National Sanitary Statistics Center, about 70% of the 107,543 overdose deaths recorded in 2023 involved synthetic opioids.
Florida, on the other hand, reported record seizures last year with 45 kilograms confiscated in Miami-Dade and another 12 in Fortlauderdale.
Drug trafficking
Analysts point out that MS13, present in twenty -two states and ally with at least nine Mexican cartels, has diversified its traditional extortion business towards high profitability opioid trafficking.
Although the sentence against Rivera constitutes a relevant blow, the specialists warn that it remains to address immediate challenges.
Among the challenges highlights the use of illicit phones within the prisons, shielding the postal shipping system against drug trafficking and expanding accelerated extradition agreements with Mexico and Central America to interrupt the supply chain.
The authorities said they trust that the combination of artificial intelligence technologies for prison monitoring and the joint operation strategy Take Back America It will be decisive in the next actions against transnational criminal organizations.
