SAN DIEGO — Mexican drug cartel kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. federal court to racketeering and conspiracy to launder money.
The plea avoided the spectacle of a trial for one of the world’s most powerful drug lords of the 1990s. The agreement calls for a maximum of 25 years in prison. Federal prosecutors agreed to dismiss other charges that could have brought a sentence of 140 years in prison if convicted. Sentencing was scheduled for April 2.
The 58-year-old Arellano Felix said little during the proceeding. As part of the agreement, Arellano Felix acknowledged leading an organization that distributed hundreds of tons of cocaine and marijuana in the United States and raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds that were sent back to Mexico, sometimes stuffed inside cars.
Arellano Felix headed a once-mighty cartel that came to power in Tijuana, Mexico, in the late 1980s. He was extradited from Mexico in April 2011. The Associated Press
