The women have argued they cannot be prosecute because they were promised immunity by federal agents and the U.S. attorney’s office as part of their husbands’ cooperation against drug lord.
before making the stunning decision in 2008 to surrender and help federal investigators build a case against their boss, Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.they had to come clean.
That claim has been hotly contested by prosecutors, and the bid to dismiss the charges is widely regarded as a legal long shot. Still, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly has scheduled an evidentiary hearing starting Monday at downtown Chicago’s Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where the judge will try to get to the bottom of what — if any — promises were made.
Lopez also allegedly sent $5,000 of the laundered money to her husband in prison and spent another $31,000 on a laundry business she opened in Arizona after the family went into hiding, according to the indictment. Flores, who would appear via video link, might assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, but if he chooses to answer questions, he could find himself in legal jeopardy trying to explain under oath his connection to the money that the wives were allegedly spending.
But like their husbands, Gaytan and Lopez had enjoyed the riches that drug trafficking had brought them — the villa in Mexico with a private zoo, the Bentleys, Jet Skis and jewelry. And like their husbands, they knew the cartels had surely marked them for death as turncoats. “Finally I was going to meet the legendary Flores twins,” she wrote in the book. Peter’s handshake greeting and respectful demeanor struck her immediately, a big departure from the boys who would openly comment on her looks.
Gaytan, meanwhile, admitted in the book that she started hanging out with gang bangers and drug dealers as a teenager in the rough-and-tumble Brighton Park neighborhood. She dropped out of the University of Illinois at Chicago to enroll in cosmetology school, she wrote. Reveles also told a federal grand jury that he took Gaytan on trips to Hawaii, Miami and Las Vegas, giving her $10,000 in cash to gamble at casinos and up to $5,000 at a time to just “carry around,” federal court records show.Gaytan was indicted on money laundering charges related to Reveles’ operation in December 2000. Her attorney later wrote in a court filing that investigators had approached her and tried to get her to cooperate against her new love interest, Rangel, but she refused.