(The Center Square) – Federal prosecutors on Wednesday unsealed charges against the sitting governor of Mexico's Sinaloa state and nine other current and former officials, alleging they took millions of dollars in cartel bribes in exchange for helping flood the United States with fentanyl, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.
The indictment, filed in the Southern District of New York, names Ruben Rocha Moya, 76, the governor of Sinaloa, as the most prominent of the defendants. Prosecutors allege the Sinaloa Cartel's so-called Chapitos faction – the sons of imprisoned drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman – helped rig the 2021 gubernatorial election that put Rocha Moya in office, including by ordering cartel members to steal ballots and kidnap opposition candidates. In exchange, the indictment alleges, Rocha Moya handed the Chapitos effective control over state and local law enforcement.
"As the indictment lays bare, the Sinaloa Cartel, and other drug trafficking organizations like it, would not operate as freely or successfully without corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials on their payroll," U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said.
The case represents an escalation in the Trump administration's campaign against the Mexican cartels, which the administration designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2025. DEA Administrator Terrance Cole, who has called fentanyl a weapon the cartel has used to deliberately increase American drug dependence, said the charges expose an effort to corrupt public institutions.
"No one is above the law," Cole said.
The other defendants span nearly every level of Sinaloa's government and law enforcement apparatus. Enrique Inzunza Cazarez, now a sitting Mexican senator, allegedly served as a go-between for the Chapitos and the governor's office, prosecutors said. Enrique Diaz Vega, the former secretary of administration and finance, allegedly handed cartel leaders the names and home addresses of Rocha Moya's political opponents before the 2021 election so they could be threatened into dropping out, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors accused Damaso Castro Zaavedra, the current deputy attorney general for the Sinaloa State Attorney General's Office, of accepting about $11,000 per month in bribes, with prosecutors alleging he tipped off the Chapitos to planned DEA-backed raids so they could move drugs and destroy evidence before agents arrived. Two successive heads of the state's Investigative Police – Marco Antonio Almanza Aviles and his successor Alberto Jorge Contreras Nunez, known as "Cholo" – allegedly pocketed about $16,000 a month and, in exchange, ordered the release of cartel members who had been arrested for drug trafficking.
The indictment's most serious corruption allegations target Juan Valenzuela Millan, a/k/a "Juanito," a former commander in the Culiacan Municipal Police. Prosecutors allege Millan accepted roughly $41,000 per month in bribes to be distributed among himself and more than 40 other officers on the Chapitos' payroll. In October 2023, the indictment alleges, Millan dispatched officers in a patrol car to stop and kidnap a DEA confidential source named Alexander Meza Leon and a relative. Both were turned over to cartel enforcers, who tortured and killed them. The victims included a 13-year-old boy. Millan faces mandatory life in prison if convicted on the kidnapping counts.
The charges are the latest in a series of indictments out of the Southern District of New York targeting more than 30 Sinaloa Cartel members since 2023. The cartel has been weakened in recent years by the arrest and extradition of several leaders, including Ovidio Guzman Lopez, one of El Chapo's sons, who was extradited in 2023. El Chapo's former co-leader, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, was brought to the United States in July 2024. Prosecutors say the resulting internal war between rival factions has produced escalating violence across Sinaloa.
All 10 defendants are believed to remain in Mexico, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
Each faces a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison on drug and weapons charges, with Millan facing mandatory life. The charges are allegations; the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
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