Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Mexico extradited the alleged top financial operator for the Sinaloa Cartel, who appeared in federal court this week in San Diego on money-laundering charges.
Victor Manuel Felix-Felix, known as "El Señor," made his first appearance in court Tuesday on charges including engaging in continuing criminal enterprise, conspiracy to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He arrived in California from Mexico on Monday.
Extradition documents indicate a Drug Enforcement Administration agent began working with a money-laundering organization in 2009, and made contact with Felix-Felix while posing as a person capable of transporting millions of dollars worth of narcotics using private aircraft.
The operation took place in five countries: Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.
The Mexican attorney general's office said officers arrested Felix-Felix, 30, at an apartment complex in Santa Fe, Mexico, in October.
He allegedly maintained communication with other criminal organizations in the production and transport of narcotics in Guerrero and Jalisco states as part of the cartel once run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
After Guzman's arrest and extradition to New York, his sons, Ivan and Jesus Alfredo, took over the operation of his cartel. Guzman's sons and Felix-Felix were kidnapped from an upscale restaurant in Puerto Vallarta in August 2016. Felix-Felix is the father-in-law of one of Guzman's sons and is the godfather of one of the drug kingpin's children.
