The ostentatious life of Cristian Fernando Gutiérrez, aka El Guacho, will take a break of 11 years and eight months while he serves his prison sentence. This Thursday, an American judge sentenced the son-in-law of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes The Mencho and one of the leaders of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) for money laundering, according to the electronic recording of his trial. It was Mencho himself who helped create the story that he had murdered his son-in-law, so that he could escape the authorities and live a life full of luxury in California with another identity.
Judge Beryl A. Howell sentenced El Guacho on only one of the charges against him, that of laundering money from CJNG. Gutiérrez was responsible for “transporting, transmitting, and transferring monetary instruments and funds to a location in the United States that represented the proceeds of a specific illicit activity, namely drug trafficking,” the list of charges states. The total sentence is 140 months in prison, or 11 years and 8 months. When he completes them, he will spend three years on supervised parole. El Guacho had another outstanding drug charge, including five kilos of cocaine and 500 grams of methamphetamines, which were dismissed.
Laisha’s longtime partner Michell Oseguera, one of the heirs of Mencho, Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficker, appeared remorseful during the trial, according to local media. “I regret all of this,” Gutiérrez told the judge, accusing him that the life of a drug trafficker was dangerous. “I will never make a mistake like this again in my life,” he added through the Spanish translators in the room, according to Los Angeles Times.
Before being captured in the California city of Riverside a year ago, Guacho, now 38, worked closely with “a close associate of the CJNG leader” and had been a member of the organization’s leadership for at least a decade. Investigators linked him to the criminal group’s cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking activities, as well as hiding money from his criminal activities and participating in acts of violence. Specifically, U.S. agents claimed that Gutiérrez participated in the kidnapping of two Mexican sailors in November 2021, an act of revenge by the CJNG for the capture of Rosalinda González Valencia, Mencho’s wife, in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco.
To avoid arrest, Guacho fled to the United States, but to do so his stepfather helped him fake his death. Nemesio Oseguera spread the rumor that he murdered his son-in-law because he lied to him. “This helped Gutiérrez escape to join Mencho’s daughter,” US authorities said at the time. He has since started a new life in California, where he took on a false identity and was able to live in a $1.2 million mansion with the boss’s heiress. This Thursday’s sentence puts an end to a life of luxury and deals a new blow to the upper echelons of the CJNG, as well as to the Mencho political family.
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