Colorado Man Sentenced to 121 Months for Federal Drug Trafficking Conviction in New Mexico

ALBUQUERQUE – Saul Cerros, 36, of Northglenn, Colo., was sentenced today in federal court in Las Cruces, N.M., to 121 months in prison for his conviction on methamphetamine trafficking charges.  Cerros will be on supervised release for five years after completing his prison sentence.

Cerros was arrested on Sept. 28, 2016, on a four-count indictment charging him with methamphetamine trafficking offenses.  Cerros was charged with conspiring to distribute methamphetamine from March 27, 2015 through March 31, 2015, and with distributing methamphetamine twice on March 27, 2015, and again on March 31, 2015.  According to the indictment, Cerros committed the offenses in Dona Ana County, N.M.

On April 10, 2017, Cerros pled guilty to the indictment.  In entering the guilty plea, Cerros admitted selling an aggregate of 891.56 grams of pure methamphetamine to undercover law enforcement agents on three separate occasions; twice on March 27, 2015, and a third time on March 31, 2015.  Cerros further admitted that he personally smuggled the methamphetamine involved in one of the drug deals into the United States from Mexico.  

This case was investigated by the Las Cruces office of the FBI and the HIDTA Regional Interagency Drug Task Force/Metro Narcotics Task Force and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Segovia of the U.S. Attorney’s Las Cruces Branch Office.

The HIDTA Regional Interagency Drug Task Force/Metro Narcotics Task Force is comprised of officers from the Las Cruces Police Department, the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, HSI and the New Mexico State Police.  The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program was created by Congress with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.  HIDTA is a program of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) which provides assistance to federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies operating in areas determined to be critical drug-trafficking regions of the United States and seeks to reduce drug trafficking and production by facilitating coordinated law enforcement activities and information sharing.