Mexican National Sentenced to Ten Years for Federal Methamphetamine Trafficking Conspiracy Conviction

ALBUQUERQUE –Javier Amador-Flores, 50, a permanent resident from Mexico who lived in Denver City, Tex., was sentenced today in federal court in Las Cruces, N.M., to 120 months in prison for his methamphetamine trafficking conviction. Amador-Flores will be deported after he completes his prison sentence

Amador-Flores was arrested on July 29, 2015, on an indictment charging him and four co-defendants, Joel Dominguez-Morales, 41, Maria Marcelina Cardoza-Burciaga, 41, Jose Manuel Trujillo, 42, all Mexican nationals, and Myrna Orozco, 32, a U.S. citizen, with participating in a conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine in Lea County, N.M., from May 1, 2015 through May 6, 2015.

Amador-Flores elected to proceed to trial and was found guilty July 20, 2016. The evidence at trial established that participated in a methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy by receiving and storing shipments of methamphetamine at the residence he shared with Orozco. Other members of the conspiracy distributed the methamphetamine in Lea County.

According to court documents, on May 1, 2015, an undercover agent arranged to purchase methamphetamine from Trujillo. On May 6, 2015, Trujillo informed the undercover agent that Dominguez-Morales would deliver the methamphetamine to the agent. Thereafter, Dominguez-Morales met with the undercover agent at a restaurant in Hobbs and directed the agent to meet him at an abandoned bar in a rural area outside of Hobbs, where a woman would deliver the methamphetamine. Later that day, law enforcement officers arrested Dominguez-Morales and Cardoza-Burciaga near the abandoned bar and seized almost four kilograms of methamphetamine.

Dominguez-Morales pled guilty on Sept. 4, 2015, and was sentenced on Sept. 21, 2016, to 145 months in prison. Cardoza-Burciaga pled guilty on Aug. 26, 2015, and was sentenced on Aug. 17, 2016. Orozco pled guilty on Nov. 6, 2015, and was sentenced on March 29, 2017.

Trujillo has yet to be arrested and is considered a fugitive. The charges against Trujillo are merely accusations and he is presumed innocent unless found guilty in a court of law.

This case was investigated by the Las Cruces office of Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Lea County Drug Task Force, with assistance from the Yoakum County (Texas) Sheriff’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brock Taylor and Matthew Beck of the U.S. Attorney’s Las Cruces Branch Office are prosecuting the case.

The Lea County Drug Task Force is comprised of officers from the Lea County Sheriff’s Office, Hobbs Police Department, Lovington Police Department, Eunice Police Department the Tatum Police Department and the Jal Police Department, and is part of the NM HIDTA Region VI Drug Task Force. 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.