The Feds are extremely concerned that the Flores brothers have a significant amount of hidden assets awaiting their release from prison.
Pedro “Little Pete” Flores and Margarito “Junior” Flores, were the top distribution lieutenants in the United States for the Sinaloa Cartel’s infamous Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. Throughout the 2000s they operated out of Chicago as the cartel’s main hub in the area until they flipped and helped the US government build a successful case against El Chapo.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera after his arrest in 2014.
Now, Junior is asking for an early release from federal prison for fear of contracting COVID-19. The brothers were each sentenced to 14 years behind bars however, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, Junior only has till November to complete his sentence. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Flores brothers are “the two most important informants in U.S. history.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Illinois filed a response this week to Junior’s request for early release. It stated that, as of March, the government has officially changed its position and now no longer believes that “all recoverable proceeds were turned over upon arrest.”
During the brothers’ sentencing hearing in 2015, the presiding judge, U.S. District Judge Ruben Castilla, made his position clear that he doubted they had turned over all their assets. At the time, the prosecutors backed the Flores brothers’ claim that they had.
In 2008, the Flores brothers cut a deal with prosecutors and surrendered over $4,000,000 in assets. Little Pete did manage to give his wife the gift of a $200,000 Bentley just days before he started his prison term.
Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera is escorted by Federal authorities from a plane at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport in 2017.
At El Chapo’s trial last year, Little Pete was the star witness. El Chapo was the biggest drug trafficker in the world and after his extradition to the U.S. in 2016, is serving life behind bars in the Colorado Supermax facility.
The Flores brothers were born and raised in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood and started associating with the Sinaloa Cartel in the early 2000s. They worked their way up and eventually gained the trust of El Chapo, becoming his number 1 go-to guys in the U.S.
In 2008, after Junior Flores agreed to cooperate with the federal government, he visited El Chapo in the northern mountains of Mexico. In the year or so that followed, the Feds recorded over 75 phone conversations the brothers had with El Chapo, many of them discussing the arrangements and plans for drug shipments into the U.S.
The brother’s cooperation with the U.S. government led to their father, Margarito Flores Sr, being kidnapped and killed. It happened in 2009 when he traveled to Mexico from his home in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. A note found at the scene confirmed that he had been killed by the Sinaloa Cartel because “his sons were rats.”
Margarito Flores Sr was killed in 2009 by the Sinaloa Cartel because his sons, Pedro “Little Pete” Flores and Margarito “Junior” Flores cooperated with the U.S government, eventually leading to the arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson will decide Junior’s current “compassionate release” request.
