One Mexican national that is currently serving time in a prison located in Ohio was able to manage and grow his drug trafficking ring that focussed on the sale of fentanyl, heroin, meth, and more much more across the Buckeye State and reaching outward.
Having been previously deported as an illegal alien one before, Jose Bernardo Lozano-Leon was slammed with another 10-year prison sentence on the 1st of February for his illegal operation after he pleaded guilty to utilizing a smuggled cell phone to plan and execute various narcotics trades all while sitting safely in the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center.
As reported by The News-Herald, Lozano-Leon was previously charged back in 2019 alongside a group of 9 other people by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio in the wake of the crew finally getting caught “trafficking fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, often in blue pills that were stamped to look like oxycodone. Those drugs along with cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana were shipped from Mexico to a house in Cleveland and from there sold throughout Northeast Ohio.”
Lozano-Leon was sitting safely inside a prison cell when the most recent drug trade scheme started, serving a previous 18-month prison sentence for his illegal re-entry of the country after he had pled guilty to coming into the country without permission. He orchestrated the entire ring from a distance after he was delivered a mini-cell phone via a small drone while inside the facility. As reported by police officials, law enforcement was able to record the various conversations between Lozano-Leon and his crew.
One such conversation focused on how “strong” the drugs should be, as reported by the Herald:
In a conversation that was monitored by law enforcement, Lozano was allegedly asked how strong he wanted the pills to be on a scale of 1 to 10. Lozano allegedly replied that he wanted them to be an 8 or a 9, but that he didn’t want any overdoses.
Lozano-Leon will be sent into the custody of Immigration and Customers Enforcement once he manages to complete his currently slated 121-month prison sentence, but if he comes back to the U.S. after this deportation or is never removed from the country, he will be pushed into a supervised release for a period of 10 years.
“This group brought danger,” stated U.S. Attorney Justin E. Herdman back in 2019. “Let me underline that, they brought danger from Mexico to Cleveland in the form of drugs that were labeled as one thing but they were in fact something far more dangerous.”
As stated by police officials, drugs from this group could spread out as far as Arizona and California.