Jose Lozano-Leon, a 41-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, has been charged in a 17 count indictment for running fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine into Ohio from Mexico.
Lozano-Leon ran the operation using a phone that his co-conspirators smuggled into the prison for him. Nine others have been indicted in the conspiracy to sell drugs.
He was deported in 2007 and then tried to reenter the country as an illegal alien and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors say that since then he has headed the drug smuggling operation from his prison cell.
His nine co-conspirators are:
- 31-year-old Mario Hernandez-Leon of Mexico
- 27-year-old Clemente Gutierrez-Meraz of Mexico
- 45-year-old Lorne Franklin of Ohio
- 49-year-old Leevern Coleman of Ohio
- 36-year-old Belen Orozco-Sigala of Ohio
- 28-year-old Najee Amir Evans of Ohio
- 47-year-old Troy Pinnock of Ohio
- 60-year-old Damon Bybee of Ohio
- 38-year-old Montez Vanburen of Ohio
Jose Lozano-Leon, a 41-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, was named in a 17-count indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Cleveland, Ohio as the ringleader of a drug trafficking operation where he allegedly used a cellphone — smuggled into the prison by his associates — to oversee large-scale fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine trafficking into the country.
According to federal prosecutors, Lozano-Leon was first deported from the U.S. in 2017 after illegally entering the country through the southern border. Sometime after his deportation, Lozano-Leon re-entered the U.S. as an illegal alien and was indicted on federal reentry charges in October 2018.
After pleading guilty to illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Lozano-Leon was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison and was incarcerated at the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center in Youngstown.
Around November 2018, Lozano-Leon’s associates smuggled a cellphone into the Ohio prison for the illegal alien so he could operate the massive drug trafficking pipeline of fentanyl from Mexico to Cleveland.
Lozano-Leon, along with nine other Ohio residents, many of which are from Mexico, managed the Lozano drug trafficking organization which prosecutors said specialized in importing pills filled with deadly fentanyl to the U.S.