Former Mexico police chief pleads guilty to accepting $290,000 from a drug ...

Former Mexico police chief pleads guilty to accepting $290,000 from a drug ...
Former Mexico police chief pleads guilty to accepting $290,000 from a drug ...

Iván Reyes Arzate, former commander of the Federal Police's Sensitive Investigative Unit, pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn, New York, federal court Tuesday and admitted that the El Seguimiento 39 criminal organization bribed him with $290,000 following a November 2016 meeting

Iván Reyes Arzate, former commander of the Federal Police's Sensitive Investigative Unit, pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn, New York, federal court Tuesday and admitted that the El Seguimiento 39 criminal organization bribed him with $290,000 following a November 2016 meeting

A former Mexican police chief pleaded guilty in a Brooklyn federal court Tuesday to receiving payments from a drug cartel that helped traffic cocaine to the United States and ratting out a DEA snitch who was later killed.

Iván Reyes Arzate, 49, former commander of the Federal Police's Sensitive Investigative Unit, admitted that the El Seguimiento 39 criminal organization bribed him with $290,000 following a November 2016 meeting.

'Being a member of the Mexican public service and in exchange for a payment, I agreed to give a drug trafficking organization data that would facilitate the distribution of cocaine, being aware that this was a crime,' Reyes Arzate told U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan.

Reyes Arzate participated in a U.S.-run investigation of the El Seguimiento 39 drug trafficking organization, which is aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel, the Beltran Leyva Organization and other Mexico-based cartels.

Known as 'La Reina' or 'The Queen,' Reyes Arzate met the El Seguimiento 39 cartel's leadership and passed along information about the investigation in exchange for the cash compensation. 

Arturo Beltrán-Leyva, co-founder of the Beltrán Leyva Organization reportedly paid Iván Reyes Arzate and two other cops  $3 million in 2008 for information on a DEA informant who was later kidnapped and killed

Arturo Beltrán-Leyva, co-founder of the Beltrán Leyva Organization reportedly paid Iván Reyes Arzate and two other cops  $3 million in 2008 for information on a DEA informant who was later kidnapped and killed

In 2008, Reyes Arzate and two other cops took in $3 million from the Beltrán Leyva Organization after they provided background information on a DEA informant, who had been arrested in Miami. 

The disgraced police commander and the other agents met in Mexico City with then cartel leader Arturo Beltrán-Leyva with a photo of the informant, who was later kidnapped and killed.

The Beltrán-Leyva Organization also paid Reyes Arzate $500,000 to apprehend American-born drug lord and former associated Edgar 'La Barbie' Valdez Villareal. 

He was caught at a rural home outside Mexico City in August 2010 and is serving a 49-year sentence at a federal prison in Florida.

Reyes Arzate was arrested in April 2017 shortly before the Drug Enforcement Administration intercepted a call between two drug traffickers who described the former top cop's crooked ways.

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