Well-connected cartel figure pleads guilty in S.A.
A longtime drug cartel figure who associated with movers and shakers in Texas and Mexico has pleaded guilty to a drug-trafficking conspiracy charge in San Antonio.
Hedilberto Casas Gonzalez, also known as Beto Casas or “El Buda,” had been mentioned in high-profile court cases in San Antonio and elsewhere and had been sought for years on federal charges.
In one case, a government witness testified that the drug cartel Los Zetas used Casas' ranch in Mexico to deliver a large “campaign contribution” — a vehicle stuffed with cash — to a thengovernor of the state of Coahuila, Ruben Moreira.
In another, Casas was captured on a federal wiretap discussing under-the-table business about officials in Eagle Pass, which helped set off a large, separate FBI public corruption investigation that targeted now-former Maverick County commissioners and others in the Texas border city of 55,000 people.
Casas was charged for his drug-trafficking ventures with operatives of the Zetas who worked for the cartel's violent leader, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, or “Z-40,” and years before that with another notorious drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, among others.
With little fanfare, Beto Casas, in ailing health, pleaded guilty on Thursday before U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez to a charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine.
Rodriguez scheduled Casas' sentencing for May 17. He faces 10 years to life in prison.
Many of El Buda's old associates have been sidelined. Treviño was arrested in 2013 and is jailed in Mexico, but has yet to face any trials in the United States. Guzman, who led the rival Sinaloa Cartel, is serving life in prison in Colorado. He was convicted in New York in 2019 of drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
It took at least three indictments and several years for Casas to be brought to the United States. Court records show he was well known in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, which borders Eagle Pass, and knew lawyers, businessmen and others who were part of that city's elite, according to news stories.
Casas was also one of the longest-surviving drug traffickers there. In 2001, he was indicted along with Guzman and several other drug traffickers in Del Rio. But that case against Casas was later dismissed.
Casas was extradited to Texas in March 2020, when Mexican federales turned him over to U.S. marshals at the international bridge in Del Rio. By then, he had been named in two other federal cases, including one from 2005 where his wife, Maria, admitted she picked up $36,000 in drug proceeds from San Antonio, and another drug-trafficking case involving 27 defendants in Sherman in North Texas.
Maria Casas was arrested late in 2009. She pleaded guilty in March 2010 to bulk cash smuggling and aiding and abetting, and was sentenced that April to the three months she had been in jail.
“His name did come up,” said lawyer Mike Mccrum, who represented Maria Casas. “They wanted information about him and her cooperation against him. She, of course, did not want to do that. That's not to say that she had any (information).”
Maria Casas died of health complications early in the COVID pandemic, said Beto Casas' lawyer, Jackson Lindsay.
Lindsay limited comment about his client but said Beto Casas is still in the process of resolving the other federal charges pending in Sherman, where he has yet to make a court appearance.
In 2016, a drug trafficker who turned government witness, A. Tavira, mentioned Casas as a drug associate during the San Antonio trial of a former Zetas leader in Piedras Negras, Marciano Millan Vasquez. Witnesses testified how the Zetas took control of border cities in Mexico's northeast through violence, forcing traffickers in those cities to work for them or face consequences.
Tavira testified about a massacre of people from Allende, Coahuila, ordered by Treviño, who was upset about a former ally who came to the U.S. and became a government informant. Tavira said the Zetas operated freely and with impunity because they bribed local police and officials.
They even gave money to Moreira, in 2012, Tavira said. Moreira was Coahuila's governor from December 2011 to November 2017.
Tavira testified that he was at one such delivery, but didn't stay for the whole thing.
“It was at Beto Casas' ranch,” Tavira said. “All they told me was they had given him a Suburban with a bunch of suitcases full of money.”
A spokesman for Moreira denied the allegations, saying Moreira's campaign was in 2011.
“There's no way,' the spokesman said. “He didn't accept anything like that . ... In fact, his promise was to fight narco-trafficking.”
Beto Casas' name also came up during a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigation in 2009 and 2010 of a drugtrafficking cell in Eagle Pass. The DEA listened in on various wiretapped phone conversations involving Casas, other traffickers, and then-maverick County Commissioner Rodolfo “Rudy” Heredia.
“There were allegations Heredia and others were involved in public corruption,” said one federal law enforcement source familiar with the case. “That's why it was referred to the FBI.”
Prosecutors said at the time that, in January 2011, Heredia had two associates sell his truck to a member of the Zetas in Mexico, which U.S. citizens are banned from doing business with, and then smuggle the money back to the United States.
An FBI agent later testified that Heredia had traveled to Mexico for sex with underage girls, bragged about his relationship with the Zetas and took bribes in exchange for contracts.
The contracts stemmed from a $15 million grant from the Texas Department of Transportation to improve roads and drainage in the county's poor colonias. The contracts were padded to allow for the kickbacks. More than a dozen people, including two other county commissioners, were indicted in the kickback scheme. Heredia, who got 10 years in prison, was released in 2021.