‘La Barbie,’ reported partner of Petties, is sentenced in Atlanta
Drug trafficker gets 49 years, 1 month in prison
Edgar Valdez Villareal, the American drug trafficker nicknamed “La Barbie” who worked with a major Mexican cartel and reportedly also with Memphis kingpin Craig Petties, has been sentenced to 49 years, one month in prison by an Atlanta court.
In addition to the federal prison sentence imposed Monday, Valdez also was ordered to forfeit $192 million in earnings related to shipping an estimated 12,000 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S., the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Abe Collins was pleased when Valdez was extradited from Mexico to the U.S. in 2015.
“I’m very excited,” he said at the time. “A majority of the cocaine on the streets of Memphis could be traced to La Barbie.”
Valdez is a U.S. citizen who grew up in Laredo, Texas, near the border with Mexico, and a high school football coach nicknamed him “Barbie” because of his appearance, the San Antonio ExpressNews reported in 2010. He’s been described as having blond hair, light skin and green eyes.
He later became a high-ranking member of Mexico’s Beltran Leyva drug trafficking organization, in what was called an extremely unusual step for a U.S. citizen.
Valdez was tied to extreme violence in Mexico, including ordering a video be made of a rival’s execution and distributed to the news media, the Atlanta newspaper reported. But Monday’s sentence was for drug and money laundering charges only.
Valdez might have received a life sentence, but prosecutors had asked the judge to give Valdez a chance to eventually leave prison. It was compensation for having helped prosecute other cases and having quickly pleaded guilty after his extradition to the U.S. and saving the expense of a trial, the Atlanta newspaper said.
Valdez, now 44, also could receive time off for good behavior, meaning he might leave prison when he’s elderly.
The story of La Barbie intersects with that of Petties, who grew up in the rough Riverside neighborhood of South Memphis and later moved to Mexico. There, Petties is accused of using cellphones to orchestrate drug shipments into U.S. cities and assassinations of rivals in Memphis.
Collins, the DEA agent, has said La Barbie and Petties became friends in 2000 and their business relationship quickly made them both multimillionaires.
During the 2012 trial of cousins Clinton Lewis and Martin Lewis for their roles in the Petties organization, prosecution witnesses also said Petties had worked directly with La Barbie.
Valdez was captured by Mexican authorities in 2010. Photos of the smirking suspect wearing a green shirt with a big Ralph Lauren polo logo went viral and led to a spike in sales of similar shirts in Mexico.
Extradited to the U.S., Valdez had pleaded guilty in 2016 to three criminal conspiracy counts for distributing and importing cocaine and then laundering the proceeds, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Years earlier, Petties had faced a stiff sentence handed down by a federal judge. He secretly pleaded guilty to four murders, kidnapping and conspiracy in December 2009 and was sentenced in 2013 to nine concurrent life sentences.
Now 41, Petties is imprisoned in USP Atwater, a high-security federal prison in Atwater, California, according to a Bureau of Prisons website.
Reach Daniel Connolly at daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com or 901529-5296 and on Twitter @danielconnolly.