Suspected coke ring leader was dealing in sixth grade
Mendoza under indictment here
Don Juan Mendoza, a drug dealer from Florida who started selling in the sixth grade, said he wanteda “fresh start.”
He was done with the drug life, he said, that had sent him to prison three times and nearly gottenhim killed.
He’d cooperated with federal prosecutors during the last decade and helped police solve four murdersin Florida.
He got a break in his sentence for that, but also became a target inhis hometown of Jacksonville.
In November 2013, gunmen shot him in the head and killed his drug-dealing friend, who had alsocooperated.
Now a father and a purported businessman, he told a judge in 2015 that he wanted to move to Charlotte, N.C., raise his family where no one knew him and focus on running his hair salons there and in Tampa with his wife, Charlene Mendoza, a rapper who goesby “Sno-Cold.”
“I don’t have no need to sell drugs,” he said. “I got five kids. I’m fixing to be a grandfather in December. My 19-year-old is pregnant right now. I want to be here for my kids. I don’t want to be in prison. I’ve done 13 years in prison.”
But Mendoza, 38, who most recently was living in suburban Atlanta, could be headed back to prison.
He’s at the heart of a Pittsburgh case in which the FBI says he and his pals shipped huge amounts of cocaine in a recreational vehicle and a distinctive van, imprinted with his wife’s image, from Georgia and California to two Mon Valley brothers, Jamieand Deaubre Lightfoot.
Mendoza and the Lightfoots are under indictment here, along with five others from the Mon Valley, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
The investigation is ongoing, but the first plea already has been entered.
On Thursday, Anthony Davis of Donora admitted to possession of cocaine following an FBI raid on his house in December that turned up cocaine, bags of marijuana, multiple shotguns and other firearms, a hydraulic cocainepress and cash.
His lawyer said Davis had allowed his home to be used as a “drop house” for the gang’s guns and drugs, but she said he works six days a week at a cement factory to provide for his family and is not a danger to anyone. The U.S. attorney’s office objected, saying he was involved in a
significant drug conspiracy andshouldn’t be free.
U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak let him go on bond.
While Davis is an underling in the ring, Mendoza is considered a major catch for prosecutors here.
He was the alleged leader with ties to sources in numerous states and connections stretching into Mexico.
The FBI said the Lightfoot brothers were his local distributors.
Assistant U.S. attorney Tim Lanni said in court that Jamie Lightfoot’s house on Harvest Drive in Penn Hills was “the center of cocaine distribution for the entire westerndistrict of Pennsylvania.”
A wiretap investigation of Jamie Lightfoot came to a head Nov. 5, when agents watched as members of the conspiracy arrived at Jamie’s house in the RV after a cross-country drive tracked by cell phone. Inside the vehicle, law officers recovered 52 kilos of cocaine and 85 pounds of marijuana, as well as an AK-47 and another gun.
Agents are aware of at least two trips the RV made from California and seven trips the van made from Atlanta. But they suspect there were more, making this the largest cocaine prosecution here in maybe 15 years.
Big coke cases were a more regular occurrence in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Since those years, the federal court docket here has been increasingly dominated by heroin and opioid cases. But cocaine is still in demand. Police and drug agents say cocaine is more attractive for some users because it’s less risky.
“It never went away,” says Patrick Trainor, a veteran U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent and public information officer in the Philadelphia division, which covers Pittsburgh. “Coke does not kill you. Whereas heroin or synthetic opioids will, or can. It has increased and there’sno lack of it.”
Most of it comes from South America, he said, where coca production is “through the roof.”
Some agents also suggest that cocaine is increasingly popular to dealers because law enforcement is more focusedon heroin and fentanyl.
The Mendoza network appeared to have been operating without interference for some time, but law officers knew about it, at least from the Pittsburghend.
Frank Konek, a state trooper who works with an FBI drug task force, said police were aware for about three years that Jamie Lightfoot, who is originally from Donora, was accepting shipments of drugs at his house in Penn Hills.
They put the secluded property under surveillance, but they needed more evidence, so in late summer they got a court order to tap Lightfoot’s phone.
Over the months, Trooper Konek said, they monitored arrivals of the RV and the Mercedesvan, which featured a promotional image of CharleneMendoza posing in a tight leotard and holding a massive sword.
Agents began calling it the “Sno-Cold van.” The FBI in Atlanta impounded it after seizing it during a search of the Mendoza home in Lawrenceville, Ga., following the Pittsburgh arrests. The van andthe RV, both with Georgia plates, are owned by Mendoza’s mother, Marina, who was convicted with him in his Jacksonvilledrug case.
One mystery to agents and troopers is why any narcotics network would repeatedly haul drugs or cash in a van with a flashy image of the ringleader’s wife on it.
At any rate, the FBI waited until November to pounce. They were tracking the phone signals of one of the accused ring members, Brian Powell of Jacksonville, and monitored the signal as the RV left Los Angeles on the evening of Nov. 3, a Friday.
Agents tracked the RV as it drove across the U.S. for two days. On Sunday morning, they also tracked Mendoza’s phone signal as he flew from Atlanta to Pittsburgh and rented a Chevy Tahoe.
At noon that day, all these moving parts came together.
Agents watched as the RV arrived at Lightfoot’s house. Mendoza pulled up in the Tahoe a short time later. Powell and another man aboard the RV, Troy Rowe of South Carolina, carried luggage from the RV to a waiting car and drove away. Police followed and arrested them later at a hotel in Harmarville.
Other officers executed a search warrant at Lightfoot’s house and said they found money, an Uzi, testosterone, drug scales and money counters. A search of his car turned up wrappers used for cocaine.
Agents said they towed the RV to the FBI’s headquarters and searched it, finding the coke, marijuana and the guns.
Lightfoot, Mendoza, Rowe, Powell and another man from Jacksonville, Pedro Blanco, were charged and detained.
Rowe, Powell and Blanco were the RV drivers. The ring needed three so they could drive straight through from L.A. and not stop anywhere.
Mendoza arrived separately, a typical move by narcotics bosses to distance themselves from the drugs. In fact, in court his lawyer argued that he should not be held for that very reason — the FBI didn’t catch him with any drugs.
A magistrate judge didn’t agree and ordered him detained.
All five men were later indicted by a grand jury. In December, prosecutors brought a second indictment against Jamie Lightfoot’s brother, Deaubre, along with Brandon Thomas and Davis.
The connection between Mendoza and the Lightfoots hasn’t been made clear; prosecutors are still unraveling the ties.
But Mendoza is clearly a large player, they say. His estimated worth is some $5 million and Mr. Lanni said in court that he laundered his drug money through the hair salons he and his wife operate in southern cities.
His New York lawyer, Barry Zone, has not responded to requests for comment but previously said his client and his wife are “lawabiding citizens” who operate legitimate hair salons.
Charlene Mendoza also did not respond to messages left at her salon in Charlotte, where she had lived with her childrenuntil moving to Atlanta. She has not been charged. Prosecutors said her husband’s life of drug dealing dates to the sixth grade, when he was selling out of his Mandarin, Fla., home with his parents, Marina and Jose Mendoza.
In 2004, he and his parents were indicted by a federal grand jury in Jacksonville, along with a man named Juan Carlos Farinas. At the time, prosecutors said the ring was responsible for distributing cocaine, methamphetamines and 2,000 pounds of marijuana in a multistate operation stretching from Florida to Texas.
When he was arrested, Mendoza was carrying a gun, had $20,000 in cash in his pocket and 8 pounds of marijuana in a duffel bag on his front porch.
He cooperated and pleaded as part of a deal in which he got 109 months in prison.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Jacksonville said Mendoza helped them prosecute Farinas for drug dealing and a related murder. While in jail, he turned informant against another man who had killed his 8-week-old daughter, allowing prosecutors to secure a plea. Mendoza also persuaded witnesses to come forward in two other murder cases.
Marina Mendoza got 15 months behind bars. Jose disappeared and remains a fugitive.
Don Juan served his time and got out of prison in 2012, but he didn’t stay out of trouble long.
The terms of his probation called for him to stay away from known felons, although he later said he didn’t understand how to do that since everyone in his neighborhood was a felon.
On Nov. 7, 2013, he said he went to visit a friend, Royal Jackson, who had just been released from jail. The two had cooperated with authorities in the drug investigation and everyone in the neighborhood knew it. At 4 a.m., someone shot them as they sat in a car outside Jackson’s house. Jackson died. Mendoza was wounded in the head and chest.
He recovered and was sent back to prison for five months forviolating probation.
After his release, he and Charlene asked a federal judge in Jacksonville to release him from probation early so they could start a new life in North Carolina without the fear and violence of the old neighborhood. By then the couple had been married for two years and had two children together, plus a third she had with another man before shemet Don Juan.
The judge denied the request. After his probation ended last year, he moved to Atlanta to be with Charlene and the children. The couple now run six hair salons. Judging by Charlene’s online boasts, the business has been a booming success.
Her husband’s career as a drug dealer, however, is almost certainly over.
If convicted, he’s facing life in prison.