Undercover federal agents realized that they’d been made — the 37-year-old driver turned again and again, and then went into a BMW dealership on Adams Street just east of the 91 Freeway in Riverside and then into a Honda one.
Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa, who federal authorities say is a high-ranking member of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, was onto the Drug Enforcement Administration agents. He actually started following one of the unmarked agents’ vehicles — until another agent blocked his passage on the 91 so the first agent could slip away.
These maneuvers, and other details of the U.S. Department of Justice’s case against Gutierrez-Ochoa, were revealed in documents provided to reporters on Friday, Nov. 22. Gutierrez-Ochoa, accused of drug-trafficking and money-laundering and even faking his death, was arrested on Tuesday, Nov. 19, the Justice Department announced on Thursday, Nov. 21.
According to the 19-page sworn statement by a DEA agent filed in federal court, Gutierrez-Ochoa had been living in Riverside as Luis Miguel Martinez since 2023: In September of that year, Luis Miguel Martinez applied for a California driver’s license using a Social Security number that had not been in use since issued in 1992.
A confidential informant told authorities that Gutierrez-Ochoa went missing from Mexico in December 2023. Federal authorities said this week that Gutierrez-Ochoa’s father-in-law and the cartel’s leader, Nemesio Osegura Cervantes, might have helped Gutierrez-Ochoa by telling associates that he had been murdered for lying. Osegura Cervantes has a $10 million price tag on him — the U.S. government is offering that much for information leading to his conviction.
In late 2023, a company named Pasion Azul purchased a home in Riverside for $1.2 million in cash; the document says that was for Gutierrez-Ochoa. The company, supposedly a tequila manufacturer in Jalisco, Mexico, is believed to be a money-laundering front for the Jalisco Cartel, according to the federal document.
Pasion Azul applied for a trademark on Feb. 15, 2023, and now possesses 53 trademarks related to alcohol or alcoholic beverages. According to the document, this was a web created to confuse law enforcement.
Gutierrez-Ochoa’s wife, an American, has a coffee shop within 20 miles of the home, the federal document says: “It appears as though Gutierrez-Ochoa fled Mexico to reside with or near his wife in Riverside.”
In one part of the federal document, it says it is unclear if the pair are married or just in a romantic relationship.
In October 2024, the DEA in Los Angeles learned that the Department of Homeland Security in California had received a notice from Interpol seeking the arrest of Gutierrez-Ochoa, that he was found to be living in Southern California under an assumed identity.
Photographs of Gutierrez-Ochoa were compared to that of the man going by Luis Miguel Martinez of Riverside, and determined to be a match.
Gutierrez-Ochoa was arrested for conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine and money laundering. An arrest warrant issued by the Mexican government accuses Gutierrez-Ochoa of organized crime and kidnapping: He is accused of kidnapping two members of the Mexican Navy in 2021 and holding them hostage in an attempt to secure the release of his mother-in-law, who had been arrested.
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