SAN JOSE — After years of litigation, four men have been sentenced for helping operate what prosecutors have called “one of the South Bay’s largest trafficking operations.”
In late February, Jose Banuelos-Garcia was sentenced to five years and 10 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to methamphetamine distribution offenses. His sentencing ends the four-defendant criminal case, with the three others receiving terms ranging from house arrest to seven years behind bars, court records show.
The defendants were charged in 2022, after drug agents say they seized enough methamphetamine to tip over a grizzly bear on a seesaw. All told, 650 pounds of the drug were recovered, as well as 15 pounds of heroin, court records show.
Banuelos-Garcia’s co-defendants were sentenced in 2022 and 2023. This includes a seven-year term for Raul Jimenez-Verduzco, an alleged “dispatcher” for the organization, a four-and-a-half-year term for Manuel Sanchez-Pedraza, and a six-month house arrest term for Edgar Portillo, court records show.
The four men, along with unnamed co-conspirators, helped ensure that drugs “remained cheap and plentiful on San Jose’s streets,” prosecutors wrote in court filings. While many of the court records in this case were filed under seal, including Banuelos-Garcia’s, the lawyers for Jimenez-Verduzco said he deserves more consideration given the horrors he witnessed during his upbringing in Michoacan, Mexico.
“As a youngster, Mr. Jimenez Verduzco witnessed first hand the violence, extortions, kidnaping and killings that occurred in his hometown” of Zicuiran, a defense sentencing memo said.