By Brittny Mejia
Los Angeles Times
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — When a man who called himself Luis Miguel Martinez moved into a $1.2-million home in an exclusive Riverside, California, neighborhood in 2023, he brought standard luxuries.
Parked outside were luxury cars, including a BMW and another car with Mexican license plates.
But after his arrest this week by federal authorities, neighbors learned that Martinez was allegedly an alias. His real name, investigators say, is Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa, and he is a son-in-law of the reputed Mexican drug lord known as El Mencho.
Gutierrez-Ochoa, a high-ranking member of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, or CJNG, went missing in Mexico in December 2023, reportedly murdered for lying to his wife’s father, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes.
Federal authorities arrested the purported dead man in Riverside on Tuesday, charging Gutierrez-Ochoa with international drug trafficking and money laundering offenses.
Court records do not indicate whether he has retained a lawyer or entered a plea in response to the charges.
“The Jalisco Cartel — one of the world’s most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations — is weaker today because of the tenacious efforts of law enforcement to track down and arrest a cartel leader who allegedly faked his own death and assumed a false identity to evade justice and live a life of luxury in California,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
Gutierrez-Ochoa, 37, allegedly began working for the CJNG around 2014, and later married El Mencho’s youngest daughter, identified in court records as a U.S. citizen who owns a coffee shop in Riverside.
According to court documents, Gutierrez-Ochoa coordinated shipments of approximately 40 metric tons of meth and 2,000 kilograms of cocaine in Mexico, all destined for the Unites States.
He also used violence to further drug trafficking and money laundering activities, prosecutors charge.
Gutierrez-Ochoa allegedly kidnapped two members of the Mexican Navy around November 2021 in an attempt to secure the release of his mother-in-law, El Mencho’s wife, who had been arrested by Mexican authorities.
Based on an arrest warrant tied to that kidnapping, the Mexican government in September 2022 issued an Interpol Red Notice seeking the detention of Gutierrez-Ochoa.
A DEA confidential source later reported that Gutierrez-Ochoa had gone missing, murdered by his father-in-law. Authorities suspect El Mencho assisted Gutierrez-Ochoa by spreading the rumor in the scheme to fake his own death.
The Justice Department previously returned an indictment against El Mencho in April 2022, charging him with leading a continuing criminal enterprise to manufacture and distribute fentanyl for importation into the U.S., according to the Department of Justice. There’s a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest. The cartel leader remains a fugitive.
The same year of Gutierrez-Ochoa’s disapperance, a company named Pasion Azul, a purported tequila manufacturer and suspected money laundering front for the cartel, paid $1.2 million in a cash for a luxury residence in an exclusive neighborhood of Riverside, according to an affidavit from Kyle Mori of the DEA’s Los Angeles office.
Mori said he interviewed the escrow agent, real estate agent and seller of the home, who called the circumstances of the purchase “suspicious.” The previous owner of the house said she believed the purchasers were “drug dealers” from Mexico.
In October 2024, the DEA in L.A. in October learned of an Interpol notice seeking the detention of Gutierrez-Ochoa. The Department of Homeland Security compared known photographs of Gutierrez-Ochoa and found they matched that of Martinez, according to the affidavit.
The department utilized facial recognition software and found that Gutierrez-Ochoa and Martinez were the same person, Mori stated.
As DEA agents attempted to conduct surveillance of Gutierrez-Ochoa, Mori said, he began employing counter-surveillance techniques and later began following an agent. Authorities arrested him Nov. 19.
If convicted as charged, Gutierrez-Ochoa faces a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum penalty of life in prison on the drug distribution conspiracy charge.
Before Gutierrez-Ochoa there has been a long history of Mexican kingpins faking death to avoid capture, with El Mencho himself rumored killed on several occasions. In 2020, amid reports that the CJNG boss had died or was suffering chronic kidney problems, Mexico’s president and the DEA spoke out publicly to say he was still alive and on the run.
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