Two men linked to a Downey residence that authorities say was a smuggling hub for Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel faced sentencing this year before a federal judge.
One appeared last week in a Sacramento courtroom to learn his fate.
The other has been missing for months.
Julio Cesar Nevarez-Erunez, 24, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison on Dec. 4 after pleading guilty to a methamphetamine distribution conspiracy charge.
His co-conspirator, Juan Niebla-Osuna, 28, struck a plea agreement with U.S. attorneys for the same charge and was out on bond, but was reported missing in late August, according to a pretrial services violation petition.
According to the petition, Niebla-Osuna left his Downey residence after his court-approved curfew on Aug. 25 — the day of his scheduled sentencing in the Eastern District of California.
His supervising officer hadn’t seen him in weeks; his wife told authorities she was in Mexico and hadn’t spoken with her husband since the day before he went missing; his mother noted that there were “suitcases near his bedroom” at his home, according to the petition.
His whereabouts since are a mystery.
Attorneys for Niebla-Osuna did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.
The Downey apartment complex where he and Nevarez-Erunez both lived sits on a quiet suburban street corner. According to a criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors in Sacramento, in 2022 agents from Homeland Security Investigations photographed the pair carrying duffel bags and boxes suspected to contain pounds of meth.
In April 2022, according to the criminal complaint, federal investigators identified the men as as distributors of heroin and methamphetamine “believed to be” sourced from the Sinaloa cartel. Agents set up a sting with a confidential informant three months later, in which the men sold 15 pounds of methamphetamine for nearly $20,000.
Months of surveillance on the men outside of their apartment led to sightings of them carrying “white boxes” filled with pounds of meth to deliver to the informant, an affidavit from a Homeland Security Investigations agent said.
In Oct. 2022, Nevarez-Erunez was arrested during one of the deliveries by agents in Sacramento with 40 pounds of meth and more than 5,000 pills of the synthetic painkiller oxycodone in his vehicle, several court documents said.
Niebla-Osuna was arrested days later during the search of the Downey residence, according to the criminal complaint filed against him. The complaint said Niebla-Osuna told agents he took orders from a “lady” and had only been involved in the drug business for approximately six months.
Agents found seven pounds of methamphetamine and more than two pounds of fentanyl with Niebla-Osuna’s wife and child in the home, according to court documents and a U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California news release Tuesday.
On Wednesday, one Downey neighbor — who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation — recalled the search of the home as “mostly peaceful.” He didn’t believe at the time that the influx of police around the complex had anything to do with drugs, but said he was “not surprised.”
The arrests of Niebla-Osuna and Nevarez-Erunez were not the first of their kind in Downey. L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman announced in March that another three alleged “cartel affiliates” in the area were busted with over 50 pounds of fentanyl and 12 pounds of opium in a small apartment complex.
U.S. attorneys originally recommended that Niebla-Osuna be sentenced to nine years in prison on one count of drug conspiracy for his plea deal. However, his plea agreement stipulated that if he fled, he could be tried again for the counts he did not agree to and additional charges.
According to the release, a bench warrant was issued for Niebla-Osuna’s arrest. The federal prosecutor’s office in Sacramento declined a request for additional comment.
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