An Ontario woman smuggled drugs into Oregon every month because she was under threat from the Mexican cartel that already murdered her father and two brothers, according to federal court records.
Alma Pacheco, 46, who was stopped in 2020 with 40 pounds of methamphetamine and a kilo of heroin, had been trafficking drugs to the Treasure Valley for several years, court documents note.
In May, Pacheco pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and was sentenced to five years of supervised release and time served. A mother of four, Pacheco entered the country from her native Mexico when she was 18 and lived in California briefly before moving to Ontario the following year, according to court filings.
The records provide a revealing glimpse of the drug underworld that reaches into Malheur County.
She was one of several of her family suspected of trafficking narcotics into the Treasure Valley, including her husband, his parents and her oldest son.
Raised in Sinaloa, Mexico, Pacheco said in court documents that she witnessed the murder of her father and two of her brothers at the hands of the cartel after they stood up to them when they attempted to take her family’s ranch.
Another brother, according to Pacheco, was subsequently kidnapped by the cartel. It was six years ago that the cartel coerced her to run drugs for them or they would murder her brother, the court documents note. The cartel member who killed her father and two brothers was the one who threatened to murder her remaining brother, she told a court-appointed psychologist.
She said cartel members came to her house in Ontario and showed her a video of her kidnapped brother.
“They had a phone,” she said, “and I saw my brother, and my brother said, ‘Sister, pay attention to them,”
Pacheco said she did not question the cartel members given that they had already murdered members of her family.
“I was scared,” she said, “And I said, ‘I’m going to do anything, but my children, you do not touch them, and my brother, don’t kill my brother.’”
Her kidnapped brother later attempted to escape the cartel and was shot twice in the back of the head but survived. He recovered in Tijuana and later came to the U.S. The cartel would kill him if it could find him, he later told investigators.
Pacheco said cartel members continued to threaten her brother while he recovered in the hospital.
“They told me if I didn’t continue helping them, they were going to finish him off at the hospital,” she said.
Justin Rosas, Pacheco’s defense attorney, declined to answer specific questions about whether Pacheco disputed the prosecutor’s claims about the frequency of her monthly drug runs to California, whether she was getting paid to transport drugs and whether cartel members made direct threats that she deliver drugs to the Treasure Valley.
Rosas said in a Monday, June 24, email that he did not “feel at liberty” to answer those questions.
“I will say I believe the result in court was a really profound statement of justice that acknowledges the violence that has been directed at Ms. Pacheco and her conduct since the time of the arrest,” Rosas said. “She is a person deserving of grace and understanding.”
Kevin Sonoff, a public information officer for Oregon U.S. Attorney Natalie Wight, said prosecutors were not available for comment. Andie Rocksund, an executive assistant to the U.S. Attorney responded to subsequent written questions about the Pacheco case with previously-made public documents, leaving out of public reach more details about the extent of her trafficking.
While one of Pacheco’s brothers remains in hiding, another one of them, Victor Noe Pacheco Ortiz, is awaiting sentencing after being caught with 13 pounds of methamphetamine in July 2022 in Idaho. Ortiz tried to evade arrest and led state troopers on a high-speed chase. He’s facing a mandatory 10 years in jail.
A psychologist who examined Pacheco for her defense team diagnosed her with serious mental illness, post traumatic stress disorder and a history of methamphetamine use. According to his report, she could have been fabricating or grossly exaggerating psychosis.
Prosecutors contend that law enforcement had been investigating Pacheco “for years.”
“Though she was known by law enforcement to be a high-level drug trafficker,” court documents note, “law enforcement had never been able to successfully investigate her.”
Pacheco’s partner, Victor Gomez Casa, who was with her when she was stopped with narcotics in 2020, pleaded guilty to a federal drug charge in 2023. He is scheduled to be sentenced in August.
Her son, Efren Aviles-Lopez, 29, who went by Alex, is facing a mandatory minimum of 15 years on a federal guns charge and possession of 40 pounds of fentanyl. His trial is set to begin in September.
Alex’s grandparents, Efren Avilez-Lopez and Maria Medina-Zeveda of Ontario were sentenced earlier this year after law enforcement stopped the couple in 2023 on U.S. Highway 95, west of Marsing, Idaho with 21 pounds of methamphetamine. Avilez-Lopez was sentenced to nine years in federal prison, while Medina-Zeveda received a three-year sentence.
In court documents, prosecutors note that the drug smuggling operation was a “family business.”
“It is time for this cycle of drug trafficking to end,” prosecutors wrote.
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