A cartel-fueled drug trafficking ring that an elderly Ontario man had been involved with that spanned generations in his family was spurred – in part – by the pandemic, according to court records.
Efren Avilez-Lopez, 81, is serving nine years in prison after he and his wife, Maria Medina-Zeveda, 70, were convicted in U.S. District Court in Boise of drug trafficking. They were charged after being stopped in Idaho in 2023 with 21 pounds of methamphetamine in their vehicle.
Marco DeAngelo, Avilez-Lopez’s defense attorney, said in a court filing that Avilez-Lopez knew a “source who had a large amount of methamphetamine” and began moving the drugs into the Treasure Valley to “make ends meet.”
“I think it’s very clear that this was a side of Efren that he hid from his whole family, that he’s ashamed of, and that he truly does have regret,” DeAngelo told the court.
The account was contained in a court filing that was recently unsealed following the Enterprise’s request to the federal judge.
Avilez-Lopez, who worked at Fry Foods for nearly a decade before selling tamales and bread to field workers in Malheur County, saw that work come to a halt during the pandemic, his attorney wrote in a memo recommending what sentence his client should face.
DeAngelo noted that Avilez-Lopez and Medina-Zeveda didn’t have retirement income and lacked a “safety net.” He said it was not an option for Avilez-Lopez to go back to working in the fields because of his age.
He noted that the case was unusual because Avilez-Lopez, had no prior arrests or criminal convictions.
Christian Nafzger, a U.S. Attorney, argued that the evidence law enforcement had to arrest Avilez-Lopez was but a “small snapshot” of his activity.
“The story of working for seven years, working in the fields and then selling tamales, I feel like there are a few chapters that are missing in this story,” Nafzger said during the federal court sentencing proceeding in February of this year.
The Enterprise recently obtained a transcript of the hearing.
Avilez-Lopez and Medina-Zeveda had been traveling to California and were picking up large quantities of methamphetamine, up to 50 pounds at a time. People don’t travel to California and pick up such large amounts of drugs without “serious contacts” in the illegal drug trade, Nafzger said.
“You don’t go zero to 100 in a matter of days or months,” Nafzger said.
Nafzger pointed out that Avilez-Lopez bragged to an undercover officer that others he had worked with admired his ability to not use the drugs he was trafficking. Avilez-Lopez had also told undercover officers he did not want to take the chance of getting caught by using the phone. Those statements, Nafzger said, pointed to Avilez-Lopez’s experience in trafficking drugs.
In a sentencing memorandum, DeAngelo argued that Avilez-Lopez faces the prospect of dying in jail.
Avilez-Lopez told District Court Judge David Nye that he knew he had made a “mistake.”
“The only thing that I would like to say is that you give me an opportunity. I know that the things that I did were a mistake, but I ask that you forgive
me,” Avilez-Lopez said.
The judge said that Avilez-Lopez made a “choice” to traffic methamphetamine.
“I do not believe that he made a mistake,” Nye said. “He made a choice. He made a deliberate choice to basically spend the rest of his life in prison, given his advanced age.
Age and health, Nye said, “are not a defense.” He said given the large amount of methamphetamine being trafficked into the Treasure Valley, Nye said he couldn’t justify a lighter sentence.
The elderly couple weren’t alone in their drug work. Their son, his wife and their grandson have all been caught up in a federal dragnet trying to crack organized trafficking in the Treasure Valley, according to court records.
Their son, Ramon Efren Avilez-Medina, was charged with possessing methamphetamine in Idaho’s Owyhee County in 2015. He pleaded guilty three years later and is serving a 15-year sentence.
His son, the Ontario couple’s grandson, Efren Aviles-Lopez, 29, who went by Alex, is facing a mandatory minimum of 15 years on a federal gun charge and possession of 40 pounds of fentanyl. His trial is set to begin in September.
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