A onetime leader of a drug cartel tied to the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico nearly a decade ago admitted Friday that he smuggled heroin to Chicago by hiding it inside passenger buses and then had hundreds of thousands of dollars shipped back to him in Mexico.
Adan Casarrubias Salgado, who was once the head of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel and was known as “El Tomate,” admitted his crimes to U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly, pleading guilty to drug conspiracy and money laundering.
Salgado, 55, who has been held in Chicago since 2022, admitted he shipped 52 kilograms of heroin to Chicago for sale in 2014 and had $600,000 smuggled back to him on a passenger bus.
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum life sentence, but Salgado struck a deal with prosecutors designed to put a lower cap on his potential punishment.
Prosecutors agreed with Salgado’s lawyers that he should get 10 to 20 years in prison on the conspiracy charge. It’s a deal Kennelly can either accept or reject at Salgado’s sentencing hearing, set for May 28.
There was no agreement, though, on the money-laundering charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Kennelly could theoretically order Salgado to serve back-to-back 20-year terms — imposing a 40-year sentence.
But prosecutors don’t plan to ask for consecutive prison terms, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Erskine told the judge. That means Salgado’s sentence likely won’t exceed 20 years if Kennelly accepts the deal.
Salgado and his brothers — Sidronio, Angel and Mario — were leaders of the Guerreros Unidos cartel. The late Mario Casarrubias Salgado, known as The Handsome Toad, started it around 2011, sources have said.
Adan and Mario Casarrubias were born in Mexico but lived for years in Chicago. They worked at Mama Luna’s pizzeria on Fullerton Avenue in Belmont Cragin on the Northwest Side.
Marco Vega Cuevas, who grew up in Aurora and drowned in a lake in Mexico in 2014, also was involved in running the cartel. His brother Pablo Vega Cuevas became a Chicago-area cell leader. He has been cooperating with federal authorities and was ordered released from jail and into house arrest last November. He pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges in 2021.
Guerreros Unidos has been blamed for the presumed massacre in Mexico of 43 college students in Iguala in the Mexican state of Guerrero. About 100 students from a teacher’s college there commandeered several buses on Sept. 26, 2014, planning to use them to ride to a protest.
That night, police officers and other armed men in Iguala began firing at the students. Several were wounded. Dozens were taken away in police vehicles. By dawn, six people were dead, and 43 students had vanished.
What exactly happened remains unclear. Text messages intercepted by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and published in a report by international investigators suggest Guerreros Unidos might have believed an opposing group entered Iguala with the students.
Contributing: Frank Main
