When a man named Luis Miguel Martinez moved into a $1.2 million home in the exclusive Riverside neighborhood in 2023, he brought standard luxury with him.
Parked outside were luxury cars, including BMWs and other cars with Mexican license plates.
But after being arrested this week by federal authorities, neighbors learned that Martinez was an alleged alias. His real name, investigators said, was Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa, and he was the son-in-law of a Mexican drug lord known as El Mencho.
Gutierrez-Ochoa, a member of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, or CJNG, disappeared in Mexico in December 2023, reportedly killed for lying to her husband’s father, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes.
Federal authorities arrested the man suspected of being killed in Riverside on Tuesday, charging Gutierrez-Ochoa with international drug trafficking and money laundering offenses.
Court records do not indicate whether he has retained an attorney or entered a plea in response to the charges.
“The Jalisco cartel – one of the most violent and productive drug trafficking organizations in the world – is now weaker due to the strong efforts of law enforcement to track down and arrest the cartel leaders who allegedly faked their own deaths and assumed false identities to avoid justice. and live a luxurious life in California, “Deputy Atty. General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
Gutierrez-Ochoa, 37, allegedly began working for 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 the shipment of approximately 40 metric tons of meth and 2,000 kilograms of cocaine in Mexico, all destined for the United States.
He also used violence to increase his drug-trafficking and money-laundering activities, prosecutors said.
Gutierrez-Ochoa is accused of kidnapping two members of the Mexican Navy around November 2021 in an attempt to free his mother-in-law, El Mencho’s wife, who had been arrested by Mexican authorities.
Based on an arrest warrant related to the kidnapping, the Mexican government in September 2022 issued an Interpol Red Notice requesting Gutierrez-Ochoa’s arrest.
A confidential DEA source later reported that Gutierrez-Ochoa had disappeared, killed by his father-in-law. Authorities suspect El Mencho helped Gutierrez-Ochoa by spreading rumors in a plan to fake his own death.
The Justice Department previously returned an indictment against El Mencho in April 2022, charging him with being the leader of a criminal enterprise that continuously manufactured and distributed fentanyl for import into the U.S., according to the Justice Department. There is a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to his arrest. The cartel leader remains at large.
In the same year Gutierrez-Ochoa disappeared, a company called Pasion Azul, a tequila producer suspected of laundering money for the cartel, paid $1.2 million in cash for a luxury home in the exclusive neighborhood of Riverside, according to an affidavit from Kyle Mori of the DEA office. Los Angeles.
Mori said he interviewed escrow agents, real estate agents and home sellers, who called the buying situation “suspicious.” The homeowner said he believed the buyers were “drug dealers” from Mexico.
In October 2024, the DEA in LA learned of an Interpol notice requesting Gutierrez-Ochoa’s arrest. The Department of Homeland Security compared known photos of Gutierrez-Ochoa and found them to be similar to Martinez, according to the affidavit.
The department used facial recognition software and found that Gutierrez-Ochoa and Martinez were the same person, Mori said.
When DEA agents tried to conduct surveillance on Gutierrez-Ochoa, Mori said, they began using counter-surveillance techniques and then followed agents. Authorities arrested him on November 19.
If convicted as charged, Gutierrez-Ochoa faces a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison on the drug distribution conspiracy charge.
Before Gutierrez-Ochoa, there was a long history of Mexican kingpins faking death to avoid capture, with El Mencho himself reportedly killed on several occasions. In 2020, amid reports that the CJNG boss was either dead or suffering from chronic kidney problems, the Mexican president and the DEA went public to say he was alive and on the run.
