Texas business owner sentenced to 25 years for transporting drugs from Mexico to Chicago

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The owner of a Texas trucking company was sentenced to 25 years in prison this week for using his business to move hundreds of pounds of heroin and cocaine to Chicago.

José Farias, 44, who lived in Mexico and owned a transportation company near the border in McAllen, Texas, hid drugs in the cupped axles of truck tires and arranged for his drivers to transport the contraband to several warehouses in the Chicago area in 2015 and 2016, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.

Two of the warehouses are in Naperville and Sugar Grove, and other shipments went to an abandoned car lot in the West Garfield Park neighborhood and an auto repair shop in Channahon, prosecutors said.

Authorities said searches in those areas turned up about 120 pounds of heroin, nearly 40 pounds of cocaine and about $630,000 in cash.

José Farias, 44, hid drugs in the cupped axles of truck tires and arranged for his drivers to transport them from McAllen, Texas, to several warehouses in the Chicago area in 2015 and 2016.

The sellers delivered the drugs to be distributed throughout the Chicago area and hid the money in the same trucks to be returned to Texas and Mexico, prosecutors said.

Farias was convicted in 2021 on conspiracy and drug possession charges. Seven other people have been previously convicted in federal and state courts as part of the investigation.

“The drugs [que el] The defendant caused them to be distributed and resold to thousands of people, fueling addiction, destroying families, and decimating communities, all for the benefit of the defendant and his conspirators,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Richard Rothblatt and Kristen Totten wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Translated by The Voice Chicago