A Chicago-born drug trafficker who moved cocaine and heroin throughout the US for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman testified Tuesday that he kept ritzy stash houses in New York City — and even had one overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge.
“I would choose the best neighborhoods,” Pedro Flores said when it came to choosing the places he’d hide the 38 tons of cocaine he moved through the major cities. “We were trying to minimize contact with law enforcement.”
Flores, who with his identical twin brother ran drugs for El Chapo from 2005 to 2008, said that the neighbors in swanky areas were better too, because they were more likely to alert the cops if someone came sniffing around.
He told jurors he never allowed his workers to tell him where the homes were, but one woman, he said, called him and said “she was looking out the window and had a beautiful view of the Brooklyn Bridge.”
The location of the stash house was not further revealed.
Flores and twin, Margarito, netted $227 million for El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel. They worked as a team, and were often simply referred to as “the twins.”
His testimony Tuesday was the first time Flores had been seen publicly in four years.
Flores is serving a 14-year prison sentence, after he and his brother turned themselves in to the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008.
He’s had a few hiccups while behind bars — mostly involving his wife.
“I was able to sneak away to the bathroom and got her pregnant,” Flores admitted. He also copped to paying a fellow inmate to hang two billboards outside the prison for his beloved, though an objection was sustained before their message was revealed.
“I just have a hard time following the rules, I guess,” he said.
Even before he went to prison, the lovesick drug trafficker doted on his wife, who is the daughter of a high-ranking Chicago cop. Flores testified he bought her a $200,000 Bentley shortly before he went to prison — though that was later seized by the DEA.
He claimed to have turned himself in because a war had broken out between the Sinaloa Cartel and its rivals, and he feared for his and his family’s life.
It wasn’t the first time, he testified, recounting how he’d been kidnapped in 2004.
“I thought I was going to die,” he said of the harrowing experience, during which he was stripped, starved and blindfolded while locked in a cell for 16 days. He was dumped in the desert after his brother intervened, and forced to walk miles in the dark as wild cats screamed around him.
Flores first met Chapo soon after in May 2005, he testified, after a plane ride to the mountains and a bumpy ride up a long driveway — where he saw a naked man chained to a tree “looking down at us.”
The runty kingpin wasn’t particularly impressed with Flores, he recalled, saying Chapo immediately mocked his jean shorts and jewelry.
“With all that money, couldn’t I afford the rest of the pants?” the witness said the drug lord asked, prompting laughs from jurors. Chapo also took aim at the chain around his neck, saying the “only thing that was missing is a dress.”
During the meeting, they discussed his kidnapping, and Chapo allegedly offered to lure out his kidnapper. But only, Flores testified, if he agreed to “shoot him once in each eye.” Flores declined.
In December 2015, his own father was kidnapped, and Flores said he sought advice from Chapo. This time he brought along a gift for runty cartel king.
“Jean shorts,” he smiled. “In a Viagra box.”
Before joining with Chapo, Flores ran cocaine, heroin and meth across Chicago and into other major metropolises, including Washington, DC, and Minneapolis.
Chapo faces up to life behind bars if convicted.
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