Brother of drug-trafficking Flores twins sentenced to time served: ‘I am not the man I used to be’

CHICAGO — When Armando Flores’ powerful drug-trafficking brothers decided to flip on the Sinaloa Cartel and its notorious boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Flores knew he had to get out of Mexico.

He had gotten married and put down roots there after being deported in 2003, his attorney said in court Wednesday. But it was a dangerous place for family members of cooperators.

So he came back, with the federal government’s assistance, while his younger brothers Pedro and Margarito Flores Jr. helped take down El Chapo for good.

And he started collecting on his brothers’ drug debts: millions of dollars, some of which he buried under his back porch in Texas. Years later, after the feds caught up with him, he pleaded guilty to money laundering.

As part of his deal, federal prosecutors said they would recommend he not be deported. And on Wednesday, he was sentenced to time served, walking out of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly’s courtroom a free man, though, as Kennelly said, the threat of being sent back to Mexico will hang over him.

“The immigration issue is out there,” he said from the bench. “I think honestly, if Mr. Flores doesn’t commit more crimes, which is kind of what everybody hopes, that’s likely not going to end up being a problem in the future. But that’s kind of all in Mr. Flores’ hands.”

Flores had been in custody on the case for some 19 months before he was released in January thanks to a judge’s order that remains under seal. Prosecutors on Wednesday requested a two-year sentence, but federal inmates generally only must serve 85 percent of their sentences. So, Kennelly noted, a two-year term on paper would only actually lock him up for a few more weeks.

“I don’t think there’s much of a point in putting Mr. Flores in jail for five weeks,” Kennelly said.

Flores, in a gray three-piece suit and shiny shoes, sniffed and cleared his throat before reading a prepared statement in court. He spoke so quietly the judge asked him to pull the microphone closer.

“I am not proud of the reason I am here. I blame no one other than myself,” he said. “I am not the man I used to be … I enjoy simple things in life, like a quiet night watching Netflix with my wife.”

The sentencing closes a major chapter in the Flores family saga. Armando Flores was charged along with the twins’ wives and two other relatives with conspiring to hide the twins’ enormous drug proceeds from the government.

All of the defendants pleaded guilty in the case. Vivianna Lopez and Valerie Gaytan, the twins’ wives, were both sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. Lopez’s sister, Bianca Finnigan, was sentenced to probation while their aunt, Laura Lopez, was given a one-year prison term.

After Flores was arrested and charged, he and his lawyer approached authorities about cooperating, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Erskine said in court. He cooperated broadly, and while he was never called to the witness stand, the fact that he could have done so was likely a major factor in his co-defendants’ guilty pleas, Erskine said.

Flores admitted to participating in a long-running scheme to disperse money to the twins’ wives without the knowledge of federal investigators, according to his 21-page guilty plea.

As early as 2009, Flores had another person pick up about $1.9 million in drug proceeds from one of his brothers’ former couriers and leave it in a car parked in a Chicago garage, where it was later retrieved by Flores and the twins’ wives.

The next year, Gaytan went to Flores’ home in Round Rock, Texas, which is near Austin, to pick up an estimated $2.3 million hidden in a U-Haul truck carrying secondhand furniture, according to the plea.

Later, Flores mailed drug proceeds in increments of about $9,000 through the U.S. mail, sometimes exchanging worn or dirty bills for clean $100 bills at a gas station currency exchange near his home, according to the plea.

He also laundered the money by purchasing lavish trips for the wives through a travel agency in Texas, according to the plea.

Flores admitted in the plea that he participated in the conspiracy in exchange for a cut of all the money he delivered.

The Flores twins were West Side drug traffickers whose decision to cooperate with federal authorities in 2008 led to arguably the biggest drug case ever brought in Chicago, with charges against El Chapo himself as well as many of his top underbosses.

The twins were sentenced in 2015 to 14 years in prison and were released late last year into witness protection.

Margarito Flores Jr. last month gave an expansive interview to the Tribune, detailing his life growing up in Little Village and his rise to the top of Chicago’s drug world.

The twins were just 12 when they started being introduced into the gang life through Armando, who was in his 20s and already a kingpin in the Latin Kings.

Just like they were later forced to navigate two sides of the Mexican drug cartels, the twins in those days found themselves positioned between two realities of Little Village.

On the one hand were the street gangs, where kids their age were becoming murderers at 13 and 14 years old, he said. On the other was their brother and his friends, who commanded a certain respect and stayed largely out of the day-to-day mayhem on the streets.

“That’s where I started to see where me and my (twin) brother were going to sit, like, right in the middle,” Margarito Flores said.

With their dad largely absent while living in Mexico, Armando bought the home on South Homan and fixed it up, turning the ground floor into a two-bedroom apartment for the twins, who were about to become teenagers.

Like their father, Armando tried to shield the twins from the Latin Kings, even when he was regularly hosting gang meetings at the home. When the gang members would leave, Armando would tell the twins, ‘Don’t ever be like them.’ "

“In my head I was like, ‘I thought they were your friends,’” Margarito Flores said. “I was like, OK so not everyone who you associate with is your friend. And that’s a lesson of criminal life. You don’t have a lot of choices in that life. You’re going to be associated with some people where you don’t always like what they do.”

_____