By Lucio for Borderland Beat
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In September 2007 she was arrested in Mexico City along with her boyfriend and Colombian cocaine drug trafficker, Juan Diego Espinosa Ramírez 'El Tigre'. She was charged with and convicted of laundering money for billions of dollars’ worth of drugs smuggled from Colombia to Mexico. She was an intermediary between Mexican drug cartels and their Colombian suppliers.
Sandra Ávila Beltrán left the prison at 10 A.M. This morning
Sandra Ávila Beltrán, also known as "La Reina del Pacífico" or The Queen of the Pacific”, was released from imprisonment in the United States in September 5, 2014, and immediately deported to her native Mexico.
Upon her arrival in Mexico she was incarcerated in the Nayarit federal prison, and was sentenced to 5 years for money laundering more than 10 million pesos.
She appealed that sentence and the decision was handed down yesterday, “the appeal filed by Ávila Beltrán against this judgment, on February 6, 2015 Judge of the second unit of the third circuit court reversed the judgment of the Seventh District Judge Federal Criminal Proceedings in the State of Jalisco, and ordered the immediate release of the inmate, finding that Avila Beltrán had already been tried for the same crime, both in Mexico and The United States .”
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| Juan Diego image from arrest |
She was then extradited to the U.S. in June 2012 on cocaine trafficking charges that had dated back to 2001, after two failed extradition attempts, the third was ultimately successful.