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Written by Greg Moran | SDUT
May 15, 2012

SAN DIEGO — A former high-ranking official in the Baja California Attorney General’s Office pleaded guilty Tuesday in San Diego federal court to using his position to provide information to a lethal Tijuana drug gang.

Jesús Quiñónez Márquez pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge for providing information to the Fernando Sanchez Organization, a a drug trafficking group that federal and state investigators targeted in a sweeping investigation that culminated two years ago with the indictment of 43 people.

Quiñónez, 50, served as the director of international liaison under Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno Manjarrez from October 2008 until his arrest in July 2010.

In that post, Quiñónez met regularly with law enforcement agencies on the U.S. side of the border, including the District Attorney’s Office and San Diego police.

He now faces a maximum sentence of life in prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 5, said Assistant U.S. Attorney James Melendres.

According to the plea agreement, Quiñónez admitted he worked with the Fernando Sanchez gang in 2009 and 2010. He specifically acknowledged using his post in the Attorney General’s Office to provide information on the investigation of a double homicide in Tijuana on March 25, 2010.

Two men, Efrain Alvarez Gonazlez and Abel Joatan Gonzalez, were killed as part of the city’s vicious cartel wars. The plea agreement says that Quiñónez learned Fernando Sanchez gang members committed the murders, and he then told a top underboss of the gang, José Alfredo Nájera Gil, that the organization was suspected.

“The plea agreement says he knew that the FSO would use that information to avoid apprehension,” Melendres said Tuesday. In court papers filed last week, prosecutors said that Quiñónez told Nájera how and where the two men were killed, and later gave digital photographs of the aftermath of the killing on a computer thumb drive to another top leader in the organization. In return, Quiñónez received $5,000.

He also admitted in the guilty plea to agreeing to help try to smuggle in to the U.S. $13 million in drug money on behalf of the gang. The money was never transported to the U.S., records say.

Quiñónez’s attorney, Patrick Hall, could not be reached for comment on the plea Tuesday. The case was scheduled to go to trial on June 5.

Of the 43 people indicted, Quiñónez is the 38th to plead guilty. Two remain fugitives in Mexico.

Two men, including the gang’s top lieutenant, Armando Villareal Heredia, are in Mexican custody awaiting extradition to the U.S., Melendres said.

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