Dámaso López Serrano, son of a Sinaloa cartel leader, accused of masterminding the murder of journalist and La Jornada correspondent Javier Valdez, and a cooperating witness for the US government, was sentenced to 5 years in prison by a federal court in Virginia this Wednesday on fentanyl trafficking charges.
López Serrano was accused of distributing fentanyl while under the supervision of US federal authorities following a previous drug trafficking conviction. After pleading guilty in May, he was sentenced today by a federal judge in the District Court of Alexandria, Virginia, outside of Washington, DC, the Washington Post reported. The Mexican government has been requesting the extradition of López Serrano since 2020, accusing him of being the mastermind behind the 2017 murder of Javier Valdez, correspondent for La Jornada and founder of its news outlet Riodoce, in Culiacán. As the Post recalls, U.S. authorities repeatedly refused to extradite “El Mini Lic,” claiming he was a protected witness providing information to U.S. law enforcement.
The son of Dámaso López Núñez, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s right-hand man in the Sinaloa cartel, was caught in a trap set by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) when he was detected attempting to coordinate the delivery of approximately three kilograms of fentanyl to an associate in Los Angeles for distribution.
Before being sentenced for the first time in 2022 in a federal court in San Diego, he pleaded for leniency from the judge, declaring that he wanted to be “a different person than he was… and start a new life.” Apparently, it worked, as the judge sentenced him to “time already served” and five years of probation (i.e., supervised release) after he had already served five years in prison. Two years later, in 2024, he was arrested again for attempting to traffic drugs.
With this conviction, the Post indicates that U.S. authorities might consider extraditing the defendant to Mexico. López Serrano and his father have maintained that the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera were responsible for ordering the murder.
