Tijuana drug kingpin pleads guilty

SAN DIEGO – The former head of a violent Tijuana crime family who was apprehended last year while on a deep-sea fishing trip pleaded guilty today to running a drug cartel and conspiracy to launder money.

Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, 39, faces a lifetime in jail without parole and agreed to forfeit $50 million in drug money and the 43-foot yacht that was captured by the U.S. Coast guard in August 2006, when Felix was on a fishing trip off the tip of Baja California. By pleading guilty, federal prosecutors dropped charges that could have brought the death penalty.

Shackled and wearing an orange prison uniform, Felix admitted to a federal court judge that his family used violence to run a business that earned $20 million a year by smuggling cocaine and marijuana into the United States.

He will be sentenced Nov. 5 but the first charge he pleaded guilty to carries a mandatory life sentence.

The arrest last year was based on a 2003 U.S. indictment that charged him with conspiracy, smuggling and murder. A $5-million bounty had been offered for his capture as the reputed leader of the Arellano Felix organization.

At its height in the late 1990s, the cartel was believed to be responsible for supplying nearly half the cocaine sold in the United States.

U.S. and Mexican authorities blame the cartel for at least a score of slayings of police officers, journalists and rivals, as well as the accidental killing of Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo at the Guadalajara airport in 1993.

Authorities say the Arellano Felix gang, though weakened by the killing of one brother and the imprisonment of another, remained one of Mexico’s largest drug-smuggling organizations since joining forces last year with the Gulf cartel.

Prosecutors say the gang hired assassins to kidnap, torture and kill adversaries in a struggle to dominate lucrative smuggling routes that link Mexico and California.

tony.perry@latimes.com

Times Staff Writers Sam Enriquez and Greg Krikorian contributed to this story.