{"id":139758,"date":"2018-06-11T21:15:54","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T21:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/us-drug-lord-la-barbie-sentenced-to-49-years\/"},"modified":"2018-06-11T21:15:54","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T21:15:54","slug":"us-drug-lord-la-barbie-sentenced-to-49-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/us-drug-lord-la-barbie-sentenced-to-49-years\/","title":{"rendered":"US drug lord &#8216;La Barbie&#8217; sentenced to 49 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Photo of Edgar Valdez under arrest by Mexican authorities\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/282F\/production\/_101978201_gettyimages-103742128.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  Getty Images<figcaption>Image caption                                      Edgar Valdez - known as &quot;La Barbie&quot; for his light eyes and fair skin - has a brutal reputation                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">A former US high school athlete who became a Mexican crime lord has been sentenced to 49 years in prison on drug and money-laundering charges.<\/p>\n<p>A federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, ruled Edgar Valdez Villarreal, called &quot;La Barbie&quot; for his light eyes and fair skin, must also forfeit $192m (\u00a3143m).<\/p>\n<p>He was brought up in a middle-class family in Texas, where he was born, but turned to gang crime as a teenager. <\/p>\n<p>Arrested in Mexico in 2010, he was extradited to the US in 2015. <\/p>\n<p>He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Valdez, 44, was a member of the Beltran Levya drug cartel.<\/p>\n<p>He distributed thousands of kilos of cocaine in the eastern US between 2004-06 and shipped millions of dollars in cash back to Mexico.<\/p>\n<p>Before he joined the Mexican drug cartel, Valdez was a high school American football linebacker in Laredo, Texas.<\/p>\n<p>After years dealing drugs in the US, Valdez is reported to have moved to Mexico.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Profile: Edgar Valdez<\/li>\n<li>Mexico arrests &#039;drug lord&#039; Valdez<\/li>\n<li>Mexico&#039;s war on drugs: Arrests fail to drive down violence<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure>             Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionViolence has erupted in Guadalajara, Mexico, in response to an anti-drugs cartel operation by authorities<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He is said to have served as a bodyguard to Joaquin &quot;El Chapo&quot; Guzman, who was the head of the Sinaloa cartel and Mexico&#039;s most-wanted drug lord.<\/p>\n<p>After falling out with El Chapo, he allegedly switched allegiance to the Beltran Leyva brothers.<\/p>\n<p>Valdez, also known as El Comandante and El Guero, then allegedly became the head of the gang&#039;s hitmen.  <\/p>\n<p>When the cartel&#039;s leader, Arturo Beltran Levya, was killed, Valdez was said to have been involved in a bloody struggle for control of the organisation.<\/p>\n<p>In 2010, he was arrested by Mexican authorities. He and 12 others were extradited in September 2015.<\/p>\n<p>In January 2016, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to import and distribute cocaine and conspiring to launder money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright Getty ImagesImage caption Edgar Valdez - known as &quot;La Barbie&quot; for his light eyes and fair skin - has a brutal reputation A former US high school athlete<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":139759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}