Almost two months since being sentenced to more than 38 years behind bars in an U.S. federal prison, former secretary of public safety Genaro García Luna was transferred to a new location as he awaits his final destination where he will spend the majority of his almost four-decade sentence.
The former high-ranking official was convicted early last year of taking millions of dollars in bribes to protect the violent Sinaloa Cartel and in October of this year, a Brooklyn federal court jury found him guilty of conspiring with the Sinaloa Cartel, participating in a criminal enterprise, and making false statements to U.S. authorities, making Garcia Luna into the highest-ranking Mexican official to ever face justice in a U.S. court.
But while U.S. authorities decide where he will spend the majority of his sentence, García Luna was transferred to a facility in Oklahoma City, designed to host criminals while their final destinations are decided by the Bureau of Federal Prisons.
During his term as Mexico's top security official, García Luna was tasked with fighting criminal organizations such as the Sinaloa drug cartel, but prosecutors say that he instead worked alongside them. Court records indicate that, in exchange of millions of dollars, García Luna provided intelligence about investigations against the cartel, information about rivals and the safe passage of drug shipments.
In his last futile attempts to avoid a long sentence, García Luna bribed fellow inmates into making false statements to support his bid for a new trial. Prosecutors discovered his alleged jailhouse bribery efforts and disclosed them in a court filing earlier this year, citing such evidence as a former cellmate's handwritten notes and covert recording of a conversation between the cellmate and García Luna.
Before being moved to the state of Oklahoma, the crooked Mexican official was being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, in Brooklyn. When he was sentenced, U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan suggested that García Luna to be transferred to a federal prison near Washington, as his family lives in Virginia.
Although he has been transferred, authorities did not share the reasons why García Luna was moved to Oklahoma nor the date when he arrived at the facility.
The Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City is a federal facility that houses offenders and parole violators who have yet to be assigned to a permanent prison. But according to an audit of the Oklahoma prison, the facility was overcrowded in March as its 1,271 population surpassed the established limit of 1.072 inmates.
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