Wilber Alirio Varela-Fajardo, Julio César López-Pena

Wilber Alirio Varela-Fajardo
Wilber Alirio Varela-Fajardo is one of the top echelon members of the North Valle Cartel. Varela-Fajardo is known as a "point man" by the other leaders of the Cartel to direct trafficking and enforcement operations. He is also well-known throughout Colombia as an enforcer and the leader of a "hit man squad." Varela-Fajardo determines how much each North Valle Cartel leader contributes for the target assassination of rival traffickers and suspected informants. Varela-Fajardo’s drug trafficking activities are integral to the North Valle Cartel which exports multi-ton loads of cocaine primarily from Colombia’s Pacific Coast to the United States and Europe.
Julio César López-Pena worked closely with Norte Valle Cartel leader Wilmer Alioro Varela, participated in the shipment of multi-ton quantities of cocaine, worth an estimated $100 million dollars, to the United States between 1998 and 2003. Specifically, useing maritime routes through the Caribbean and Mexico, sending his drugs on speed boats that each carried as much as 1,600 kilograms of cocaine. In December 2001, for example, the defendant sent a load of approximately 1,600 kilograms of cocaine to Houston, Texas, where it was divided up; 600 kilograms were taken by vehicle to Manhattan for distribution. On separate occasions in 2002, LOPEZ-PENA organized the trafficking of two loads of cocaine -- 1,200 and 1,600 kilograms -- through territory in Colombia then controlled by the Colombian right-wing paramilitary group, Autodefenses Unidas de Colombia ("AUC"). Lopez-Pena paid a high-ranking AUC member $310 dollars per kilogram to handle and transport the cocaine through the AUC territory to the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2003, the Colombian Marines seized 4,000 kilograms of cocaine in the coastal region of Nanguma, Colombia, of which approximately 1,600 kilograms belonged to Lopez-Pena.found guilty of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. The offense carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment