Cartel member sentenced to life in prison for fentanyl trafficking and money laundering

Date: Jan. 9, 2026

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Birmingham, AL - A member of the Jalisco New Generacion Cartel ("CJNG") has been sentenced to life in federal prison for fentanyl trafficking and money laundering, announced U.S. Attorney Prim F. Escalona.

U.S. District Judge Madeline H. Haikala sentenced Juan Francisco Castaneda, also known as "Pariente," to life in prison. In October 2025, after two days of trial testimony, Castaneda pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic fentanyl, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and distribution of fentanyl. These crimes occurred in the Birmingham and Homewood area.

According to the evidence presented at trial and Castenada's guilty plea, Castaneda ran his drug trafficking and money laundering organization with the use of contraband phones while he was serving multiple life sentences for murder at the Alabama Department of Corrections' Bullock Correctional facility. Castaneda used a network of couriers and local businesses as "fronts," from which he arranged fentanyl distribution and collected drug proceeds. Undercover operations revealed that Castaneda was laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars to CJNG sources in Mexico through these couriers and businesses.

According to Court documents, Castaneda previously pleaded guilty to a 2008 multi-victim homicide in Shelby County, in which five individuals were murdered over a cartel debt. Evidence at sentencing revealed that Castaneda also threatened to kill co-defendants during the course of the investigation and "feed them to the dogs," and that he was responsible for the movement of over 19 kilograms of fentanyl throughout the District during the time period of the investigation. As part of sentencing, Castaneda also had a $700,000 money judgment entered against him.

The DEA and HSI investigated the case, along with assistance from the Internal Revenue Service, United States Marshals Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, Hoover Police Department, Birmingham Police Department, Bessemer Police Department, Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, Alabama Department of Corrections, and Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Allison Garnett and Carson Gilbert are prosecuting the case.

This case is part of the Homeland Security Task Force (HSTF) initiative established by Executive Order 14159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion. The HSTF is a whole-of-government partnership dedicated to eliminating criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and human smuggling and trafficking rings operating in the United States and abroad. Through historic interagency collaboration, the HSTF directs the full might of United States law enforcement towards identifying, investigating, and prosecuting the full spectrum of crimes committed by these organizations, which have long fueled violence and instability within our borders. In performing this work, the HSTF places special emphasis on investigating and prosecuting those engaged in child trafficking or other crimes involving children. The HSTF further utilizes all available tools to prosecute and remove the most violent criminal aliens from the United States. The Alabama HSTF comprises agents and officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Marshals Service, and the Internal Revenue Service, with the prosecution being led by the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.