Former Mexican mayor who directed massive meth shipment to Miami sentenced to 10 years

A former Mexican mayor was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge accusing him of directing the largest shipment of methamphetamine to Miami-Dade in the county’s history.

Adalberto Comparan-Rodriguez, aka “Fruto,” who authorities say headed the United Cartels in Michoacán while serving as the mayor of Aguililla, Mexico, was extradited in June of last year from Guatemala. He is the last of six defendants to be sent to prison by U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles in the massive meth case in Miami federal court.

His defense attorney, Rene Sotorrio, filed a batch of letters from family members and other supporters who know Comparan-Rodriguez, seeking lenience from the judge. But under his plea deal, Comparan-Rodriguez, 58, faced a mandatory minimum of 10 years up to life in prison for his conviction on a charge of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute crystal meth in the United States.

The meth-export scheme was hatched in January of 2021 when Comparan-Rodriguez and his partner Alfonso Rustrian met in Cali, Colombia, with a U.S. undercover operative whom they believed to be a money launderer and drug trafficker affiliated with the Islamist militant group Hezbollah, according to an indictment and other court records.

Rustrian explained that Comparan-Rodriguez was the leader of the United Cartels, and that they could supply hundreds of kilograms of meth to the purported Hezbollah buyer, court records say. They ultimately agreed that Comparan-Rodriguez and Rustrian would send 500 kilograms of crystal meth from Mexico, through Texas, to the Miami area.

In 2021, the duo arranged for a truck to carry concrete tiles filled with the meth load, court records say. The ringleader’s son, Adalberto Comparan-Bedolla, helped crack open the concrete tiles and remove about 200 kilos of meth at a Miami-area warehouse in March of 2021. Then, 350 kilos of meth arrived in another shipment later that month at the same location.

This time, it was dissolved within 245 five-gallon buckets of house paint, according to court records. Comparan-Bedolla and two chemists, Silviano Gonzalez-Aguilar and Salvador Valdez, worked for days inside the warehouse, extracting the crystal meth from the paint, records say.

But federal agents seized the meth before it hit the streets and made arrests. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s seizure of the 550 kilos of crystal meth — or 1,200 pounds — was the largest in Miami-Dade County history.

Before the ringleader’s sentencing on Thursday, his son, Comparan-Bedolla, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to possess and distribute meth in the United States and was sentenced to 11 years in prison, court records show. Gonzalez-Aguilar and Valdez, the chemists, also pleaded guilty to the same conspiracy charge and were sentenced to six years and five years, respectively.

Comparan-Rodriguez’s partner, Rustrian, who was extradited to Miami in January 2022, also pleaded guilty to the same charge along with a money-laundering conspiracy count and was sentenced to 11 years.

An associate, Carlos Basauri-Coto, who ran investment companies, pleaded guilty to a money laundering conspiracy and was sentenced to the time he had been detained after his arrest in March 2021 — for a total of one year and nine months.

The Miami meth case, prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Shane Butland, contrasts with the typical cocaine, heroin and opioid distribution probes in South Florida. It reflects a resurgence of meth shipments pouring over the southern border of the United States, authorities say.

The new wave of meth is shifting the focus from opioids to this crystal stimulant — a drug that used to be common, then faded, but is resurging — via illegal imports from meth superlabs in Mexico. And much of what’s being sold is no longer low-grade meth home-cooked in some ramshackle Florida trailer park.

In recent years, crystal meth has racked up more overdose victims and spurred bigger law enforcement probes into trafficking of the highly addictive drug.