TWO MONTHS AFTER HIS BROTHER’S ARREST, JOSÉ TREVIÑO SAT ONCE again at the defense table in Judge Sparks’s courtroom—this time for his sentencing. Instead of a new suit, he wore a red-and-white-striped prison uniform. His face gave away little emotion, but he avoided looking at the crowded gallery, where his mother and sisters sat in the back row. Throughout the trial he had remained silent, his defense choosing not to put him on the witness stand. After the guilty verdict he had fired David Finn and hired another high-powered Dallas criminal defense attorney, Kirk Lechtenberger.
He was facing a maximum sentence of twenty years for money laundering, and this was his final chance to argue for clemency. Francisco Colorado, in an orange prison jumpsuit, sat next to him. Unlike José, who kept his eyes on the judge and the prosecutors, Colorado scanned the gallery and smiled at his wife and two sons, Pancho Jr. and his youngest, Antonio. Like José, Colorado was also facing a maximum sentence. But he didn’t appear deflated like José as he sat at the defendants’ table. Colorado had brought his business partner from Mexico to testify under oath before the judge that no drug money had ever passed through the coffers of ADT Petroservicios. A dealmaker at heart, he was still hoping to spin the wheel in his favor.
He would be the first to address the courtroom before the judge meted out his sentence. Colorado stood up from his chair and faced the judge and prosecution table.
“Throughout all of this, a lot has been said about me personally and about my company ADT Petroservicios, but unfortunately, we have still not gotten the whole truth . . . ,” he said in Spanish, shaking his head. “. . . ADT Petroservicios, throughout this period that it’s been accused of all this, won public contracts. It wasn’t given things, it won publicly tendered contracts for amounts of over $450 million for a period even before the Zetas came into existence. I am a person who because I followed my instincts and my dreams has been bankrupt on three occasions,” he said. “Just like the phoenix, through hard work and perseverance, I have been able to take flight . . . I want you to know, Your Honor,” he said, now facing the judge directly, his eyes tearing with emotion. “I’ve survived two very intense wars. The first one, I underwent seventeen years ago, and this is the war I waged against my addiction to cocaine and other character flaws I had. And the second war is the one I’m fighting now, trying to show that I am a good, decent man. And for that reason . . . I personally turned myself in, after having seen on—in the newspapers and on the Internet my name linked to this shameful case.” Colorado said, looking defiant. “But I’d also like to say there are many occasions, facts are not what they seem to be when you look at them, but they are circumstantial. And in this specific case, I find myself involved in a very big dilemma. I ask, what would you do if you find yourself at a sale or purchasing something and you get a phone call saying, ‘You do me the favor of buying this and/or your family will die like this and this and this.’ It’s difficult.”
As Gardner and Fernald waited for the interpreter to finish translating Colorado’s statement into English, they began to look alarmed. Colorado was trying to put forth an entirely new defense motive in his case by saying that he had been extorted at the point of a gun, like Alfonso del Rayo, into helping Miguel Treviño and his brothers. The extortion angle had never come up during Colorado’s defense at trial, and now he was trotting it out during the sentencing phase, which was way out of bounds as far as the judge was concerned.
“Hold on,” Judge Sparks said, raising a hand. “We’ll take a brief recess and talk with your client.” The judge put on the noise-canceling fan so that the gallery wouldn’t hear what they were discussing up at the judge’s podium.
After about five minutes, the judge called the hearing back to order. “Ready to continue, Mr. DeGeurin?”
“Yes, we are.” The attorney nodded, a contrite look on his face. “Thank you, Judge.”
“Mr. Colorado Cessa.” The judge gestured for Colorado to continue his soliloquy. Colorado talked about how he loved his family and gave them a smile once again in the gallery, and then he turned to the judge. “And for you, Your Honor, with all due respect,” he said with some flourish, opening a book the size of a Bible to the appropriate page, “I would like to quote a paragraph from Don Quixote de la Mancha . . .”
“I’ve read the book,” Judge Sparks said gruffly.
Colorado began to read in Spanish, and a translator repeated the words in English. “Sancho, he’s talking to Don Quixote,” Colorado explained. “. . . ‘And fear not, my Lord, because in the face of your judgment, they have placed a wise man whose hammer, according to those people who know, works in favor of the Lord and not in favor of mankind.’ Thank you, Your Honor.” Colorado closed the book with an air of finality and went back to his seat.
Next up was Colorado’s business partner Ramon Segura. The handful of reporters in the room had expected the sentencing to be over quickly, but now it appeared that Colorado was just getting started. Segura stood up and took the oath, then sat down at the witness stand. Segura was thin with a cavernous face and had the deep voice of a heavy smoker. As he testified about the sanctity of their business practices at ADT, Michelle Fernald and Doug Gardner looked as if they possessed some secret between them.
After he had finished, Fernald made her way to the lectern for the cross-examination. After peppering Segura with questions about the amount the Zetas had invested in ADT, she followed up with an unusual line of questioning that left everyone in the gallery wondering where she was headed.
“. . . When is the last time that you’ve had any contact with Francisco Colorado Cessa?”
“I have daily,” Segura said.
“And have since he’s been incarcerated?”
“Yes.”
“. . . And Mr. Segura, finally, have you ever been involved in any criminal activity with ADT Petroservicios, Francisco Colorado Cessa, or any activities on behalf of either the company or Mr. Colorado Cessa?”
“No.”
“I remind you that you’re under oath,” Fernald said with emphasis.
“Yes, ma’am.” Segura nodded.
“Pass the witness,” Fernald said. As she walked back to the prosecution table it was difficult for her to hide a look of self-satisfaction. Lawson could see that the reporters sitting in the gallery looked perplexed. Something was going on, and no doubt they were hoping the prosecutors would clue them in soon, before their afternoon deadlines.
After the odd exchange with Colorado’s business partner, it was José’s turn to address the judge. He stood up and solemnly walked to the lectern. His delivery was plainspoken in contrast to Colorado’s dramatic monologue. José told the courtroom that he was embarrassed to find himself in court, and that he was innocent. His change in fortune, he said, was all due to his purchase of Tempting Dash. “The horse that I bought for my wife and myself, and that from there on, anything that I touch includes winnings from racetracks to a horse that I sold. It all includes winning $4.2 million . . . and of those $4.2 million, $2.6 million were race earnings,” he said, facing the judge. “And like I said, I am very sorry. That it was in the trial that I’m a Zeta. It was proved in trial that I don’t have any aggressive conduct to anybody . . .”
After José sat down, his new attorney made their case to the judge that José should only receive a sentence of ten years, not the maximum of twenty, which was what they feared the government was about to propose. After the defense attorney took his seat, Doug Gardner made his way to the lectern to address the judge. “Mr. Lechtenberger’s right. The government is asking for 240 months . . . The ability of the defendant to take that money, knowing how it was earned and the price of blood in which it’s covered with, fully justifies the court imposing a twenty-year sentence, the statutory max.”
Judge Sparks was silent for a moment, seeming to digest what Gardner had just said. He looked out at the courtroom, then turned his gaze toward José. “Mr. Treviño, nobody in this court has alleged that you are a Zeta . . . You’re charged with moving money of the Zetas, and there’s no question in my mind that that was done,” Sparks said. “The evidence was pretty overwhelming . . . You had the opportunity to say no. You just didn’t . . . And whether you knew about these murders or not, whether you knew about all the other things that were going on, you were the funnel for most of it, and you ended up with all of the horses, and it’s just beyond comprehension that you could do all that on your own, as was the defense you put forward. I sentence you to 240 months in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons . . .”
There was a gasp from the back of the gallery where José’s sisters, mother, and extended family sat. But José didn’t turn to acknowledge their shock. He kept his eyes on the judge as he read out the rest of his sentence. Whereas he had been defiant at the trial, Lawson now saw him as resigned. His expression gave away little as a U.S. marshal escorted him out of the courtroom. Colorado had also received a twenty-year sentence. And while José had accepted his fate stoically, a look of total surprise and shock had spread across Colorado’s face as the judge read out his sentence. The reporters in the gallery would soon find out why.
Fernando Garcia received thirteen years and Chevo Huitron eight years for their roles in the conspiracy. José’s wife, Zulema, was given three years’ probation, and their daughter Alexandra, now twenty-two years old and about to give birth to her first child in California, received two years’ probation. Adan Farias and Felipe Quintero, the horse trainers from California, each received three years of probation. And the young Raul Ramirez, who had created such a commotion at the Ruidoso auction, was sentenced to a year in jail.
The case finally felt like it was coming to a close, especially with Miguel in jail in Mexico. But five members in the money laundering scheme including Omar Treviño, Sergio “Saltillo” Guerrero, Luis Aguirre, and two other men—Erick Jovan Lozano and Gerardo Garza Quintero, who had been added, along with Jesse Huitron, in a superseding indictment—still remained fugitives in Mexico. Lawson and Perez worried that Miguel could still seek revenge. Together they had pierced the inner circle of the Zetas. They had arrested his elder brother, José, but Omar was still out there, the new leader of the cartel.
As Judge Sparks called the courtroom to recess, Gardner and Fernald told the reporters milling in the hallway to stick around, because something unusual was about to happen. “I think you’ll want to be here,” said Gardner to the handful of reporters impatiently waiting to be let in on their secret. Lawson’s mind was far away from the group, still focused on the drama that had just unfolded in the parking lot of the courthouse, which the press would learn about soon enough. But after a few minutes, Fernald and the rest of the team told the reporters to go home. “Come back first thing in the morning,” Gardner promised with a knowing smile.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, their secret was finally revealed during a hastily called press conference outside the courthouse. Fernald and Gardner stood next to their boss, U.S. Attorney Rod Pitman, who announced to the group of reporters assembled that while Judge Sparks had been sentencing Colorado the previous day in court, his eldest son, Pancho Jr., and business partner, Ramon Segura, had been arrested in the parking lot of the courthouse on bribery charges.
Pancho Jr. and Segura had planned to place a golf bag filled with $1.2 million in the trunk of Judge Sparks’s car in exchange for a lighter sentence for Colorado Sr. Lawson could see it was all falling into place now for the reporters—Colorado’s overriding confidence yesterday and then his shock when the judge read out a maximum sentence of twenty years.
Pitman told the reporters that the FBI had first learned of the scheme back in August through recorded jailhouse phone calls between Segura, the elder Colorado, and his son. The FBI’s Austin office had set up a sting with an informant posing as a confidant of Judge Sparks who would act as a go-between for the bribe money. Pitman told reporters that Judge Sparks had been kept in the dark about the bribery attempt and the sting to catch Segura and Colorado’s son in the act. “He had no idea,” Pitman said. Now Michelle Fernald’s line of questioning in the courtroom the day before about whether Segura had ever engaged in any criminal conduct with Colorado Sr. made sense. She had caught Segura lying under oath.
Now the reporters, Lawson, Perez, and the other agents had the surreal experience of entering the courtroom across the hallway from Sparks for the arraignment of Pancho Jr. and Ramon Segura, who was still wearing the business suit he had testified in the day before. Only now he wore leg irons with his loafers. Both men looked stunned as federal judge Andrew Austin ordered they be held without bond for two weeks until their detention hearings. Both men could receive up to five years in jail for attempting to bribe a federal judge, and now Francisco Colorado Sr. would also face additional jail time on top of the twenty years he’d just received. Colorado had spun the wheel, but he was all played out. The dealmaker had lost the game.