Man gets prison time for drug trafficking

 

The man who supplied massive quantities of methamphetamines and other narcotics to the upper Great Plains will spend 18½ years in prison for his crimes, a federal judge ordered Tuesday. Prosecutors said Victor Espinoza fed the supply line of a large-scale drug-trafficking and money-laundering conspiracy investigators call “Operation Budapest.” According to the U.S. attorney’s office in North Dakota: The drug-trafficking organization transported more than 50 pounds of meth and other amounts of marijuana and cocaine from California to communities in North Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska. These illegal narcotics were distributed locally in Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismarck and on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in north-central North Dakota. Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Myers has charged 44 individuals so far in connection with “Operation Budapest.” Not including Espinoza, 26 defendants have already been sentenced for crimes such as drug conspiracy, firearms charges and money laundering. Eleven of those defendants were Fargo residents and nine were Grand Forks or East Grand Forks, Minn., residents, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Among those convicted was Fargo resident Jesse Walters, who is serving a 27-year sentence for distributing meth that resulted in the death of a Fargo man two years ago. “Let there be no mistake, the tentacles of drug-trafficking organizations on or near our country’s southwest border reach right here into our homes and communities in North Dakota,” U.S. Attorney Timothy Purdon said in a statement after Espinoza’s sentencing hearing. Purdon praised the work of Myers and the many authorities whose investigations helped bring the “Budapest” criminals to justice. At least 16 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies assisted in the case. The federal investigators’ probe also revealed a separate drug-trafficking operation that moved nearly 2,000 pounds of marijuana to the Fargo area and the Turtle Mountain reservation. Two individuals have also previously been sentenced in that case.