A leader of a Guatemalan drug
trafficking organization was sentenced today to 23 years in prison for his
participation in an international drug trafficking conspiracy, announced
Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s
Criminal Division and Special Agent in Charge Wendy Woolcock of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Operations Division.
Waldemar Lorenzana-Lima was
sentenced by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in the District of
Columbia following an Aug. 18, 2014, guilty plea to his participation in an
international drug trafficking conspiracy.
The court also ordered Lorenzana-Lima to forfeit $50,949,000.
As Lorenzana-Lima admitted in
connection with his guilty plea, from March 1996 to November 2007,
Lorenzana-Lima was a member of a drug trafficking organization that would
receive, inventory, and store large quantities of cocaine from Colombia at
Lorenzana-Lima’s properties in Guatemala, for eventual importation into Mexico
and the United States. The court
concluded at sentencing that Lorenzana-Lima’s conduct qualified him as an “organizer
or leader” of the drug trafficking organization within the meaning of the
applicable sentencing guidelines.