SAN JOSE — A San Jose man allegedly affiliated with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel is among a group of people charged in a recent undercover DEA bust, court records show.
A suspected fentanyl dealer named Elias Valdez was identified as a cartel affiliate based on DEA Special Agent Joshua Serafin’s “experience, intercepted messages, and communication with other agents who have investigated Valdez,” according to a probable cause statement filed in court.
Valdez and four others — William Huynh, Jonathan Lucero-Peace, Alejandro Pelayo-Gonzalez and Julio Vasquez-Ochoa — have been charged with federal crimes either related to the sale of fentanyl, methamphetamine, or the even deadlier opioid carfentanil, which authorities say has been showing up in the Bay Area with increased frequency.
The five men were charged in separately filed but identical complaints. According to the DEA, the case came together after an unidentified confidential source came forward. The source is described in the criminal complaint as someone with “a long-term personal and business (narcotics trafficking) relationship” with Valdez, Huynh and Lucero-Peace. The person cooperated in exchange for leniency in a federal prosecution for drug sales, according to court records.
The criminal complaint details several alleged drug transactions, including the February sale of 6,000 pills containing carfentanil in San Jose involving Pelayo-Gonzalez, and the March sale of 5,000 counterfeit Adderall pills containing methamphetamine in Milpitas, involving Lucer-Peace. In the February incident, the confidential informant and Pelayo-Gonzalez each asked the other to either show the drugs or money first, and argued over which had been Valdez’s “boy” for a longer period of time to make their point.
In August, Valdez allegedly bragged to the informant that he could supply 25,000 to 30,000 counterfeit opioid pills in San Jose, if the informant would pick them up in Southern California to receive a discounted price, records show.