One man, Margarito “Jay” Flores Jr., rose to the top of the drug-trafficking world, going from flipping burgers at a McDonald’s in Little Village to becoming the trusted top customer of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera.
The other man, Saul Rodriguez, ran a robbery and kidnapping crew in Chicago and the suburbs in cahoots with a crooked cop.
Their paths crossed in 2003, when Rodriguez abducted Flores’ twin brother Pedro Flores, his partner in overseeing the biggest drug-dealing outfit in Chicago history. To win his brother’s freedom, Margarito Flores paid Rodriguez a ransom of cocaine. Flores estimates the value of the drugs was more than $2.4 million.
Now, in an extraordinary turn of events, Flores says he has contacted Rodriguez in prison to let him know: All is forgiven.
The Flores twins, who helped bring down El Chapo after being caught by the feds, are backing Rodriguez’s bid under the federal First Step Act for an early release from his 40-year prison term.
“He has expressed his commitment to working with me and spreading the message of change, redemption and deterrence,” Margarito Flores wrote to the federal judge who sent Rodriguez away.
Flores, 43, is a free man, like his brother, after getting a break on their prison time for agreeing to help make the case and testify against El Chapo, who’s serving a life sentence in Colorado. The twins served 14-year sentences for smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States over a span of years.
The Flores brothers’ wives both went to prison for hiding and spending some of the ill-gotten proceeds from their husbands’ drug empire. The women — who wrote about their lives in the 2017 book “Cartel Wives” — recently were released from prison.
Rodriguez, 49, who’s doing his time at a federal prison in Minnesota, has served 16 years of his 40-year sentence. He was convicted of leading a kidnapping crew that, according to prosecutors, was involved in at least three killings.
Rodriguez, who made a deal and cooperated with prosecutors, told them he thought money that he paid to two lawyers was used to bribe then-Ald. Edward Burke (14th) to approve the zoning to build homes.
Burke, now in prison on a unrelated corruption conviction, has said in response that all he did was approve the project to beautify his Southwest Side ward.
Rodriguez is now asking U.S. District Judge Joan Gotschall to let him out of prison early under the federal First Step Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in his first term with bipartisan support. The 2018 law allows people convicted under previous federal drug laws to seek a compassionate early release from prison.
He and Flores have made public statements that they had religious conversions behind bars.
In Flores’s letter to the judge, he wrote, “I felt true freedom when I gave my life to Jesus Christ.”
Through his organization Kingpin to Educator, Flores now offers seminars to law enforcement officials about drug-trafficking and how to combat it. He also speaks at universities, churches and juvenile detention centers.
In his letter, he told the judge, “I have worked with Congress to address issues such as cartel influence and border safety.”
In an emailed response to questions from the Chicago Sun-Times, Flores expanded on his thoughts about life after prison, saying: “I’m grateful for the law enforcement and agencies who’ve supported me along the way. Not everyone is open to my training. There’s still pushback, and some doors get shut. But the ones who are willing to utilize my knowledge and experience have made all the difference.”
Of Rodriguez, Flores says: “Although Saul caused real harm, not just to me and my brother, but to my wife and family, we never operated out of hate. Forgiveness wasn’t something that happened overnight. It was a process rooted in accountability, healing and growth.”
Flores says he’s not in a federal witness-protection program.
“In fact, I travel the country working side by side with law enforcement officers as a consultant and educator,” he says.
At Rodriguez’s sentencing in 2015, he told Gotschall he, too, had found God in jail and wanted to become an ordained minister behind bars. Sobbing, he told the judge, “I do not want to do bad no more.”
In his First Step petition, filed Tuesday, Rodriguez said he became a “doctor of ministry” last summer.
He also presented a letter from a correctional officer who wrote that Rodriguez is “a changed man.” Another prison official said Rodriguez “would be a perfect inmate to reconsider to be released from prison.”
According to Margarito Flores’s letter, “His story, like mine, could be used as a powerful tool to prevent others from following a destructive path.
“I believe I could involve Mr. Rodriguez in some of the programs I lead, where his testimony and life experience could be a powerful tool to inspire and deter others.”
In Rodriguez’s petition for early release, his lawyer Jeffrey Steinback said Rodriguez suffers from ailments that would be better addressed outside prison.
Glenn Lewellen, a former Chicago cop who elevated Rodriguez from a drug informant to a partner in crime, was convicted in the same trial. In 2020, Lewellen got a compassionate release under the First Step Act because he said he was at risk of contracting the coronavirus.
Prosecutors had opposed the crooked cop’s release, saying he had been the “CEO and guardian angel” of the crew. But Gotschall said he “rehabilitated himself, personally and spiritually.”
