A Mexican drug boss from Aurora who helped flood Chicago’s streets with heroin walked out of court a free man Tuesday after playing a key role in a cartel linked to the disappearance of dozens of college students in Mexico in 2014.
Pablo Vega Cuevas, 50, a former Chicago area leader for Guerreros Unidos, was sentenced to 10 years in prison — time he’s already spent in a federal pretrial lockup when reductions for good behavior are considered.
Because of his cooperation with U.S. authorities since his 2014 arrest, he caught a break. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Vega could have gotten 30 years to life.
Vega must forfeit to the government $1.75 million in proceeds from his drug operation. And he faces possible deportation to Mexico.
From 2012 through 2014, Vega, known as “The Transformer,” rented warehouses in Aurora, Batavia and Chicago, where his crew unloaded heroin from hidden compartments in passenger buses. He ordered members of the crew to sell the drugs to wholesale buyers in the Chicago area. Five men charged with Vega were previously sentenced. Their prison terms ranged from four to six years.
In 2023, Vega was released from jail in lieu of bail. Wearing a purple shirt and dark pants, he appeared in federal court Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso. He listened to the hearing with the help of a Spanish interpreter.
“I am very regretful,” Vega told the judge, adding, “I understand the magnitude of the case.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Erskine said Vega merited a lenient sentence because he testified against the cartel and helped investigators interpret what was being said on wiretapped cartel conversations. Vega’s attorney Robert Rascia agreed, saying his cooperation is perilous.
“That is something that will follow him forever,” Rascia told the judge.
Alonso said Vega was “well on his way to being rehabilitated.”
“He learned a very difficult lesson,” the judge said.
Prosecutors said Vega was responsible for importing at least 132 kilograms of heroin and 120 kilograms of cocaine. He “sought to profit from the misery of drugs,” prosecutors said in a sentencing document.
In March, Adan Casarrubias Salgado, a Mexico-based leader of Guerreros Unidos, was sentenced in Chicago to 11 years in federal prison. A different judge gave Casarrubias a break on his sentence, too, because of allegations that Mexican authorities tortured him while he was in custody there.
The Guerreros Unidos cartel has been tied to the 2014 disappearance and presumed massacre of 43 college students in Iguala, a city in the Mexican state of Guerrero near the resort town of Acapulco. The only remains of the students that have been recovered are bone fragments from a few of them.
Prosecutors here have never implicated Vega in the disappearances, but wiretaps reportedly captured him telling his Mexican counterparts that it was “going to cost us business” and “they didn’t know how to control their people. It’s screwed up. It’s gonna create a mess.”
Vega’s lawyer has said his client has “absolutely nothing to do with what, if anything, happened to those students.”
The Vega drug case has roots here and in Mexico. Vega and his brother, Marco Vega Cuevas, were born in Mexico and raised in Aurora. Pablo Vega “lived a fairly normal childhood with family and friends — free of abuse and mostly free of want,” prosecutors said in their sentencing memo.
After losing a factory job in 2012, Pablo joined the cartel with his brother, who had climbed the ranks of Guerreros Unidos after moving to Mexico.
Tragedy struck the family in March 2014 when Marco died in Mexico. At Marco’s memorial there, Pablo was introduced to the cartel’s top boss, Mario “El Sapo Guapo” Casarrubias — the “Handsome Toad” — who once delivered pizzas in Chicago before becoming a kingpin.
Mario Casarrubias owned a bus company, Monarca, that doubled as a rolling drug delivery system. Each time one of his buses pulled into Chicago packed with heroin, Vega’s crew unloaded the cargo, prosecutors said.
In April 2014, Mexican authorities nabbed Mario Casarrubias, calling him “one of the main drug transporters to Chicago.” He is said to have died in a Mexican prison. Leadership of the cartel then passed to his brother Adan Casarrubias Salgado, who also worked as a Chicago pizza delivery man.
According to authorities, the hyperviolent Guerreros Unidos cartel has played a far smaller role in smuggling heroin and other drugs to Chicago than vast Mexican organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel once headed by imprisoned kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, whose sons are now facing charges in federal court here.