 | Former drug kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix was sentenced to 25 years in prison for leading a Tijuana-based ring that raised Mexico's drug violence to new levels. The gang was known for dissolving bodies in drums of acid or burning them in the desert. Noting that the plea deal set 25 years as the maximum, the judge said the 58-year-old drug lord deserved life. |  Arellano Felix and his late brother, Ramon, the cartel's top enforcer, ruled the criminal enterprise from 1986 to 2002. |
 Ramon Arellano Felix wearing shorts. | Aided by corrupt Mexican officials, the Arellanos killed anyone who stepped on their California-Mexico border turf. The cartel was fictionally portrayed in the Hollywood film 'Traffic'. Arellano Felix will not be released until he is almost 80. He will be sent to Mexico to serve 22 more years. Ramon Arellano Felix was killed in 2002. El Chapo was reputed to have said ... "If anything had ever really given me pleasure, it was to have killed Ramon Arellano Felix." They arranged for police to pull him over in the city of Mazatlan, Sinaloa. Younger brother Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, who took over in 2002, was sentenced in San Diego to life in prison in 2007. |
