“Sol Prendido” and “Morogris” for Borderland Beat
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| Tomás Yarrington Ruvalcaba was born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, the bastion of the Gulf Cartel. He was served as Mayor of Matamoros from 1993 to 1995, before he ran for Governor of Tamaulipas. |
Tomas Yarrington, the former governor of the border state of Tamaulipas, was sentenced to (9) nine years in prison by a US federal judge in Houston, Texas.
Yarrington was the Governor of Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005. During his governorship, he was accused of protecting the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas by taking millions in bribes. Among his formal charges include racketeering, drug trafficking, money laundering and bank fraud. After fleeing Mexico, Yarrington was arrested in Florence, Italy, in 2017 and extradited to the U.S. the following year.
In 2021, Yarrington pleaded guilty and said he accepted $3.5 million in illegal bribe money and used it fraudulently to purchase multiple assets, including airplanes, a South Padre Island condo, a residence in Port Isabel, homes in McAllen and an Austin suburb and a partial ownership in a planned mixed-use development off La Cantera Parkway in San Antonio.
As part of the plea, Yarrington also detailed how he accepted bribes from individuals and private companies in Mexico to do business with the state of Tamaulipas while he served as governor.
This plea, however, meant that his alleged crimes that directly tied him to Mexican cartels were dropped.
“The governor is happy to put this behind him and happy that the court and the government both determined that he had no involvement with the cartels, and his sentence reflected that,” Flood said.
“Even if you are governor of a Mexican state, we will not stand idly by when you use your position to wrongfully fill your pockets and violate the laws of the United States.” said Alamdar Hamdani, the U.S. Attorney in Houston. “Today’s prison sentence for Yarrington concludes a multi-year, multi-agency international investigation spanning two continents concluding in bringing a corrupt politician to justice.”
Originally, Yarrington faced up to life in prison if he had been convicted of the racketeering or drug trafficking conspiracy charges the U.S. government leveled against him eight years ago.
In more than 15,000 digital documents consisting of 100,000 pages, US investigators detailed how Yarrington took bribes from the Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, and the Beltran Leyva Cartel, and actively participated in drug trafficking operations. Authorities from multiple law enforcement agencies had pictures, information about warrants, seizures, and protected witness testimonies framing him as a top cartel figure.
Borderland Beat reports show that Yarrington was a key figure in the Gulf Cartel’s ascension as one of Mexico’s leading criminal groups in the late 1990s and early 2000s. During that era, the cartel was headed by kingpin Osiel Cardenas Guillen. US prosecutors walked away from the allegations and dismissed these serious charges after Yarrington pleaded guilty.