Two years for Honduran ‘Queenpin’ who ran fentanyl ring while on San Francisco ankle monitor
A Honduran asylum seeker who led her family’s drug-trafficking ring while wearing a San Francisco ankle monitor was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment today at the city’s federal courthouse.
Cristel Cruz-Banegas made between $5,000 and $11,000 a day selling fentanyl. In a single transaction with an undercover FBI agent she sold four ounces of the drug for $2,000. In a one-day raid rounding up the organization, law enforcement found more than 35 pounds of fentanyl, $430,000 cash and a gun.
“This is indeed serious conduct,” said U.S. District Judge Rita Lin. “This is a case in which Ms Cruz-Banegas was engaging in multiple instances in which she was selling multiple ounces of fentanyl.”
“Even after she was arrested she went back to doing it again.”
The defendant earlier pleaded guilty to fentanyl distribution.
Cruz-Banegas was arrested on the evening of April 16 2024 as she stood outside the main branch of San Francisco library in the city’s Civic Center. In her bag, officers found two and a half pounds of fentanyl, along with smaller quantities of other drugs, $1,812 in cash and a pair of digital scales.
She was in custody until May 29 when Judge Eric Fleming set bail and ordered that she be released on home detention. On June 28 Judge Fleming loosened her home detention to allow her to work and, on October 7, Cruz-Banegas asked that all restrictions be lifted and that she merely wear an ankle monitor.
She had carried on trading herself and directing other family members to deal on her behalf.
On October 16 an FBI undercover agent contacted Cruz-Banegas to arrange a drug purchase. She sent a courier to meet the agent and sell eight ounces of fentanyl. Asked to supply more drugs, the courier went to Cruz-Banegas’ house, resupplied and returned to provide them.
San Francisco Sheriff’s officials found that Cruz-Banegas’ ankle monitor showed her traveling frequently between Oakland and San Francisco in the early hours of the morning.
In a series of raids conducted on November 19 – in which federal law enforcement recovered more than 35 pounds of fentanyl and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash – Cruz-Banegas, her two aunts Cesia and Jessy, and a man who lived in her home, were arrested.
She confessed to investigators that she made between $5,000 and $11,000 selling drugs. $126,000 was found during a search of her residence along with nearly six pounds of fentanyl and a Glock pistol.
“Cruz-Banegas’ willingness to return immediately to drug trafficking after her San Francisco state arrest, and subsequent release, demonstrates a troubling pattern of recidivism and disregard for the law,” assistant U.S. attorney Charles Bisesto wrote in a sentencing recommendation to the court.
“This was not a single lapse in judgment, but an entrenched criminal practice carried out for profit despite direct exposure to law enforcement consequences.”
Bisesto asked the court to impose a 42 month sentence.
Describing her client as “a youthful offender with no criminal history,” defense attorney Alexandra McClure told the court that Cruz-Banegas came to the U.S. to seek asylum, had fallen on hard times, and then fallen into dealing fentanyl. A 15-month sentence was fair in the circumstances, she said.
The court was told Cruz-Banegas has a four-year-old child who lives in Honduras with her mother.
Today in courtroom 15 of San Francisco federal courthouse, Cruz-Banegas was sentenced to 2 years in prison. This struck a balance, said Judge Lin, between the scale of the criminality and the substantial mitigation presented – not least what was described as significant childhood abuse and trauma.
“From the bottom of my heart I want to offer you my deepest apology for the irreparable damage that I’ve caused – something I’ll never do again,” said a tearful Cruz-Banegas through a Spanish interpreter.
Cruz-Banegas’ aunt, illegal alien Cesia Ramirez-Barahona, pleaded guilty in February to fentanyl distribution after the FBI found 30 pounds of the drug and more than $175,000 cash at her Oakland home. At the time of the raid she was on bail in a San Francisco drug case – picked up while on bail in another drug case.
She is free awaiting sentencing because she was pregant at the time of her arrest and recently gave birth. Notwithstanding the money and quarter of a million dollars worth of narcotics that were found, her delivery and postpartum care, a court was earlier told, is being paid for by Medi-Cal.
Her other aunt, illegal alien Jessy Banegas-Barahona, pleaded guilty in January to fentanyl distribution and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment. In her home was found more than five pounds of fentanyl and nearly $127,000.
Another member of the group, Allen Pacheco Padilla, who lived with Cruz-Banegas and himself sold more than half a pound of fentanyl to an undercover FBI agent, was given a time-served six-month sentence in May and sent for deportation.
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