Rodrigo Alexis Jimenez-Perez
CHICAGO — A former Columbus resident has been sentenced to federal prison for his role in a drug trafficking case that involved a private jet that authorities say landed at the Gary/Chicago International Airport with 220 pounds of cocaine on board.
Rodrigo Alexis Jimenez-Perez, 27, was sentenced Jan. 12 in a plea agreement with prosecutors to three years in federal prison, according to filings in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
In September, Jimenez-Perez pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to possess with intent to distribute at least 11 pounds of a controlled substance, court records show.
Jimenez-Perez was arrested in November 2021 in downtown Chicago following a stake out by Drug Enforcement Administration agents of an undisclosed hotel about a block from the city’s famed Magnificent Mile shopping district.
As the agents observed the hotel, a 2015 Toyota Highlander with an Indiana license plate pulled up near the hotel.
The driver of the vehicle, later identified as Jimenez-Perez, got out and helped a suspect the agents had under surveillance load a suitcase that “appeared to be significantly weighted down” into the trunk of the Toyota Highlander.
The agents had been following the suspect, later identified as co-defendant Sebastian Vazquez-Gamez, since he arrived at Gary/Chicago International Airport in a private jet a couple hours before on a flight from Mexico that stopped over in Houston that officials suspected had millions of dollars of cocaine on board.
Court filings state that DEA officials believe that the plane, a 1987 Bombardier CL-600 Twin Jet, was loaded with 220 pounds of cocaine in Houston after clearing customs.
In downtown Chicago, the DEA agents performed a traffic stop and found about 176 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of the vehicle that Jimenez-Perez was driving. According to a plea agreement, Jimenez-Perez had been instructed by one of his co-defendants to transport the drugs to the Indianapolis area.
DEA agents later search Vazquez-Gamez’s hotel room and seized another 44 pounds of cocaine.
According to a plea agreement, Jimenez-Perez had previously been paid $500 to pick up $30,000 in drug proceeds in the Cincinnati area at the request of co-defendant Sergio Ivan Blas.
Blas, who was currently awaiting sentencing as of Monday, admitted in a September plea agreement that he had been conducting bulk pick-ups of cash in Indiana and other locations in the Midwest for an undisclosed individual starting in or about 2021, picking up an estimated $5.2 million in drug proceeds before his arrest — the equivalent of the street value of just over a metric ton of marijuana.
Blas also admitted in the plea agreement that he would pick up cash, count it and transfer it to other individuals, as well as distribute packages he believed contained marijuana.
In November 2021, the undisclosed individual, identified in court filings as “Individual A,” asked Blas to conduct a pick-up in Chicago, but he “was too busy with work at his restaurant” and offered Jimenez-Perez the chance to go in his place.
Jimenez-Perez, for his part, is no stranger to Bartholomew County law enforcement and has spent time in Bartholomew County Jail, according to court records and local records.
In August 2016, Jimenez-Perez was sentenced to a 60-day suspended sentence in Bartholomew Superior Court after being convicted of illegal consumption of an alcoholic beverage.
In February 2019, he was convicted twice of operating a vehicle while intoxicated in Bartholomew Superior Court, receiving a one-year suspended jail sentence and one year of probation and a 60-day suspended sentence. The convictions stemmed from arrests in September 2017 and January 2018.
In June 2021, Jimenez-Perez was convicted in Bartholomew Superior Court of operating a motor vehicle without ever receiving a license and sentenced to a fine.
Local court records listed multiple addresses for Jimenez-Perez in Columbus, including residences on Franklin Street, Cottage Avenue and one address in the Heritage Heights Mobile Home Community.
Court records state that Jimenez-Perez was born in Mexico City and brought to the United States illegally by his parents when he was 8 years old, originally settling in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Jimenez-Perez, who is married and has a 10-month-old daughter, moved to Columbus in 2014 and has held jobs in restaurants and automotive repair, according to court filings.
Jimenez-Perez is a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program but will likely face deportation to Mexico after his sentence is complete, his attorney said in court filings.
As of Monday, Jimenez-Perez was being held in at an administrative security correctional center in downtown Chicago, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Vazquez-Gamez pleaded guilty this past October to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute at least 11 pounds of a controlled substance and was sentenced Jan. 13 to 3.5 years in federal prison.
Government prosecutors have asked for Blas to be sentenced to 11 years, three months in federal prison.
