Fridman Fels & Soto co-founder Adam Fels and Lynn Kirkpatrick, U.S. Attorney's Office, Miami Fl. Courtesy photos

CRIMINAL LAW

Adam Fels, Andrea Goldbarg and Lynn Kirkpatrick

U.S. Attorney's Office

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's reputation preceded him when he was extradited by Mexico to the United States. His exploits as a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel were dramatized in the Netflix series with his nickname as the title.

Guzman was reputed to be the biggest smuggler of drugs into the United States, and he faced federal indictments by New York and Miami grand juries detailing his criminal history. But to gain a conviction, prosecutors needed to move beyond the myths and present facts in the New York trial to tie Guzman to smuggled drugs.

Two witnesses independently put Guzman on a 10-year-old phone call to arrange a Chicago-area heroin delivery. This is the kind of detail needed to implicate Guzman.

Miami prosecutors Adam Fels, now with Fridman Fels & Soto, Andrea Goldbarg and Lynn Kirkpatrick helped assemble the case that resulted in conviction and a life sentence plus a $12.6 billion forfeiture.

Describe a key piece of testimony, evidence, ruling or order in the case and your view of how it influenced the outcome. 

We gave the opening statements for the trial on Nov. 13, 2018. Precisely a decade earlier on Nov. 13, 2008, DEA special agents and task force officers covered the pickup of 20 kilograms of heroin in a Chicago-area Home Depot parking lot. The intended recipient was a government cooperator named Pedro Flores. He recorded two calls with Guzman in which Flores agreed to provide $1 million to Guzman's people in Chicago. Guzman placed another man on the phone — whose voice Flores didn't recognize — and this man gave Flores a phone number and asked him to speak with "Lazaro."

A few months before trial, we interviewed a witness named Alex Cifuentes, who lived with Guzman in 2008. We asked him to talk about the people who used to pick up money in the U.S. He ticked off a short list, but when he mentioned "Lazaro," I pulled out my laptop, played him the call between Flores, Guzman and the mystery man, and asked if he recognized the latter. Cifuentes listened and then replied: "That's me."

Of the three people on the call, one was the defendant, and the other two were government witnesses who did not know each other and had never met.