Daniel Pérez Rojas—alias “Cachetes” and “Cachetón 49”—a former Mexican military officer turned high-ranking lieutenant of the Los Zetas cartel, pleaded guilty on April 22, 2026, in a U.S. federal court to charges of conspiracy to engage in international drug trafficking. This proceeding is part of the case file in which brothers Miguel Ángel and Omar Treviño Morales—known as “El Z-40” and “El Z-42,” former leaders of the criminal organization—are also charged.
According to U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) court documents, Pérez Rojas deserted from the Mexican Army’s special forces in 2001 to join Los Zetas, an organization founded by former military personnel that originally operated as the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel. Within the criminal structure, he rose to hold security positions for the organization’s then-leaders, until being designated in 2007 as the chosen successor to leader Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano. The defendant was extradited to the United States in August 2025, in accordance with Mexico’s National Security Law.
Pérez Rojas pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine and 1,000 kilograms or more of marijuana intended for unlawful distribution within U.S. territory. Sentencing has been scheduled for October 30, 2026, at which time the defendant will face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. A federal district judge will determine the final sentence after considering U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other legal factors.
A. Tysen Duva, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, noted that Pérez Rojas was responsible for widespread violence, corruption, and intimidation in Mexico and other countries, which enabled the cartel to continue its narcotics trafficking operations. “Today’s conviction serves as a stark reminder that the Criminal Division will aggressively pursue violent cartel members and hold them accountable for the harm they have caused both here and abroad,” the federal official stated in a press release. For his part, Matthew W. Allen, Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), affirmed that “no one escapes justice in the United States.”
Among the facts documented in the case file, it stands out that in 2008, Pérez Rojas traveled to Guatemala, where Los Zetas had paid millions of dollars in bribes to the newly elected president. During that trip, the defendant and other cartel members met with Guatemalan government officials to negotiate the organization’s expansion into that country, and with local drug traffickers to coordinate the supply of cocaine. In the course of one of those meetings, Pérez Rojas and his companions killed a Guatemalan rival as well as several of his associates and bodyguards.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is leading the investigation. Prosecutors Kirk Handrich, Hunter Smith, and Erik Cervantes, of the Money Laundering, Asset Forfeiture, and Narcotics Section of the Criminal Division, are prosecuting the case. The DOJ’s Office of International Affairs provided assistance in the transfer of the defendant from Mexico.
Pérez Rojas’s guilty plea comes within the context of the proceedings being conducted simultaneously against the Treviño Morales brothers, who were extradited on February 27, 2025—pursuant to Mexico’s National Security Law—and are currently incarcerated in separate U.S. federal prisons. Both men pleaded not guilty on March 14, 2025, before Judge Trevor McFadden at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (based in Washington, D.C.) to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, drug trafficking conspiracy, firearms offenses, and international money laundering conspiracy. On September 12, 2025, the DOJ informed Judge McFadden that it would not seek the death penalty against either of the brothers—a decision authorized by Attorney General Pamela Jo Bondi.
The case against the Treviño Morales brothers involves an evidentiary record comprising 4.9 million files collected by U.S. and Mexican government agencies; these files include 490,000 intercepted telephone calls, intelligence reports, and court documents provided by DEA offices in Houston, Dallas, and Laredo. The next status hearing has been scheduled for May 1, 2026. In these same proceedings, “El Cachetes” had appeared virtually during the hearing on October 14, 2025, as one of the defendants named in the case file; he has now become the first among them to formally enter a guilty plea. The massacres attributed to the Treviño Morales brothers—particularly the one in Allende, Coahuila (in which dozens of people were abducted, murdered, and incinerated over the course of March 18, 19, and 20, 2011), and the one in San Fernando, Tamaulipas (where 72 migrants were killed in August 2010)—remain central reference points in the U.S. case file. Victims’ organizations, such as *Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Coahuila* (Fuundec) and *Alas de Esperanza*, have demanded that the U.S. federal proceedings result in sanctions commensurate with the documented crimes, given the absence of comprehensive convictions in Mexico. “We hope that the U.S. justice system can accomplish what the Mexican government—and, in particular, the government of the State of Coahuila—failed to do,” stated Daniel Durán, a member of Fuundec.
The case is part of Operation Recover America, a nationwide initiative by the DOJ that mobilizes federal resources to combat illegal immigration, drug cartels, and transnational criminal organizations. The Los Zetas organization was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State (DOS) on February 20, 2025.
Source: Zeta Tijuana
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