A Mexican national with what the FBI called “probable” ties to a transnational drug cartel was sentenced Thursday in a Casper federal court to 15 years in federal prison, for selling meth on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Oscar Espinoza-Duarte had also pleaded guilty to using a gun to traffic drugs and possessing a gun as an illegal alien.
U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl on Thursday sentenced Espinoza-Duarte to 15 years in prison, with a deportation to follow. The judge ordered Espinoza-Duarte to pay $400 in special assessments and $1,000 in restitution, court documents say.
Skavdahl on Tuesday sentenced Espinoza-Duarte’s co-defendant, German Ortiz-Esparza, to 10 years in prison, also with deportation to follow.
Ortiz-Esparza has been ordered to pay $200 in special assessments and $500 in restitution, according to the minutes sheet from his sentencing hearing.
Red Package
Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agents had been investigating Espinoza Duarte’s circle at least as early as October 2024, says a complaint filed in his case.
Someone implicated Espinoza Duarte.
The informant’s meth sources said their supplier was a Mexican man named Oscar.
Espinoza Duarte lived on a highway near Kinnear. Agents monitored the home Feb. 6. At about 12:59 p.m., a man arrived in a white Ford pickup and entered the home empty-handed.
At 1:20 p.m., agents watched the man leave the home with a red package in his hands, the complaint says.
They followed the man south into Ethete, where he parked at a convenience store and got into the passenger seat of another vehicle. That vehicle had expired plates, agents noticed.
The document says agents stopped the vehicle and identified Collie Judson Warren — sitting in the vehicle — as the man they’d seen leaving the rural home with a red package.
Agents noted the package in the bed of the truck and in plain sight and could tell that it was a red Budweiser beer box with clear-colored baggies and what looked like meth nestled inside, the complaint says.
They secured the box, tested and weighed the substance. It tested presumptive positive for meth and weighed about 915 grams (2 pounds), reportedly.
Warren’s sentencing hearing is set for Aug. 22, in the Cheyenne-based U.S. District Court for Wyoming.
Another man associated with the case, Tyler Riser, is set for sentencing an Aug. 11 sentencing on drug and gun charges, in Skavdahl’s court in Casper.
The FBI said in February that agents had arrested a male Mexican national, who’s in the country illegally, the day prior in Fremont County. He has “probable ties to a known transnational drug trafficking organization,” the statement says.
