A Texas trucking company owner who used warehouses in Naperville and Sugar Grove as part of his Mexico-to-Chicago drug pipeline has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.
Jose Farias, a 44-year-old Mexican resident whose business was located in McAllen, Texas, worked with truck drivers in 2015 and 2016 to transport dozens of kilograms of narcotics to the Chicago area by hiding them in the hollowed-out wheel axles of tractor-trailers, a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago said.
The drivers would distribute the drugs to sellers and hide the money they received in their trucks to drive back to Texas and Mexico, the release said.
In addition to the Naperville and Sugar Grove warehouses, Farias also used an abandoned auto lot in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood and an auto repair shop in Channahon as part of the organization, officials said. When law enforcement officers searched the locations, they found 54 kilograms of heroin, about 17 kilograms of cocaine and $630,200 in cash, the report said.
Farias was convicted on drug conspiracy and possession charges by a federal jury in Chicago in 2021. The sentence was handed down Monday by U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey, the release said.
