Sinaloa man to serve 10 years for weapon smuggling

Forty-one-year-old Luis Enrique Beltran from Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for weapon smuggling on Tuesday, according to the Department of Justice.

Beltran had previously pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with conspiracy to unlawfully export and aiding and abetting the unlawful possession of machine guns, grenades, and grenade launchers.

He was also extradited from Mexico to the United States in 2017.

According to the DOJ, agents received information in 2011 that Beltran was trafficking military-grade weapons from the U.S. into Mexico and later discovered that Beltran sought to buy and smuggle up to 10 machine guns with attached grenade launchers and 50 grenades each week.

Beltran was sentenced to the maximum sentence allowed by law due to the severity of his crimes and his role a a leader of an extensive weapons-trafficking conspiracy.

DOJ said all of this activity was orchestrated from Mexico and also directed several other co-conspirators to smuggle over 50,000 rounds of ammunition and hundreds of high-capacity ammunition magazines.