Wives of Chicago twins who helped convict El Chapo charged in money laundering case

Pedro Flores (left) and his twin brother Margarito Flores, once Chicago’s biggest drug traffickers, rose from street-level Chicago drug dealers to the top of the cartel world — and, when they got caught, helped bring down Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, the Mexican drug kingpin who headed the Sinaloa cartel | U.S. Marshals Service

At sentencing in 2015, a federal judge told the brothers they’d always have to worry about being hunted down by cartel hit men after cooperating with prosecutors against El Chapo.

The wives of two of the most significant drug informants in U.S. history have been named as defendants in a money laundering case in Chicago, according to federal prosecutors.

Vivianna Lopez, also known as Mia Flores, and Valerie Gaytan, also known as Olivia Flores, have been charged with conspiring to launder illicit drug proceeds for more than a decade, U.S. Attorney John Lausch’s office announced.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this year that their husbands, Pedro and Margarito Flores, were once again under federal investigation.

That news came six years after a federal judge in Chicago rewarded them with relatively light 14-year prison sentences in exchange for their extraordinary cooperation against Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera.

The Flores brothers — known as the Twins — have admitted they smuggled at least 1,500 kilograms of Sinaloa cartel cocaine into the United States every month between 2005 and 2008. And, according to their guilty pleas, they sent more than $930 million in “bulk cash” back to the cartel in Mexico.

Meanwhile, a court filing last year revealed that “the government no longer holds the view that all recoverable proceeds were turned over to the government.”

This is a developing story.

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