CHICAGO — Posing for selfies with bricks of cocaine may rank among the worst ideas in the drug trafficking business, but that’s exactly what federal prosecutors say 33-year-old Jose Ramirez-Arellano of Chicago did with some frequency. It’s a decision he’s probably regretting.
Ramirez-Arellano was sentenced to ten years in federal prison this month, the mandatory minimum sentence, after pleading guilty to receiving a package containing 11 pounds of cocaine at his Chicago home. But investigators allegedly found evidence that linked him to even more drug trafficking activity.
Around Valentine’s Day 2022, Ramirez-Arellano used WhatsApp to arrange to receive the shipment from California.
“Send it … Send it the right way. I don’t want any failures,” he allegedly told the supplier. The “right way” apparently involved sending it to his house but addressing it to a fictitious woman named “Stephanie Rodriguez.”
Unbeknownst to Ramirez-Arellano, federal investigators were already on his trail. They intercepted the shipment, opened it, and found a clear banker’s box wrapped in cellophane that contained five bricks of cocaine, officials said. At least one of the bricks was marked with a scorpion logo, while another was marked with the image of a pineapple.
Agents replaced the cocaine with a “sham substance,” carefully repackaged the shipment, and delivered it to Ramirez-Arellano’s home, a federal complaint said. Within an hour of its arrival, Ramirez-Arellano took an Uber from his house to a downtown Chicago hotel with the “sham cocaine” stuffed inside a garbage bag, according to the complaint. He dropped the bag and ran when officers tried to arrest him outside the hotel.
About two weeks earlier, Ramirez-Arellano received an identical shipment, prosecutors claimed, citing a “selfie-style video” on his WhatsApp account as evidence. They said he opened the shipment containing a cellophane-wrapped banker’s box “just like the one” they intercepted two weeks later.
The video showed Ramirez-Arellano holding a wrapped box and bricks of cocaine imprinted with the logos of a pineapple and a scorpion.
While searching his house, investigators found a U.S. Postal Service shipping receipt. That shipment was intercepted in New York a month before he got arrested. Prosecutors said it contained six kilograms of fentanyl. That’s equal to 6 million fatal doses of fentanyl.
Three days after Ramirez-Arellano’s arrest, authorities intercepted another shipment addressed to “Stephanie Rodriguez” that was sent to his home. Officials said it contained $6,000 cash inside a children’s book.
Prosecutors said Ramirez-Arellano’s fingerprints were also found on and inside a parcel investigators intercepted in November 2021 that contained $37,500 cash. Another WhatsApp video allegedly showed him cutting open a kilo of cocaine in August 2021.
His defense attorney conceded that nothing could prevent Ramirez-Arellano from receiving a sentence of at least ten years in federal prison. But the lawyer argued against any sentence longer than that, saying Ramirez-Arellano had been a heavy drinker and pot user from the age of 15 until his arrest in the cocaine case. Those habits resulted in three DUI arrests between the ages of 22 and 24.
And, the attorney argued, “There is nothing to indicate that Mr. Ramirez-Arellano was the type of mastermind or kingpin contemplated by Congress as deserving of the ten-year mandatory minimum.”
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