A Mexican illegal immigrant has been jailed for 25 years in the United States for orchestrating a vast drug and gun trafficking operation from inside a Georgia prison cell, as the Trump administration escalates its crackdown on foreign nationals running criminal enterprises on American soil.
The US Department of Justice announced this week that Servando Corona Penaloza, 38, used a contraband mobile phone smuggled into a Georgia state prison to direct the sale of more than 1,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and fentanyl, while also coordinating the purchase of more than 200 military-style firearms that were trafficked to Mexico for use by drug cartels.
US District Judge Mark H. Cohen handed down the sentence on Wednesday. At least 15 years of the federal term will run consecutively to a 30-year state prison sentence Penaloza is already serving for a drug trafficking offence in Gwinnett County. He will also be subject to 10 years of supervised release.
According to the Justice Department, fourteen other members of Penaloza’s organisation have already been convicted and sentenced, with two further defendants awaiting sentencing in the coming months.
US Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said in a public statement: “These defendants flooded our community with deadly drugs and used the proceeds of their drug deals to arm narco-terrorist Mexican cartels with high-powered weapons of war.”
The investigation was the product of a Homeland Security Task Force initiative set up under Executive Order 14159, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion”, which President Donald Trump signed on the first day of his second term in office. The task force was created as a cross-government effort to dismantle criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organisations and human smuggling rings operating in the US and abroad.
“As a result of the exceptional and dedicated work by our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners under the auspices of Atlanta’s Homeland Security Task Force, there are no more drugs coming in — or firearms going out — at Corona Penaloza’s direction,” Hertzberg said.
The probe began in March 2024, when federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives noticed a pattern of cash purchases of M249S firearms in the Atlanta area. The military-style weapons retail at between $10,000 and $12,000 per unit. At the same time, the Drug Enforcement Administration uncovered evidence that Penaloza was brokering large-scale cocaine and methamphetamine deals and arranging the importation of hundreds of kilograms of fentanyl on behalf of a major Mexican drug cartel — all from his prison cell, using a smuggled phone.
The ATF later established that Penaloza and his associates had arranged the purchase and trafficking of at least 223 guns to Mexico, with a combined value of more than $700,000. Most of the weapons, the Justice Department said, were paid for in cash generated by the drug sales.
Penaloza pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy to traffic firearms, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine, and conspiracy to engage in concealment money laundering.
In a separate case in Oregon, two Romanian illegal immigrants have pleaded guilty to running a food stamp fraud scheme. Aramis Manolea, 35, and Cristina Manolea, 35, admitted conspiracy to defraud the United States in a case brought jointly by the Justice Department and the US Department of Agriculture. The pair share a surname, although neither court documents nor local news reports have made clear how they are related.
Between April and November 2025, the two used stolen Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) account details and PINs to fraudulently purchase goods eligible under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. According to the Justice Department, the items were then loaded into vans and trucks and shipped to California. The total value of the stolen benefits stood at around $27,000.
In November, a federal grand jury in Portland indicted the pair on 26 counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, unauthorised use of access devices, possession, production and trafficking of device-making equipment, and aggravated identity theft.
The two are due to be sentenced in late May and face a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Both have agreed to pay restitution.
