Mexican National Found Guilty for Drug Trafficking in E. Washington

A jury returned a guilty verdict against a Mexican national accused of trafficking hundreds of pounds of controlled substances in Okanogan County.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Washington says the Washington jury found 45-year-old Luis Esquivel-Bolanos guilty of trafficking fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine in eastern Washington and Montana.

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In April 2023, authorities executed search warrants at numerous homes in Okanogan County and found 161,000 fentanyl-laced pills and approximately 80 pounds of methamphetamine with six pounds of heroin and more than two pounds of cocaine.

They also recovered a dozen firearms. Bolanos inhabited the trailer home where detectives recovered the drugs.

"The volume of drugs removed from Eastern Washington and Montana communities, including from Tribal land, is staggering, said Acting U.S Attorney Richard Barker. "At the time of Mr. Esquivel-Bolanos’s arrest, and even now, the seizure from the Medrano-Bolanos drug trafficking organization was one of the largest ever in rural Washington."

Court documents show Bolanos is a member of a drug trafficking organization flooding the Oroville area and the Colville Indian reservation with methamphetamine and fentanyl. The organization spread as far as central Montana's Tribal land.

Evidence at trial established the organization used threatening tactics such as threatening to kill confidential informants and strip searching the informant.

Bolanos and other members organized to go to a home of a person suspected of stealing more than 30 pounds of methamphetamine from the organization to kill the suspected thief.

Bolanos faces a potential maximum term of life in prison and possible removal from the United States. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 16.