Cartel leader’s Ex-Wife Pleads Guilty To Paying Florida School Tuition Despite US Sanctions

The ex-wife and current partner of a leader of the Mexican drug trafficking organization Los Cuinis pleaded guilty Friday to willfully violating U.S. counternarcotics sanctions by arranging more than $500,000 in tuition payments to a Florida preparatory school and athletic academy, the Justice Department said.

Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arevalo, 45, of Mexico, admitted to criminal violations of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Act for transactions and dealings in property with IMG Academy, a school and athletic training facility headquartered in Bradenton, Fla., that her child attended, according to court documents.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Amaral Arevalo on Aug. 19, 2015, for assisting the international narcotics trafficking activities of Los Cuinis, a sanctioned drug cartel. The designation barred her from engaging in transactions or dealings within the U.S. financial system.

Despite that prohibition, Amaral Arevalo entered into contracts with IMG Academy for her child to attend the school and arranged for $504,497.48 in tuition payments, court documents say.

Los Cuinis is closely aligned with the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG, which the State Department designated a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025.

“Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arevalo willfully violated U.S. counternarcotic sanctions by funneling over half a million dollars in illicit drug proceeds as tuition payments through IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, despite being prohibited from engaging in transactions within the U.S. financial system,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

“The Kingpin Act exists to cut off foreign narcotics traffickers, their businesses, and their operatives from engaging in transactions within the U.S. financial system, and prevents them from using American institutions to receive or move drug money,” Duva said. “The Criminal Division will use every tool available to dismantle drug cartels, protect the American people, and ensure financial transactions in the United States are free of sanctioned drug proceeds.”

“Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arevalo exploited a school and training facility, a place families trust to invest in their children’s futures, as a vehicle to funnel millions in illicit drug proceeds for CJNG, one of the Western Hemisphere’s most violent and destabilizing drug cartels,” said Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terrance C. Cole.

“Her guilty plea exposes the calculated audacity and sophisticated reach of cartel financial networks operating inside the United States,” Cole said. “DEA, alongside our law enforcement partners, remains committed to pursuing the leaders, financiers, and enablers who sustain these terrorist enterprises.”

Amaral Arevalo’s ex-husband and current partner, Gerardo Gonzalez Valencia, was sentenced July 21, 2023, to life in prison for conspiring to distribute tonnage quantities of cocaine for importation into the United States.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a $1.72 million settlement with IMG Academy on Feb. 12 over yearly tuition agreements with people designated as Specially Designated Nationals for their ties to a sanctioned Mexico-based cartel, and for receiving and processing payments under those agreements.

Amaral Arevalo faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10 million fine. Sentencing is set for Dec. 2.

The DEA’s Special Operations Division Bilateral Investigations Unit Los Angeles is investigating the case. Chief Kaitlin Sahni of the Criminal Division’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Unit and trial attorneys Lernik Begian, Douglas Meisel and Nicole Lockhart of the division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section are prosecuting.

The case is part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, an interagency effort established by Executive Order 14159 that targets criminal cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling and trafficking rings.