MEXICAN DRUG KINGPIN PLEADS GUILTY IN SAN DIEGO

SAN DIEGO - Mexican
drug cartel kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix pleaded guilty Wednesday
in U.S. federal court to racketeering and conspiracy to launder money.

The plea avoided the spectacle of a trial for one of the world's most
powerful drug lords of the 1990s. The agreement calls for a maximum of
25 years in prison. Federal prosecutors agreed to dismiss other
charges that could have brought a sentence of 140 years in prison if
convicted. Sentencing was scheduled for April 2.

The 58-year-old Arellano Felix said little during the proceeding. As
part of the agreement, Arellano Felix acknowledged leading an
organization that distributed hundreds of tons of cocaine and
marijuana in the United States and raked in hundreds of millions of
dollars in proceeds that were sent back to Mexico, sometimes stuffed
inside cars.

Arellano Felix headed a once-mighty cartel that came to power in
Tijuana, Mexico, in the late 1980s. He was extradited from Mexico in
April 2011.