MIAMI — A man and woman officials said were tied to Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa drug cartel each received long prison sentences in connection with a 2022 “execution-style murder” at a “couples-only” hotel near the Miami International Airport, officials with the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.
Tsvia Kol, 37, of Hallandale Beach, and Jimmy Sanchez, 38, of Spring Valley, California, both pleaded guilty to using a firearm to cause death and conspiring to distribute at least 500 grams of methamphetamine.
Investigators said the two were among those responsible for shooting and killing Julio Gonzalez, 46, of Hialeah Gardens, at the Aladdin Hotel, located at 901 S. Royal Poinciana Blvd. in Miami Springs — about a block away from the airport — on Nov. 29, 2022.
Investigators said the killing was linked to a “missing package containing about 11 pounds of methamphetamine, the street value of which totaled approximately $90,000,” which the duo mistakenly believed that Gonzalez stole. Instead, law enforcement officials had seized the meth.
They said Kol and Sanchez, the latter of whom had flown in from San Diego to MIA the night of the killing, arranged a 12-hour room rental to confront, and later kill, Gonzalez.
Kol had been described in a Miami-Dade arrest warrant as “a known high-ranking Sinaloa cartel member with a history of international organized crime syndicate that specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering” and the ex-wife of Wilfredo Nunes Gallardo, another high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel.
The criminal organization was once run by the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
The case was originally investigated by what was then the Miami-Dade Police Department before turning federal.
“This started as a drug deal gone wrong and ended in an execution,” U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said in a statement. “The defendants armed themselves, set up the victim, and carried out a killing over a missing drug package that had already been seized by law enforcement.”
Prosecutors said Kol received a nearly 20-year sentence while Sanchez received a sentence totaling more than 27 years.
Reding Quiñones said that the sentences “reflect the seriousness of that violence.”
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