Man faces up to 40 years in prison for role in southeastern Massachusetts drug trafficking operation

BOSTON – A man pleaded guilty last week to his role in a wide-ranging cocaine trafficking conspiracy.

Luis Mejia Guerrero, 61, of Boston, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine. At the conclusion of the plea hearing, Guerrero was taken into custody and detained pending sentencing, which U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton scheduled for April 12, 2022. Guerrero was indicted in June 2019.

According to court documents, in the fall of 2018, federal and state law enforcement began investigating a violent Brockton drug crew headed by Djuna Goncalves. The investigation revealed that Goncalves worked with others to distribute large quantities of fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, cocaine base and marijuana throughout southeastern Massachusetts from a base of operations at a family home in Brockton. The neighborhood surrounding the crew’s Brockton base has been the scene of numerous murders, shootings and other crimes of violence for several years.

The investigation identified Guerrero and other members of his Boston-based drug cell as cocaine suppliers to Goncalves’s crew. Guerrero and others distributed cocaine on a daily basis out of a stash house in Dorchester. In May 2019, Guerrero was arrested along with his partner, Luis Alfredo Baez, after agents intercepted a kilogram of cocaine being transported to the stash house.

On June 23, 2021, Baez was sentenced by Judge Gorton to 41 months in prison. Goncalves pleaded guilty on Oct. 7, 2021 and is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 9, 2022. Under the terms of Djuna Goncalves’s plea agreement, he will serve a minimum of 15 years in prison and the government will recommend a sentence of 308 months in prison.

In total, 17 individuals were indicted in wide-ranging drug trafficking conspiracy reaching from Boston to Brockton to Lawrence to Cape Cod. Guerrero is the 17th and final defendant to plead guilty in this case.

The charge of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine provides for a sentence of at least five years and up to 40 years in prison, at least four years of supervised release and a fine of up to $5 million. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based on the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Acting United States Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendell; Matthew B. Millhollin, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Boston; Brian D. Boyle, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration, New England Field Division; Colonel Christopher Mason, Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police; Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz; and Brockton Police Chief Emanuel Gomes made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christopher Pohl and Alathea E. Porter of Mendell’s Narcotics & Money Laundering Unit are prosecuting the case.

This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation.