In DEA case that led to jet seizure in Gary, flight attendant and two bank employees now charged

A flight attendant and two bank employees have been charged in an international cocaine case that led to a private jet being seized in Gary in 2021.

Fifteen other people including reputed ringleader Oswaldo "Gordo" Espinosa, who's wanted on an arrest warrant, were previously charged in federal court with participating in a ring that smuggled thousands of pounds of cocaine from Mexico to Chicago and other cities.

The government confiscated a Bombardier Challenger jet in November 2021 at the Gary airport after cocaine was off-loaded from the plane and driven to Chicago, where U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized 175 pounds of cocaine in an SUV and another 44 pounds in luggage near a downtown hotel, according to an indictment.

The plane had been flown from Mexico to Houston, where the cocaine was loaded before continuing to Gary, the indictment said.

A recently unsealed indictment charged flight attendant Glenis Zapata, 34, of Lafayette, Ind. with helping the alleged traffickers transport $310,000 in drug proceeds to Mexico on commercial airline flights. The traffickers had also shipped money back to Mexico on the privately chartered Challenger jet and on trucks, authorities say.

Two northwest Indiana bank employees, Ilenis Zapata, 33, and Georgina Banuelos, 39, both of Lafayette, have been charged with helping launder $400,000 in drug proceeds by exchanging lower denomination bills for higher denomination ones. They also failed to file currency reports for the transactions, according to the indictment.

Agents have seized more than 1,775 pounds of cocaine and $7.8 million in drug proceeds from the ring at locations across the Chicago area along with Indiana, Tennessee and Maryland, the indictment said.

The government is also seeking to confiscate a second plane — a 1973 Cessna — from one of the defendants, Ricardo Tello, along with luxury watches.

Tello, a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States, was the head of one of two Chicago-based cells of the operation, coordinating cocaine shipments in tractor-trailer trucks, prosecutors say. Tello, according to court records, owns Xoco Transport. One of the company's trucks was stopped in 2020 by police officers, who seized more than $900,000, but Tello denied any connection to the money.

He's in jail awaiting trial after a judge found earlier this year that he was a flight risk.