Mexican cartel member who roped his mother into helping him sell drugs in Maverick Square gets 10 years

A federal judge has sentenced a member of the Sinaloa cartel who set up housekeeping in East Boston to ten years in prison after he pleaded guilty to distributing heroin and cocaine from Maverick Square to Hyde Park - sometimes on trips with his wife and young children in tow.

As part of his sentence, US District Court Judge Leo Sorokin asked the federal Bureau of Prisons to send Carlos Acosta Estrella, 33, to a federal prison in Arizona "to allow contact with close and extended family who reside in Mexico."

On Sept. 7, Acosta pleaded guilty to count of possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine, one count of possession with intent to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin and one count of possession of a firearm during a drug trafficking offense. One week later, his mother, Ana Acosta Grajeda, had her initial five-year sentence for her role in selling drugs reduced to the roughly three years she had already spent behind bars are a judge found compelling reasons to release her on compassionate grounds: She had metastatic renal cancer and no prior record.

Acosta was arrested in September, 2019, after DEA agents who had received a tip of a Sinaloa-to-Boston drug connection set up an arranged buy for what was originally intended to be four kilos of heroin at a Maverick Square restaurant - at $29,250 a kilo. They deal wound up being for just two kilos, but agents moved in and arrested Acosta - after he ran up to his Sumner Street apartment, where agents who went back with a search warrant found a kilo of cocaine, a kilo of gray material believed to be fentanyl, numerous phones and "a high-powered tactical shotgun with a laser sight."

According to a sentencing memo by prosecutors:

Through evidence gathered in three separate investigations, agents identified ESTRELLA as a high-ranking representative of the Sinaloa Cartel operating in Boston. Agents recovered large sums of cocaine, fentanyl, and firearms from ESTRELLA's residence or locations frequented by ESTRELLA, and ESTRELLA enlisted family members and insisted on committing these extraordinarily serious crimes in the presence of his small children.

In addition to his Sumner Street home, Acosta also ran a "stash house" where he stored drugs on Avila Road in Hyde Park, where, two month after his arrest, agents found several hundred grams of fentanyl and a number of guns. According to prosecutors, who had sought a 12-year sentence, he would bring his wife and young children on trips there.

ESTRELLA enlisted his mother to help him sell two surplus kilograms of cocaine. After the deal, agents chased ESTRELLA into his East Boston apartment, where they found the $60,000 in funds from the drug deal on a table in the living room. Also present in the apartment – ESTRELLA's mother, who was arrested, and ESTRELLA's wife and children, who were allowed to leave before the search warrant was executed. Agents searched this tiny apartment and seized another kilogram of cocaine, a kilogram of heroin, and the rifle with laser sight pictured above. A one time occurrence? Not at all. Six months before ESTRELLA's arrest, agents in a separate DEA investigation saw ESTRELLA, with his wife and children in tow, drive to a stash house at 17 Avila Street in Hyde Park. Agents watched as ESTRELLA and Adan Lara-Ciprian, a/k/a "Bolivar Torres" (later indicted ...) went inside. Two months after ESTRELLA's arrest, agents searched the stash house and seized hundreds of grams of fentanyl and cocaine, cutting agents, components for a kilo press, and several firearms.