Feds say drug kingpin targeted prosecutors in Del.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Federal authorities say a former Mexican drug cartel enforcer who was convicted on federal charges in May tried to have two assistant U.S. attorneys in Delaware killed.

According to court documents, Miguel Lavenant, apparently while incarcerated and awaiting sentencing sometime between May 2013 and February, "expressed an intent to kill the District of Delaware prosecution team that was responsible for the case against him."

The documents do not go into detail about the plot or how investigators found out about it beyond saying the information about the alleged hit came from "more than one source."

"He claims to have associates in this general vicinity and to have had one of the prosecutors followed," according to a government sentencing memorandum.

The Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office and Special Assistant U.S. Prosecutor Linwood C. Wright Jr., who was recently assigned to the case, both declined comment Wednesday.

The News Journal detailed the lengthy and elaborate cross-country investigation that led to the 2012 arrest of Lavenant, a former member of the infamous and violent Tijuana-based Arellano-Feliz Organization.

The investigation began at the bottom of a trash can in Delaware, where drug task force officers checking up on a pair of probationers found a plastic wrapper that tested positive for cocaine. A monthslong investigation followed that eventually led them to California and Lavenant.

It involved a pickup truck outfitted with secret drug compartments, a C-17 transport plane and a massive surveillance effort involving dozens of law enforcement officials.

Evidence also was presented at trial that Lavenant had apparent contacts in the New York and New Jersey area.

Lavenant was convicted in U.S. District Court in Wilmington of conspiracy to possess and distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine and three counts of money laundering. He is facing a minimum mandatory 10 years in prison and up to life behind bars.

According to the court docket, Lavenant was supposed to be sentenced Feb. 13.

But on Feb. 7, prosecutors asked for a delay and the original prosecution team was taken off the case. According to the motion, "The government recently became aware of at least two, unanticipated additional witnesses who need to be called … at the sentencing hearing," wrote prosecutors.

Wright, who is a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia, was then assigned to the case on Feb. 20 and the sentencing was rescheduled to May 15. Details about the apparent plot against the original prosecution team were buried in a March 17 motion filed by Wright seeking an increase in the sentencing guideline range for Lavenant, called an upward departure.

In addition to the described threats against the prosecutors, Wright also argues that Lavenant's criminal history understates his actual history of crime and violence.

Lavenant was able to avoid arrest, then later he became a cooperating witness for the government.

"By his own admission, Lavenant has committed a series of heinous crimes for which he has neither been charged nor punished," Wright wrote.

During debriefings with law enforcement, as part of Lavenant's cooperation with the government, he admitted to strangling three people to death, "each of whom was helpless" in that they had all been beaten and had ropes around their necks, according to Wright.

At the time, Lavenant explained away his crimes by telling officials that he had to kill the three "in order to prove his allegiance to the AFO and purportedly avoid his own demise had he failed to do so," according to court papers.

Wright also notes that Lavenant admitted to smuggling 20 to 30 tons of AFO cocaine at a time over the U.S/Mexico border when he was with the cartel and that he possessed false Mexican federal police credentials "which he used to protect AFO members from arrest by coordinating with actual Mexican law enforcement authorities."

Lavenant, who is acting as his own attorney, responded to the government's memo on March 20 without addressing the allegation that he attempted to have federal prosecutors killed.

Instead, Lavenant raises questions about the validity of the prosecution against him and accuses one of the original prosecutors, by name, of arresting him with "forged" papers.

Lavenant also mentions at the end of his handwritten six-page response that in July 2013, while he was incarcerated following trial, his mother died of a heart attack.

"A human heart of a loving mother cannot take that much pain and suffering," he wrote, apparently in reference to his conviction.