CHARLOTTE -- More than a year after pleading guilty to heroin trafficking charges, 41-year-old Carlos Ramon Castro-Rocha, also known as "El Cuate," learned he will spend more than a decade in federal prison
"He's a big fish. He's a big catch. There's no doubt," said Acting U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose.
Rose said Castro-Rocha's sentence comes after his drug network was linked to 25 pounds of black tar heroin being smuggled into the Queen City between 2005 and 2009.
"Heroin's a huge problem in Charlotte," Rose said. "The way that the organizations are set up here is it's very difficult to get to the leadership because they're very well-insulated at each and every level."
A Charlotte federal grand jury indicted Castro-Rocha back in 2009 but he didn't plead guilty in court until 2014.
"It was a long process to get him extradited out of Mexico," said Rose.
With the Castro-Rocha heading to prison, Rose hopes the heroin flow in charlotte runs dry.
"There will be other people who will attempt to replace him but, again, because it's complicated to get something from the ground to the user, particularly when it's coming from another country, it takes a while so I would say we have definitely disrupted this particular organization," she said.
Rose said Castro-Rocha won't stay held in Charlotte.
She reports he will be taken to another sentencing hearing in aAizona for more charges and later could face deportation once his sentence is carried out.