{"id":7398,"date":"2025-08-15T23:19:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T23:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/angel-del-villar-sentenced-to-4-years-in-prison-over-cartel-conviction\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T23:19:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T23:19:14","slug":"angel-del-villar-sentenced-to-4-years-in-prison-over-cartel-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/angel-del-villar-sentenced-to-4-years-in-prison-over-cartel-conviction\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00c1ngel del Villar Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison Over Cartel Conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tM<\/span>usic executive \u00c1ngel Del Villar was sentenced Friday to 48 months (4 years) years in prison following his conviction on felony charges of doing business with a concert promoter linked to Mexican drug cartels.<\/p>\n

\n\tDel Villar, who built his Del Records into a top record label for regional Mexican music, was sentenced by Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong following his conviction in March for violating the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, which bars U.S. residents from working with known drug traffickers.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe <\/strong>four-year sentence is less than what was sought by federal prosecutors, who argued that Del Villar should get 78 months (6.5 years) in prison. Lawyers for the exec argued back that the feds were trying to \u201csingle out Mr. Del Villar for extra punishment\u201d and \u201cmake an example\u201d of him.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to the prison term, the judge ordered Del Villar to pay a $2 million fine. His company, Del Entertainment, was sentences to 3 years probation and a $1.8M fine. An attorney for the executive did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tFounded by Del Villar in 2008, Del Records was home to m\u00fasica mexicana supergroup Eslabon Armado, whose global hit, \u201cElla Baila Sola\u201d with Peso Pluma, became one of the biggest songs of 2023, as well as Lenin Ramirez and other chart-topping artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in June 2022, Del Villar, 41; CFO Luca Scalisi, 56; and Del Records itself were all charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. Passed in 1999, the law allows the U.S. to impose targeted sanctions on foreign individuals involved in the illegal drug trade and ban U.S. residents from doing business with them.<\/p>\n

\n\tProsecutors alleged that Del Villar repeatedly arranged concerts with Jesus P\u00e9rez Alvear, a promoter with ties to Mexican cartels. When he was added to the sanctions list in 2018, the Treasury Dept. said P\u00e9rez Alvear had helped cartels \u201cexploit the Mexican music industry to launder drug proceeds and glorify their criminal activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDel Villar and Scalisi allegedly used P\u00e9rez Alvear to arrange four Mexican concerts for an undisclosed Del Records artist, then accepted nearly $200,000 in payments from him, all while aware that he had been sanctioned. Charging documents cite a never-sent Del Records press release acknowledging that status, as well as private messages in which Scalisi noted that P\u00e9rez Alvear was \u201cunder homeland security watch\u201d and Del Villar was directly told that the promoter was \u201ca sanctioned U.S. person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt a March trial, superstar Gerardo Ortiz took the stand to testify against Del Villar, saying he had seen P\u00e9rez Alvear at the Del Records offices and had himself performed at one of the promoter\u2019s concerts. Del Villar\u2019s defense attorneys argued back that he had been \u201cmanipulated\u201d into working with P\u00e9rez Alvear by a \u201ctrusted\u201d former employee.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the jury didn\u2019t buy it: On March 27, they found him guilty on 10 counts of violating the Kingpin law, as well as one conspiracy charge. At the time, his lawyers said they \u201cstrongly disagree\u201d with the verdict and would launch an appeal to overturn it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music executive \u00c1ngel Del Villar was sentenced Friday to 48 months (4 years) years in prison following his conviction on felony charges of doing business with a concert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5172,1908,363,2979,223,3974,5173,148],"class_list":["post-7398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-angel","tag-cartel","tag-conviction","tag-del","tag-prison","tag-sentenced","tag-villar","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}