{"id":8199,"date":"2025-10-16T21:35:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/angel-del-villar-wants-no-prison-while-he-appeals-cartel-convictions\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T21:35:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:35:58","slug":"angel-del-villar-wants-no-prison-while-he-appeals-cartel-convictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/angel-del-villar-wants-no-prison-while-he-appeals-cartel-convictions\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00c1ngel del Villar Wants No Prison While He Appeals Cartel Convictions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tMusic executive \u00c1ngel Del Villar<\/strong> is asking a judge to let him stay out of prison while he appeals his felony convictions for doing business with a concert promoter linked to Mexican drug cartels.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith a four-year prison sentence set to start on Dec. 1, attorneys for Del Villar argue that his appeal could very well overturn his March convictions \u2013 and that he should remain a free man until a higher court rules on his case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDel Villar has demonstrated since this case began that he is not a flight risk,\u201d his lawyers wrote in a Wednesday court filing. \u201cHe poses no danger to the community. And he intends to present substantial questions on appeal that, if resolved in his favor, are likely to result in reversal or a new trial on all counts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tDel Villar, who built his Del Records into a top record label for regional Mexican music, was convicted in March of violating the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act by repeatedly arranging concerts with Jesus P\u00e9rez Alvear, a Guadalajara-based promoter with cartel ties. In August, he was sentenced to 48 months in prison on those convictions.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to seeking to halt the imposition of that sentence, Wednesday\u2019s filing serves as a preview of how Del Villar\u2019s attorneys plan to mount his appeal of the underlying convictions.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey say they have a particularly strong argument on how the judge instructed jurors that they could convict Del Villar by finding that he willfully blinded himself to P\u00e9rez\u2019s shady connections. They say prosecutors couldn\u2019t prove he took concrete actions to avoid such knowledge, but that the judge gave the jurors that option anyway.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe government pointed to no evidence \u2014 and the record contains none \u2014\u00a0 from which a jury could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Del Villar took \u2018deliberate actions\u2019 or made \u2018active efforts,\u2019 his lawyers wrote, later adding that the judge\u2019s instruction \u201cwent to the heart and most hotly contested aspect of the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf that argument is successful, Del Villar\u2019s lawyers say, it will \u201cproduce a new trial on all counts of conviction,\u201d since each count required proof of such knowledge.<\/p>\n

\n\tDel Records, founded by Del Villar in 2008, 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

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\u00c1ngel<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tBut in June 2022, federal prosecutors unveiled charges against Del Villar, 41, CFO Luca Scalisi, 56, and Del Records itself under the Kingpin Act. The 1999 statute allows the U.S. to impose targeted sanctions on foreign individuals involved in the illegal drug trade, and then to ban U.S. residents from doing business with them.<\/p>\n

\n\tP\u00e9rez was added to the sanctions list in 2018 after the feds said he had helped cartels \u201cexploit the Mexican music industry to launder drug proceeds and glorify their criminal activities.\u201d Del Villar and Scalisi nonetheless allegedly used P\u00e9rez to arrange four Mexican concerts for an undisclosed Del Records artist and accepted nearly $200,000 from him, all while aware that he had been sanctioned.<\/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. But the jury didn\u2019t buy it, finding him guilty on 10 counts of violating the Kingpin law, as well as one conspiracy charge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music executive \u00c1ngel Del Villar is asking a judge to let him stay out of prison while he appeals his felony convictions for doing business with a concert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8200,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5172,782,1908,330,2979,223,5173],"class_list":["post-8199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-angel","tag-appeals","tag-cartel","tag-convictions","tag-del","tag-prison","tag-villar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199","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=8199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}