VICTORIA, Texas (ValleyCentral) — The owner of a once-popular Rio Grande City restaurant was sentenced to 11 years in prison Monday for smuggling marijuana.
Members of the Gulf Cartel provided Ricardo Hinojosa, 51, of Rio Grande City with thousands of pounds of marijuana.
Smugglers transported the marijuana from Hinojosa’s restaurant — the Mesquite Grill & Country Store — to buyers in Houston, Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“You were quite involved in this organization,” U.S. District Judge John D. Rainey said Monday afternoon, when he sentenced Hinojosa to 11 years and 3 months in federal prison.
The case against Hinojosa started in January 2013, when a sheriff’s deputy stopped an old Ford F-350 towing a horse trailer through Victoria County.
Along with two horses, the deputy found about 600 pounds of marijuana hidden in the trailer.
The driver, Gustabo Ochoa Torres, said he picked up the trailer from a horse ranch near Rio Grande City. According to Torres, the ranch belonged to members of the Beltran family.
The tip sparked a federal investigation that sent dozens of people to prison.
During the investigation, prosecutors discovered the Beltran family had been smuggling drugs…
