The “King of Cocsului” in San Diego sentenced for drug trafficking

A drug dealer in San Diego, who described himself as the “King of Cocsului” and who said that they recruited the Hitmen from the Mexican Cartel to act as executors in San Diego was sentenced to 17 years and six months of federal prison.

Rodolfo “Rudy” Benjamin Silva, 44 years old, was previously guilty of the accusation of conspiracy of the distribution of controlled substances, acknowledging that he had trafficked in cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl, according to his plea agreement. Silva acknowledged as part of his reason that he “made a credible threat to use violence or direct the use of violence against at least another person.”

“Silva has witnessed to bring kicked assassins under the name of” Sicarii “in Mexico in the San Diego area for operations for applying the cartel,” said the American prosecutor of San Diego, in a statement, citing arguments made by US lawyer Ashley Goff. “On one occasion, Silva hired a Sicario from Mexico to come to San Diego, where that individual tried to fatally shoot one of Silva’s rivals.”

Few details about this shooting were included in the publicly available judicial documents. However, at the beginning of last year, a judge of the federal magistrate denied Silva’s request to issue the pre-county, citing the shooting as a reason. Judge Barbara Major wrote that, according to what the prosecutors had argued, Silva “directed the shooting of another individual in the San Diego area, who was associated with a stolen drug load and used a hitman from Mexico to make this attempt.”

Major wrote that the prosecutors also claimed that Silva “assisted otherwise to facilitate similar application operations in the United States and Mexico for cartels.” She also wrote that prosecutors had evidence of Silva who sells firearms to natural persons in Mexico.

Defense lawyer, Gretchen von Helms, told Union-Tribune that Silva has mental health problems that have been revealed to the conviction judge, US district judge William Hayes, in a sealed case. The Defense Lawyer said he recommended a 10 -year sentence based on those unspecified mental health problems and the lack of a criminal historian for Silva for similar crimes. Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 20 years.

The judge “has been under the Government’s recommendation, because he has never served time in prison before arrest in this case and because of problems (mental health),” said von Helms, but imposed a significant sentence because of the behavior of which he was guilty.

According to the major order, maintaining Silva in arrest last year, prosecutors described it as a “prolific of local and national methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl distributor since 2018, with direct links to Mexican cards.” A strongly written criminal complaint indicated that the federal authorities identified Silva as a wide-scale drug distributor during a larger long-term investigation they carried out.

As part of this investigation in October 2022, the federal agents who followed a supposed drug courier based in Indianapolis, who led to San Diego, visited Silva’s residence and raised a large box of cardboard, according to the criminal complaint. Days later, the law enforcement authorities stopped the alleged courier in Oklahoma and found 114 kilograms of methamphetamine and about 2.2 kilograms of fentanel in the courier vehicle.

Subsequently, Silva acknowledged that she was the source of those drugs, prosecutors said.