Puerto Rican kingpin pleads guilty, elnuevodia.com reports

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico. – Puerto Rican drug kingpin Jose Figueroa Agosto “Junior Capsula" on Tuesday pleaded in guilty on drug trafficking and money laundering charges before San Juan federal judge Juan Perez Jiménez, newspaper El Nuevo Dia reports.

The federal authorities charge Figueroa, who hid in the Dominican Republic for around 10 years, of turning that country into his center to ship cocaine to the United States.

Figueroa, who escorted to Puerto Rico for indictment, was being held in a New York City federal holding facility since his arrest, in a quiet street of San Juan in July, 2010, in a joint operation by agents of the Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA), local Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

The defendant had fled to Dominican Republic in 1999 after escaping with forged papers from a Puerto Rican prison where he was serving a sentence for murder, kidnapping and weapons charges.

Figueroa’s cooperation with U.S. prosecutors is believed to have led to the arrest and extradition to the U.S. on December 15, of another alleged kingpin, the Dominican Ramón Antonio del Rosario Puente (Toño Leña).