SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Victor Viera-Chirinos, a high-level drug trafficker who fled to Honduras to avoid prosecution three years ago, was sentenced to 82 months in prison by Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco on Wednesday morning.
Chirinos, 42, was among 14 defendants accused of being a part of a drug organization that was trafficking large quantities of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine base and cocaine in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
In government charging documents, prosecutors accused Chirinos of collecting “rent” for street-level drug dealers, who paid the organization for housing while participating in the organization’s drug trafficking operation. Similarly, they say Chirinos ensured street-level dealers were supplied with drugs for trafficking activities.
Sailaja Paidipaty, a government prosecutor, recommended the 82 month sentence as fair because she said Chirinos showed no remorse even after being caught in 2019.
“The evidence is he was selling drugs while on home confinement, resulting in charges that are currently pending in San Mateo County,” she said.
Chirinos said after his 2019 arrest that he had a high risk of death if he caught Covid-19, and was released to home confinement in 2021. He was set to be sentenced in June 2021 before he cut off his ankle monitor and fled to his native Honduras. This past May, Honduras extradited Chirinos to the United States to face charges for his role in the drug trafficking operation.
Karen McConville, Chirinos’ attorney, said that her client’s criminal history is overstated and that the charges pending in San Mateo County are not proven, and asked Breyer to consider Chirinos’ home confinement and custody in Honduras while he awaited extradition and reduce his sentence by 26 months. She said Chirinos is remorseful and accepted the responsibility for his conduct.
“His freedom was restricted for almost a year,” McConville said of the home confinement, before adding that Chirinos’ two months of custody in Honduras while he awaited extradition was also “hard time” served.
Paidpaty said the government would accept time served for Chirinos’ custody in Honduras, but opposed the request to count Chirinos’ home confinement as time served. She said Chirnios asked the court to delay his sentencing in 2021 so he could get his second Covid-19 vaccination. The court complied, and Chirinos used that delay to escape to Honduras, which contradicts McConville’s assertion that he was remorseful.
“For those reasons, he should not get that time,” Paidpaty said.
Breyer determined that Chirinos will not get the home confinement as time served, but he will count the time that Chirnos spent in U.S. prisons before being released on home confinement, and will count the time served in Honduras.
That will cut “roughly 15 months” off of Chirinos’ 82-month sentence, Breyer said, before adding that Chirinos could not serve the time concurrently with any time he may receive on the drug charges in San Mateo County.
Chirinos pleaded guilty in 2021 and said in his plea agreement that he had been trafficking drugs in the Tenderloin for years and that the total weight of drugs attributable to him amounted to over 1775 kilograms of converted drug weight.
Chirinos wore a navy blue jumpsuit during the sentencing, and declined to address the court through his Spanish interpreter.
After Chirinos’ sentence is up, he will likely be deported back to Honduras, Breyer said.
Chirinos is the fourth man sent to the United States from Honduras in connection with drug trafficking charges this year.
His younger brother, Jorge Viera-Chirinos, 34, was extradited from Honduras in February along with two other people.
The younger Chirinos and another extradited defendant had previously been arrested in the Bay Area but fled the country before their trials while out on bond. Jorge Viera-Chirinos entered a not-guilty plea at a hearing in February.
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