Two brothers surrender to feds in major drug case charging Dominican politician in Miami
Two brothers accused of conspiring with a Dominican politician in an international drug-trafficking network urged a federal magistrate judge Friday to give them a bond after surrendering to authorities in Miami — to no avail.
The brothers, Endy De Jesus Nunez Marmol and Danny Nunez Marmol, voluntarily flew to Miami last week after the politician’s arrest here in mid-May on cocaine distribution charges, according to the brothers’ defense attorneys.
The brothers decided to turn themselves in after Miguel Andres Gutierrez Diaz, a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic, was arrested May 17 at Miami International Airport. The politician came to Miami for a son’s graduation without knowing he and the others had been under indictment by the grand jury.
On Friday, prosecutor Richard Getchell disclosed the magnitude of the case for the first time, saying the Nunez Marmol brothers were flight risks and a danger to the community after accusing them of importing hundreds of kilos of cocaine in fruit boxes on commercial ships and on yachts owned by the Dominican politician. Some of the loads were then transported to New York for distribution, Getchell said.
Attorney Jose Quinon, who represents Endy De Jesus Nunez Marmol, who has a home with his family in Miami, said his client arranged to come here from the Dominican Republic as soon as he learned he was charged in the indictment.
“If [he and his brother] wanted to stay there, they would have stayed there,” Quinon told Magistrate Judge Alicia Otazo Reyes. “They wanted to come in.”
Otazo Reyes decided to detain Endy De Jesus Nunez Marmol before trial, concluding he is a “danger to the community” because of the “extraordinary amount” of drug shipments alleged by the prosecutor.
The magistrate judge reached the same decision for his brother, Danny Nunez Marmol, a U.S. citizen represented by attorney Frank Quintero.
Quintero said that he and Quinon will appeal the magistrate’s detention ruling to U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, who has been assigned the high-profile case. Quintero said the case is built on “snitches” who are cooperating to reduce their prison sentences, and he stressed that no phone calls, text messages, emails, recordings, fingerprints, documents or other evidence link the Nunez Marmol brothers to any shipments of cocaine.
“No one should be held without bond on just the words of snitches with no independent corroboration,” Quintero said after Friday’s hearing.
Gutierrez Diaz — whose brother is also charged in the indictment and surrendered to federal authorities Thursday in Miami— agreed last month to be detained rather than fight a request by prosecutors to keep him behind bars. Prosecutors said the 58-year-old politician is a flight risk and danger to the community.
Gutierrez Diaz’s defense attorney, Dennis Urbano, said his client would address the detention issue at a later date.
It was unclear why the Dominican congressman did not want to seek a bond from the judge and proceed with his detention hearing. But he might have wanted to avoid generating any further publicity about his cocaine trafficking indictment, which accuses him and the three others of being members of an international drug ring that operated in the Dominican Republic, Colombia and the United States from 2014 to 2017.
At a hearing on May 21, Magistrate Judge John J. O’Sullivan called out certain news media in the Dominican Republic for illegally recording Gutierrez Diaz’s first appearance in federal court earlier that week after his arrest. O’Sullivan said audio and video recordings of court proceedings are strictly prohibited and that he would consider issuing sanctions.
The defendant’s attorney, Urbano, told the judge that Gutierrez Diaz “is a target of just about everybody in the Dominican press.”
The indictment charges Miguel Andres Gutierrez Diaz, his brother, Miguel Emilio Gutierrez Diaz, and the Nunez Marmol brothers with conspiring to distribute cocaine, knowing that it would be imported into the United States.
All four defendants are also charged with conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine. The indictment was unsealed the day after Gutierrez Diaz’s arrest, so he had no idea he had been charged by the grand jury when he arrived at MIA May 17.
Gutierrez Diaz, who is from Santiago, Dominican Republica, and the other defendants face up to life in prison if convicted. The politician and the Nunez Marmol brothers, who have all pleaded not guilty to the drug trafficking charges, are being held at the Miami Federal Detention Center.
According to Dominican news accounts, Gutierrez Diaz entered politics in 2018, the year after the alleged drug-trafficking conspiracy ended.
Campaign videos available on Facebook indicate that Gutierrez Diaz is a member of the Dominican Republic’s Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), which is described as a liberal/progressive party. The country’s president, Luis Abinader, is also a member of the same party.
Gutierrez Diaz was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house in the Dominican Republic’s bicameral legislature.
This story was originally published June 4, 2021 at 9:29 AM.
