Glenis Zapata, former Indiana beauty queen turned flight attendant indicted in Mexican cartel drug trafficking scheme. Had recently started working for private planes.
A former beauty pageant queen turned flight attendant has been indicted in a Mexican cartel’s drug trafficking scheme.
Glenis Zapata, 34, of Lafayette, former Miss Indiana Latina in 2011 was named in a grand jury indictment and charged with two federal counts of money laundering.
The flight attendant is accused of helping traffickers move millions of dollars of cash on commercial jets.
Also named in the indictment were Lafayette bank employees Ilenis Zapata, 33, and Georgina Banuelos, 39 according to ABC7Chicago.
Ilenis Zapata was identified as the sister of the former beauty pageant winner.
Prosecutors say the Lafayette bank employees helped launder drug proceeds by exchanging lower denomination bills for higher ones.
Recently Zapata had been working as a flight attendant, but according to federal authorities she was also attending to the movement of drug cartel cash onboard jetliners into Mexico, including a private jet.
That jet landed at the Gary, Indiana airport from Mexico with 20 pounds of cocaine packed in several suitcases.
Cartel operatives arrested in the private jet have already been prosecuted and imprisoned.
The indictments come as part of a years-long investigation into a Mexican drug cartel and its leader, Oswaldo Espinosa also going by the name of the ‘Scrambler’. The investigation started in 2021 when federal authorities seized a private airplane loaded with cash at the Gary/Chicago International Airport.
From 2018 to 2023, Espinosa allegedly moved cocaine from Mexico to Chicago and other cities using warehouses, garages, and stash houses to inventory the drugs and cash.
For Glenis Zapata, her arrest is a fall from the glory of her beauty pageant days in 2011 when she was heralded as the first Latina pageant winner from Indiana ever to make the top 10 at the US pageant.
Bail reports have been posted in Chicago federal court for both of the Zapata sisters, indicating they are now in custody. A court schedule has not yet been posted for the newly accused drug traffickers.
