A California woman caught with meth in Colorado as she was heading to Sioux City has been sentenced to federal prison and a Storm Lake man described as directing meth shipments into Iowa will spend two decades in prison.
Twenty-seven-year-old Leslie Aranda-Moreno of San Diego was sentenced to 10 years in prison after admitting she was transporting meth to northern Iowa. In early 2020, Aranda-Moreno was pulled over in Colorado and the State Patrol there found seven pounds of meth in her vehicle. An investigation determined she regularly drove from California to Sioux City with shipments of meth that were made in Mexico.
Thirty-one-year-old Christian Javier Ramirez of Storm Lake has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to import meth from Mexico and distribute it in Iowa. According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa, seven pounds of meth intercepted in Colorado was headed to Storm Lake at Ramirez’s direction.
A spokesman for the agency says “details regarding the cases are not part of the public record,” so he cannot say whether Ramirez and Aranda-Moreno’s cases are connected.