On New Year's Day 2023, a security officer at the Sky Dancer Casino on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota contacted authorities after a man attempted to cash in his nearly $5,000 winnings but did not have a Social Security number, which is required to collect certain large amounts.

Border Patrol agents checked the name and quickly determined that the man, Fidel Arenas-Torres, was a Mexican citizen who had been arrested and convicted of murder and kidnapping in his home country in 2013.

Arenas-Torres, also known by the nickname “El Pelón,” was taken into custody and eventually admitted that he was in the United States illegally.

During the subsequent trial in the case, Arenas-Torres claimed that he was in the United States because he was trying to avoid being targeted and tortured in Mexico.

In August 2023, Arenas-Torres was sentenced to two years in federal prison for illegal entry.

Earlier this month, Arenas-Torres' name appeared again in the federal court dock, this time as a defendant in a drug case.

On June 6, he and four others were indicted, accusing him of running a drug trafficking ring and being the primary source for transporting hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine into North Dakota over the years, primarily to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. The indictment was unsealed on June 27.

The case was the result of an FBI investigation into the conspiracy, which court records show was partly accomplished through a deal with an inmate at the Grand Forks County Jail who cooperated by providing information about the people running the drug ring and their role in it.

The FBI investigation led to surveillance of phone numbers and vehicles of a Belcourt man, Timothy Houle, and his wife, Trina Falcon, after the cooperating Grand Forks inmate told investigators that Houle was his source of meth and a major supplier of the drug on the Turtle Mountain Reservation.

During a November traffic stop, when Houle was riding with Falcon as a passenger, officers found 44 packets of meth hidden in two cattle feed bags. The drugs weighed 50 pounds and had an estimated street value of $250,000. Houle was arrested after the stop and sentenced to eight years in prison.

During his questioning, Houle told investigators that the source of his meth supply was “Pelón,” Arenas-Torres' nickname. He was shown a photograph of Arenas-Torres and was able to positively identify him as his supplier.

Houle told investigators he had known Arenas-Torres since 1999 and had received between 2 and 5 pounds of meth from him each month during that time. Houle said he began distributing meth for Arenas-Torres after Arenas-Torres was arrested at the casino and because Houle owed Arenas-Torres hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Houle said he communicated with Arenas-Torres through Diana Quezada, who lives in Minnesota and is Arenas-Torres' wife or girlfriend.

Investigators said they then began listening to frequent phone conversations between Quezada and Arenas-Torres from prison, finding evidence of coded communications about suspected illegal drug activity. Court documents show that Quezada often contacted Houle or Falcon immediately after receiving a call from Arenas-Torres to discuss drug trafficking and money collection meetings. Quezada also invoked Arenas-Torres' name to exert pressure if they didn't call her back.

During his trial for violating immigration law, Arenas-Torres claimed that Edgar Veytia, the attorney general of the Mexican state of Nayarit, had him kidnapped and arrested on false charges after Arenas-Torres refused to work for the H-2 cartel.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, H-2 is based in Nayarit and Sinaloa, Mexico, and has distribution cells throughout the U.S., including in Minnesota.

An article in the El Sol newspaper in the Mexican state of Nayarit said Arenas-Torres was arrested there in December 2012 for two murders and the following month for his involvement in the kidnapping of a shrimp trader. The article said Arenas-Torres had links to a criminal gang and was known to Mexican authorities as “El Pelón.”

Arenas-Torres claimed he and his family were victims of H-2 and a corrupt government official. He said he was tortured while awaiting trial. He claimed his scars were from prison guards who electrocuted him at the behest of the cartel and Veytia, tried to cut off his ear, and stunned him with a stun gun. He said his family was forced to pay the cartel $100,000 to get to safety.

Prosecutors acknowledged that at least part of Arenas-Torres' story was true.

In 2019, Veytia was indicted in federal court in New York and sentenced to 20 years in prison for his involvement in an international drug trafficking ring. An investigation found that Veytia had used his position to bail members of the violent H-2 cartel out of prison, directed law enforcement to specifically wiretap and arrest rival drug traffickers, and helped H-2 carry out and cover up murders and other acts of violence.

Court documents showed that Arenas-Torres had been deported from the United States twice before after being arrested on a serious crime – once in 2000 in Arizona for drug charges and again in 2011 in Utah for using a fake ID.

A Minnesota arrest warrant for Quezada states that the case involves “the distribution of hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine in the District of North Dakota and her role in the movement of large sums of money associated with that distribution, with much of the methamphetamine destined for the Turtle Mountain Reservation.”

Quezada, Arenas-Torres, Houle, Falcon and another man, Monte Hoover, are charged in the case. All five are involved in the conspiracy to distribute charge, which dates back to 2018.

Hoover is accused of maintaining a store or garage in Rolette County for the purpose of drug distribution.

Arenas-Torres and Quezada are also accused of money laundering.

Arenas-Torres is scheduled to appear in a hearing on drug charges on August 1.