Alleged Guatemalan cocaine kingpin, subject of $10M bounty, is in custody in San Diego

Alex Riggins, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 27, 2026

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The suspected kingpin of an alleged Guatemalan drug-trafficking organization, who was the subject of a $10 million reward and described by prosecutors as “one of the world’s most notorious and prolific cocaine traffickers,” made his first appearance last week in San Diego federal court, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Monday.

Eugenio Darío Molina López, a 61-year-old known also as “Don Darío” and “Molis,” is suspected of being the top leader of a drug cartel known as Los Huistas that allegedly dominates the cocaine trade and the broader criminal underworld along the Guatemala-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

A federal grand jury in San Diego indicted Molina in 2019 on two cocaine conspiracy charges, one related to the attempted importation of drugs and one related to moving the drugs on a boat. In 2022, officials from various federal agencies announced sanctions against Molina and offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture or conviction.

Molina pleaded not guilty to the conspiracy charges Friday during an initial appearance in downtown San Diego federal court. It was not immediately clear where or when he was first detained, or under what circumstances he was brought to the U.S.

“Cartel leaders don’t get to write the end of their stories. We do,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement. “And once again, the final chapter for a man alleged to be one of the world’s most notorious and prolific cocaine traffickers is here in the Southern District of California.”

A local attorney helping to represent Molina referred questions to his primary counsel in Miami. That attorney did not respond to a message seeking comment.

The indictment against Molina offers scant details about his alleged criminal conduct, but in offering the $10 million reward, the U.S. Department of State said he oversaw all drug trafficking operations for Los Huistas. The State Department alleged the group, which was designated by the Treasury Department in 2022 as a drug-trafficking organization, is aligned with both the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación in Mexico. It also alleged that Molina controlled a well-established network of drug traffickers across Mexico who were “eager to purchase bulk quantities of cocaine from him.”

According to the State Department, the 2019 indictment against Molina was built on a series of drug and money seizures that investigators linked to him, including three seizures totaling more than 7,800 pounds of cocaine within a four-month period off the Pacific coast of Guatemala. The first of those seizures led to federal charges in San Diego and eventual guilty pleas from four men transporting the cocaine, according to court records. Those men — two from Colombia, one from Ecuador and one from Guatemala — were sentenced to prison terms ranging as high as nine years.

In January 2019, investigators also linked Molina to a seizure of more than $687,000 in bulk cash in Houston, according to the State Department.

Prosecutors said Molina was charged as part of a multi-year investigation known as Operation Guerrilla Unit that was led by Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. The investigation, which also involved HSI personnel in Guatemala and federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Diego, has been focused on Molina, the Los Huistas organization and its suppliers, officials said.

The Treasury Department described the Los Huistas group as the “dominant criminal structure in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetenango” along the Mexico-Guatemala border. According to the think tank and media outlet InSight Crime, the group began in the late 1990s and has progressively gained more autonomy from its Mexican counterparts over the past several decades.

Another alleged top leader of the group, Aler Baldomero Samayoa Recinos, was arrested by Mexican security forces in March 2025. He was extradited to Guatemala and then quickly brought to Washington, D.C., where he’d been under indictment since 2018 and where he is currently facing charges.