A Mexican national admitted in federal court today that she violated federal counternarcotics sanctions by funneling more than $500,000 to an elite Florida prep school to pay for her child’s tuition.
Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arevalo, 45, pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Act. Amaral Arevalo is the ex-wife and current partner of Gerardo Gonzalez Valencia, a high-ranking leader of the Los Cuinis drug trafficking organization.
Los Cuinis operates alongside the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), which was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department in February 2025.
Court records show that the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) originally sanctioned Amaral Arevalo on Aug. 19, 2015, for assisting Los Cuinis’s international drug operations. That designation strictly prohibited her from conducting business or processing transactions within the U.S. financial system.
Despite those restrictions, Amaral Arevalo entered into contracts with IMG Academy, a preparatory school and sports training facility in Bradenton, Florida. She subsequently arranged $504,497.48 in tuition payments for her child to attend the institution.
“Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arevalo willfully violated U.S. counternarcotic sanctions by funneling over half a million dollars in illicit drug proceeds as tuition payments through IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, despite being prohibited from engaging in transactions within the U.S. financial system,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The Kingpin Act exists to cut off foreign narcotics traffickers, their businesses, and their operatives from engaging in transactions within the U.S. financial system, and prevents them from using American institutions to receive or move drug money.”
Her partner, Gonzalez Valencia, was sentenced to life in prison on July 21, 2023, for conspiring to distribute multi-ton quantities of cocaine intended for importation into the United States.
The transactions also drew federal penalties for the school itself. On Feb. 12, 2026, OFAC announced a $1.72 million settlement with IMG Academy for repeatedly entering yearly tuition contracts with sanctioned individuals tied to the Mexican cartel and accepting their payments.
“Wendy Dalaithy Amaral Arevalo exploited a school and training facility — a place families trust to invest in their children’s futures — as a vehicle to funnel millions in illicit drug proceeds for CJNG, one of the Western Hemisphere’s most violent and destabilizing drug cartels,” said Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terrance C. Cole. “Her guilty plea exposes the calculated audacity and sophisticated reach of cartel financial networks operating inside the United States.”
The case was investigated by the DEA’s Special Operations Division Bilateral Investigations Unit in Los Angeles with assistance from OFAC. Attorneys from the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering, Narcotics and Forfeiture Section and the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Unit are prosecuting the case under the Homeland Security Task Force initiative.
Amaral Arevalo faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10 million. Her sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 2.
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