On 2 June 2003, United States authorities requested the Mexican government to extradite Francisco Rafael. A Mexican federal judge approved the request the following year but the drug lord was not extradited to the United States until September 16, 2006. He was flown from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, via helicopter and handed over to U.S. authorities in a prison in Brownsville, Texas, after a 10-year sentence in Mexico. He was then transferred to the state of California pending federal charges on drug trafficking. On 18 June 2007, he pleaded guilty to the possession and distribution of cocaine before U.S. District Judge Irma E. Gonzalez in a San Diego federal court. In his testimony, he admitted to selling about 250 grams of cocaine to a supplier who negotiated with an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in an unnamed motel in San Diego in 1980. In October 2007, Francisco Rafael was sentenced to six years in prison and with possibility to parole in four months given the time he had already served in prison.
