Indiana Beauty Queen Faces Drug Trafficking Charges: Glenis Zapata’s Fall From Grace
In 2011, Glenis Zapata, who is now 34 years old, was crowned Miss Indiana Latina. Currently, she is being charged with trafficking after being mentioned in an indictment that was handed down by a federal grand jury in Chicago. Her alleged actions include the transportation of drug revenues amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Recently, Zapata had been working as a flight attendant; however, according to federal investigators, she was also attending to the passage of drug cartel funds onboard jetliners into Mexico. This included a private jet, which was initially reported by the ABC7 I-Team in the year 2022.
The plane that was traveling from Mexico to Gary, Indiana arrived at the airport with twenty pounds of cocaine packed in many luggage during its arrival.
As a result of their detention onboard the private jet, members of the cartel have already been convicted and sentenced to prison.
According to the newly filed indictment, Glenis Zapata is charged with her sister, Ilenis, who is 33 years old and also from Lafayette. Illinois is employed by an Indiana bank and is accused of assisting in the laundering of drug proceeds by exchanging notes with lower denominations for bills with greater denominations.
A second bank employee, Georgian Banuelos, who is 39 years old, is also being charged with the crime. The authorities believe that Oswaldo Espinosa, also known as “Scrambler,” is the leader of the drug trafficking network. Espinosa is a fugitive who is 41 years old.
Espinosa is accused of transporting cocaine from Mexico to Chicago and other locations between the years 2018 and 2023. He allegedly accomplished this by utilizing warehouses, garages, and stash homes to store the drugs and cash.
According to Glenis Zapata, her arrest is a fall from the glory of her beauty pageant days in 2011. In 2011, she was hailed as the first Latina pageant winner from Indiana to ever make it into the top 10 at the United States pageant. Unfortunately, she was arrested.
Both of the Zapata sisters have been taken into custody, as evidenced by the fact that bail reports have been issued in the federal court in Chicago for both of them. The freshly accused drug traffickers have not yet uploaded a court schedule for their upcoming court appearances.
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