GPS tracker led to men accused of stalking Southlake cartel lawyer

A small black GPS tracker kept Juan Jesus Guerrero Chapa under close watch in the weeks before his death.

But the tracker — bought at a McAllen spy shop and stuck with two magnets beneath Guerrero’s Range Rover — also led authorities directly to the men accused of stalking him until he was fatally shot at Southlake Town Square in 2013, according to testimony in federal court Wednesday.

Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Cepeda and his cousin Jose Luis Cepeda-Cortes are on trial in Fort Worth, each charged with interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit murder for hire.

Jesus Gerardo Ledezma-Campano, Ledezma-Cepeda’s son, is also charged and is expected to testify for the prosecution on Thursday.

On Wednesday, testimony from a Drug Enforcement Administration analyst revealed how the three men were identified as suspects and tracked to locations in South Texas and northern Mexico.

The shooter and the getaway driver in Guerrero’s death — referred to in court as “Clorox” and “Captain” — have not been arrested.

Tracker revealed email

After Guerrero’s death, DEA analyst Jeff Lloyd said, authorities found the tracking device beneath the rear passenger’s side of Guerrero’s Range Rover.

The tracker was made by Blackline GPS, a Canada-based surveillance company that allows customers to access the tracker’s information through an online account, a Blackline employee testified Wednesday.

Blackline allowed Lloyd to access the account information for the tracker. The account also included information for five other trackers.

The name on the account was fake — Juan Ramos — which authorities later discovered was an alias for Ledezma-Cepeda.

The email address for the account, menosso56@gmail.com, provided Lloyd another path.

He asked Google for the gmail account information. The account listed another fake name, Jay Ledger, but included a phone number with a McAllen area code and a secondary email address: JLCPDA@gmail.com.

Lloyd traced the IP address used to access JLCPDA@gmail.com to a Verizon account associated with Cepeda-Cortes. The Verizon account also provided Cepeda-Cortes’ address in Rio Grande City.

Email findings

When Lloyd accessed the emails in JLCPDA’s account, he found Cepeda-Cortes’ bank records and photos of him, he said.

He found a payment confirmation from a cellphone provider and an order for computer memory from Cepeda-Cortes’ business in Rio Grande City. He also found a lease application — with a copy of Cepeda-Cortes’ Texas driver’s license attached — for a rental home in Wellington, Fla., near West Palm Beach.

Prosecutors have said Cepeda-Cortes, Ledezma-Cepeda and Ledezma-Campano rented apartments in South Florida and Grapevine, paying as much as $2,400 a month, while searching for Guerrero.

Lloyd later discovered email accounts associated with Ledezma-Cepeda, including one in which he wrote, “I am Juan Ramos.”

The email findings included airline reservations with Ledezma-Cepeda’s and Cepeda-Cortes’ phone numbers and “consistent telephone contact” between those numbers, Lloyd said.

During opening statements Tuesday, Ledezma-Cepeda’s attorney said the defendant had been forced to track Guerrero by a cartel boss known as El Gato, who believed that Guerrero was responsible for the death of his father.

Cepeda-Cortes’ attorney said his client was helping Ledezma-Cepeda with what he believed was a private investigation and didn’t know that it would result in a murder.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 10:11 PM with the headline "GPS tracker led to men accused of stalking Southlake cartel lawyer."