SAN JOSE — Maybe Jesus Salamanca-Benitez should have stayed at the Panda Express assembly line.

As an employee of the popular Chinese food chain living in Mexico, Salamanca-Benitez was “in the throes of a gambling addiction” and struggling to make ends meet, his attorney wrote in court filings. His solution was to broker several high-end methamphetamine deals over the phone, leading to a drug courier taking a total of 30 pounds of the drug to an undercover DEA agent in San Jose and Redwood City, court records show.

The 2021 undercover drug bust came with major repercussions to Salamanca-Benitez, who was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison earlier this month. Court records say he was arrested in 2022, after coming into the United States through Southern California, then brought to San

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