How an intercepted package of methamphetamine led to the death of a Hialeah man, allegedly at the hands of a Sinaloa cartel hitman. NBC6’s Tony Pipitone found the woman — who police say led the hitman to his target — began working with federal prosecutors and drug agents years ago.
Tsvia Kol’s methamphetamine distribution operation – allegedly on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel – could have ended in November 2020.
That’s when federal agents say they detained her in possession of three pounds of meth from an overnight mail shipment and found another half-kilo of the drug and dozens of fentanyl pills in her Broward County apartment.
Instead, Kol was offered a deal, according to a transcript of a court hearing: avoid arrest, at least for the time being, and become an “informal cooperator,” providing information on shipments and coconspirators.
There was one caveat, an assistant U.S. Attorney said at that hearing: “She was told specifically to stop engaging in illegal activity outside of her cooperation with law enforcement.”
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But eight months after cutting that deal, a federal agent would later testify in court, she resumed receiving methamphetamine, distributing 15 pounds of it to her coconspirators.
That was July 2021, and at that point, the agent said they were done with Kol – noting she had provided “bad intel” anyway and violated her agreement by breaking the law.
“Ultimately, she did the deal on her own. She lied to us, and we were out of it,” he testified.
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But she was not arrested then, either.
“We decided not to charge that,” assistant U.S. Attorney Alexandra Comolli told U.S. District Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley at that hearing in December 2022, after Kol was finally arrested on federal drug trafficking charges related to the November 2020 shipment and seizures.
Kol would tell investigators she distributed more than 30 kilos of methamphetamine in South Florida, a postal inspector testified.
Not much is publicly known about what Kol did as federal authorities allowed her to roam free in the 16 months after the agent and prosecutor say she violated her agreement by running drugs.
But an arrest affidavit for a suspected Sinaloa cartel hitman unsealed last week suggests, had she been in custody sooner, she could not have allegedly lured a Hialeah man to his execution.
The affidavit, by Miami-Dade homicide Det. Paulo Klimick Pereira, says Kol lured 46-year-old Julio Gonzalez to the Aladdin Hotel in Miami Springs on Nov. 29, 2022, then summoned to their room suspected hitman Jimmy Sanchez, whose flight to MIA from San Diego that afternoon had been arranged by Kol.
One minute after Sanchez entered room 304, Gonzalez called 911 and announced, “In Aladdin Hotel,” the affidavit states. Asked if he needed police, Gonzalez said, “Yes. Urgent.”
The call dropped and when 911 called back, the affidavit says, Gonzalez was heard pleading for his life – “no, no, no” -- and then a gunshot.
Based on that 911 call, video evidence and cellphone forensics, the warrant states, “It is clear that (Kol and Sanchez) were alone with the victim at the time of his execution.”
But so far only Sanchez has been charged.
Miami Springs Police responded to the 911 call that night but found nothing until the next morning when a hotel manager found Gonzalez’s body in the room, with two bullets in his head.
Kol, now 35, was arrested the next day by the DEA on the federal drug trafficking charges from 2020. Her indictment was filed on Nov. 8, 2022, but remained sealed until her arrest more than three weeks later.
She pleaded guilty on Aug. 30, 2023, to conspiring and distributing the nearly two kilos of methamphetamine she had in her possession in 2020.
The U.S. Attorney’s office didn’t answer to NBC6 why she was allowed to remain free even after she admitted distributing 15 pounds of meth in July 2021.
In her detention hearing on Dec. 2, 2022, the federal agent mentioned COVID and changes in prosecutors were two factors in the delay, but Kol’s defense attorney noted the government had charged and detained many other suspects during that time period.
A judge ordered her held without bond, saying she was a possible flight risk because, as a legal permanent resident, she could flee to her homeland, Israel, which does not always extradite drug suspects back to the United States.
But nowhere in that hearing or in the plea agreement, factual proffer or other court records that followed is there mention of Kol’s possible involvement in the murder of Julio Gonzalez.
Gonzalez’s mother recalled to NBC6 her worry that day.
“What can I tell you?” she said in Spanish. “I thought I was going to die that day… I kept calling him and he wouldn’t answer. I knew in my heart something wasn’t good.”
Gonzalez was a valet at Casino Miami who neighbors say often offered to help protect their packages from porch pirates.
“He was an excellent son,” his mother said. “With me, he was good, loving, special.”
But investigators say they found another reason Gonzalez would gather packages from neighbors: to help the Sinaloa cartel ship kilos of methamphetamine into the Miami market.
And, based on evidence laid out in that arrest affidavit, that’s what got him killed.
According to investigators, Julio Gonzalez was expecting 11 pounds of methamphetamine to be delivered on Nov. 16, 2022, to his apartment complex in Hialeah, but to a next-door neighbor’s apartment, not his.
The DEA detected the UPS parcel and intercepted it and surveilled Gonzalez searching for the package he never received, Sanchez’s arrest affidavit states, and then questioned Gonzalez and neighbors, but made no arrests.
Soon, Gonzalez learned he was being targeted from another quarter: the Mexican drug cartel he was allegedly assisting, telling a Hialeah Police detective a homeless man who frequented Casino Miami told him “four Mexican-looking men were looking for him at the casino because he had a package for them.”
On November 24, Gonzalez also posted a photo of Kol and her Facebook page on his account with the caption, “If something happens to me, it’s her,” according to the arrest affidavit, which also states he told a former girlfriend Kol threatened to kill him.
Five days later, he was dead.
“My son, no one is going to bring him back to life – no one other than the creator,” Gonzalez’s mother said.
Sanchez, whose attorney didn’t respond to our request for comment, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
But conspiracy with whom?
Kol pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute, and possession with intent to distribute, methamphetamine. She faces a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and up to life at her sentencing, now set for May 2. Her relatives and attorneys declined comment to NBC6.
Neither the U.S. Attorney nor Miami-Dade State Attorney have provided an answer as to why Kol has not been charged in connection with Gonzalez’s death, leaving his mother bewildered.
“That justice is done is very important,” she said, “because one must have confidence in the authorities that we have.”
