United States of America v. Mario Castro Covarrubias, Spanish, also known as Menon

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 24-2273
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United States of America
lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee
v.
Mario Castro Covarrubias, Spanish, also known as Menon
lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the District of South Dakota - Southern
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Submitted: September 15, 2025
Filed: October 1, 2025
[Unpublished]
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Before SMITH, ARNOLD, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
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PER CURIAM.
With the help of confidential informants, investigators learned that Mario
Castro Covarrubias was coordinating large shipments of cocaine to South Dakota. He
eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute a controlled substance, see 21

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U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1), 846, and the district court,1 varying upwards, sentenced him to
240 months in prison. He maintains on appeal that the district court miscalculated his
recommended sentencing range and imposed an unreasonable sentence. We disagree
and affirm.
When calculating Covarrubias’s recommended sentencing range, the district
court applied a three-level enhancement because it found that Covarrubias was a
manager or supervisor in criminal activity involving at least five people. See USSG
§ 3B1.1(b). “The district court's determination of a participant’s role in the offense
is a factual finding that we review for clear error.” United States v. Ellis, 129 F.4th
1075, 1080 (8th Cir. 2025). We construe the terms “manager” or “supervisor”
broadly. See United States v. Gaines, 639 F.3d 423, 428 (8th Cir. 2011).
Covarrubias emphasizes that his “role in the conspiracy was limited to phone
activity” and that the government never presented evidence that he personally handed
drugs to anyone or even received the proceeds of cocaine distribution. According to
Covarrubias, he acted merely like “a customer service representative answering phone
calls” and not like a manager or supervisor in the conspiracy.
We discern no clear error in the district court’s determination that
Covarrubias’s role was more extensive than he insists. Covarrubias organized and
carefully oversaw two separate shipments of cocaine totaling nearly 67
kilograms—an amount worth over two million dollars—from South America to
Mexico and into the United States. And when the first shipment did not go as
planned, he assured a confidential informant that the second would fare better
because he would use couriers he had experience with. Organizations (whether acting
illegally or not) do not typically entrust multi-million dollar decisions to underlings.
1The Honorable Karen E. Schreier, United States District Judge for the District
of South Dakota.
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We are not left with a definite and firm conviction that the district court erred in
determining that Covarrubias was no mere bottom-rung customer-service
representative but instead exercised significant managerial and supervisory authority.
Covarrubias’s next assignment of error requires some explanation. When
discussing the sentence it would impose, the district court observed that
Covarrubias’s criminal history was in the least severe category. The court further
remarked, though, that it wasn’t sure the lack of criminal history accurately reflected
the likelihood that Covarrubias would reoffend: He had lived most of his life outside
the country, so his true criminal history was unknown. With a total offense level of
32 and a criminal history category of I, Covarrubias’s recommended sentence under
the Guidelines was 121–151 months’ imprisonment. He contends that since the court
sentenced him to 240 months, it “effectively enhanced,” as he puts it in his brief, his
criminal history category to a category VI, since 240 months falls within the range
prescribed for offenders in that category. We reject this contention because the
district court never purported to adjust Covarrubias’s criminal-history category. It
merely varied upward and imposed a sentence above the Guidelines range, largely
because of the massive quantity of cocaine Covarrubias trafficked, much of which the
Guidelines calculation likely didn’t capture. There was no error here.
Covarrubias asserts that the district court also improperly speculated that he
was “higher up in this drug conspiracy” than other coconspirators the court had
already sentenced. The court was merely pointing out that Covarrubias had supplied
those coconspirators with drugs, an observation the record supported. A government
agent testified at sentencing that Covarrubias was the drug supplier, and an
unobjected-to paragraph of the presentence report stated much the same. The district
court did not err.
For his next contention, Covarrubias asserts that the district court abused its
sentencing discretion when it mentioned the lengthy sentences it had imposed on two
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of his coconspirators. We see no abuse of discretion. “In sentencing, a judge may
appropriately conduct an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited either as to the
kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come.” United
States v. Hogue, 66 F.4th 756, 764–65 (8th Cir. 2023). A relevant sentencing
consideration is “the need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among
defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct.” See
18 U.S.C. § 3553(a)(6). Though we’ve said many times that § 3553(a)(6) refers to
national disparities and not differences among coconspirators, we’ve also recognized
that the sentences imposed on coconspirators can be a relevant consideration in fixing
a sentence. See United States v. Castillo, 117 F.4th 1021, 1025 (8th Cir. 2024). And
so even though § 3553(a)(6) “does not require district courts to consider sentencing
disparity among co-defendants, . . . it also does not prohibit them from doing so.” See
United States v. Kluger, 722 F.3d 549, 568 (3d Cir. 2013); see also United States v.
Peterson, 839 F. App’x 7, 11 (7th Cir. 2020) (citing Gall v. United States, 552 U.S.
38, 55–56 (2007)).
Finally, Covarrubias maintains that the district court failed to give proper
weight to his “safety concerns as a motivation for participating in the conspiracy.”
The district court acknowledged that people in Mexico and Guatemala are often
forced into the drug trade, but it expressly found that “there hasn’t been any evidence
to show that that coercion or those threats happened to make [Covarrubias] get into
the drug trade business.” We cannot fault the court for giving little to no weight to
Covarrubias’s unsupported allegations of coercion, and we think that on this record
the district court amply justified the 240-month sentence it imposed.
Affirmed.
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