SAN DIEGO -- A senior lieutenant for the once-powerful Arellano-Felix drug cartel has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for smuggling hundreds of tons of drugs, committing murders and paying millions of dollars in bribes to law enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns also ordered 32-year-old Manuel Arturo Villareal-Heredia on Monday to forfeit $5 million.

The defendant pleaded guilty Sept. 17 to operating an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering and conspiracy to invest illicit drug profits.

Villareal and the leader of the AFO, Francisco Javier Arellano-Felix, were captured off the coast of Baja California in August 2006 aboard the 43-foot yacht "Dock Holliday."

Francisco Javier Arellano-Felix also pleaded guilty to federal charges and was sentenced last Nov. 5 to life in prison.

Defense attorney Paul Blake told Burns yesterday that he felt very strongly that Villareal will be rehabilitated and become a productive member of society with the support of his family.

For his part, Villareal thanked the judge for giving him "good counsel" and thanked Burns for being a "fair judge."

Burns told the defendant he had trouble differentiating between the polite man before him in court and the man who tortured and killed people in furtherance of the AFO.

"I think you got a tremendous break here," Burns told the defendant.

The judge said that absent a plea agreement, he would have given Villareal more time in custody.