"The threat of Mexican
cartel violence and the drugs they bring into our nation can’t be
overstated," said Russell Coleman, the top federal prosecutor for the
Western District of Kentucky. His office has prosecuted Sinaloa and CJNG
members.
“Critics say the Mexican president, known as AMLO, seems more
concerned about using federal troops to keep South American immigrants out of
his country than challenging the cartels.”
“The cartel also recruits spies in the Mexican government and
police to keep its leaders out of jail and avoid drug busts. Those who refuse
bribes are threatened or killed.”
NARCOMEX PRESIDENTS SUCK
IN STAGGERING BRIBES FROM LA RAZA HEROIN CARTELS
"While
other witnesses at Mr. Guzmán’s trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn
have testified about huge payoffs from traffickers to the Mexican police and
public officials, the testimony about Mr. Peña Nieto was the most egregious
allegation yet. If true, it suggests that corruption by drug cartels had
reached into the highest level of Mexico’s political establishment."
The former president of Mexico, Enrique Peña
“Mexican authorities have arrested the former mayor of a rural
community in the border state of Coahuila in connection with the kidnapping,
murder and incineration of hundreds of victims through a network of ovens at
the hands of the Los Zetas cartel. The arrest comes after Breitbart Texas
exposed not only the horrors of the mass extermination, but also the cover-up
and complicity of the Mexican government.”
Macias found success following
the cartel's three-pronged business model:
• Selling
drugs in bulk to local traffickers, who then sold to area dealers.
• Paying
semitruck drivers to haul hidden caches of drugs into the U.S. and return cash
to Mexico.
• Using
others to deposit drug profits in cartel-controlled bank accounts.
A
ruthless Mexican drug lord’s empire is devastating families with its grip on
small-town USA
GO HERE FOR GRAPHIC IMAGES OF
WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH THE MEX DRUG CARTELS IN U.S.:
Beth
Warren, Louisville Courier Journal
Somewhere
deep in Mexico's remote wilderness, the world’s most dangerous and wanted drug
lord is hiding. If someone you love dies from an overdose tonight, he may very
well be to blame.
He's
called "El Mencho."
And
though few Americans know his name, authorities promise they soon will.
Rubén "Nemesio" Oseguera
Cervantes is the leader of Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, better known as
CJNG. With a $10 million reward on his head, he’s on the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration’s Most Wanted list.
El
Mencho’s powerful international syndicate is flooding the U.S. with thousands
of kilos of methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl every year — despite
being targeted repeatedly by undercover stings, busts and lengthy
investigations.
The
unending stream of narcotics has contributed to this country’s unprecedented
addiction crisis, devastating families and killing more than 300,000 people
since 2013.
CJNG’s
rapid rise heralds the latest chapter in a generations-old drug war in which
Mexican cartels are battling to supply Americans’ insatiable demand for
narcotics.
A
nine-month Courier Journal investigation reveals how CJNG's reach has spread
across the U.S. in the past five years, overwhelming cities and small towns
with massive amounts of drugs.
The
investigation documented CJNG operations in at least 35 states and Puerto Rico,
a sticky web that has snared struggling business owners, thousands of drug
users and Mexican immigrants terrified to challenge cartel orders.
How
we reported this story
Throughout
2019, Courier Journal reporters analyzed thousands of court records and
transcripts of more than 100 CJNG-linked cases around the country and talked to
more than 150 federal drug agents, police officers, defense attorneys and
prosecutors, as well as relatives, co-workers and neighbors of those accused.
The team traveled to 15 cities across the United States and to Mexico City and
Guadalajara. Reporters also reached out to more than two dozen alleged cartel
members or associates.
It
also identified at least two dozen "cells," which the DEA defines as
places where cartel members set up shop to do business and live in the
communities.
The
unparalleled speed of CJNG’s growth coast to coast in less than a decade has
made the cartel a “clear, present and growing danger,” says Uttam Dhillon,
DEA's acting administrator.
The
billion-dollar criminal organization has a large and disciplined army, control
of extensive drug routes throughout the U.S., sophisticated money-laundering
techniques and an elaborate digital terror campaign, federal drug agents say.
Its
extreme savagery in Mexico includes beheadings, public hangings, acid baths,
even cannibalism. The cartel circulates these images of torture and execution
on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to spread fear and
intimidation.
'They're
killing the next generation'
In
Mexico, El Mencho is a household name.
But
in America, few know who he is or why his rise to power matters.
Brenda
and Karl Cooley of Louisville certainly didn’t know his name when their son
Adam overdosed on fentanyl in March 2017. Adam died midsentence while writing a
thank-you note to a friend on the eve of entering a rehab facility.
Who
was to blame? his anguished parents asked.
"They’re
killing the next generation, and one of them was my son," Brenda Cooley
said.
Courier
Journal reporters pieced together CJNG’s network, from the suburbs of Seattle,
the beaches of Mississippi and South Carolina, California’s coastline, the
mountains of Virginia, small farming towns in Iowa and Nebraska, and across the
Bluegrass State, including in Louisville, Lexington and Paducah.
A
cartel member even worked at Kentucky's famed Calumet Farm, home to eight
Kentucky Derby and three Triple Crown winners.
Ciro
Macias Martinez led a double life, working as a horse groomer by day and
overseeing the flow of $30 million worth of drugs into Kentucky by night before
being imprisoned in 2018 for meth trafficking and money laundering, federal
records show.
El
Mencho’s drug empire "is putting poison on the streets of the U.S.,"
said Chris Evans, who runs the DEA’s day-to-day global operations.
CJNG
has skirted Mexican and U.S. inspections at legal border crossings by hiding
drugs in semitrailers hauling tomatoes, avocados and other produce, dumping at
least 5 tons of cocaine and 5 tons of meth into this country every month,
according to DEA estimates.
It
shows no signs of slowing down.
"It's
important for all Americans to understand the threat to their community and
what might impact their everyday lives," Evans said.
While
officials can't say how much of the U.S. drug trade comes from CJNG, they
predict the powerful organization is poised to supplant the more well-known and
established Sinaloa Cartel as the world's most powerful drug trafficking
organization.
CJNG’s increased distribution of fentanyl across the country has
helped the synthetic opioid unseat heroin as the nation’s No. 1 killer.
The
Courier Journal could not say with certainty who supplied the drugs that killed
Adam Cooley. But federal agents say CJNG was Kentucky’s main supplier of
fentanyl at the time of his death.
Throughout
2019, reporters analyzed thousands of court records of more than 100 criminal
drug cases around the country and talked to more than 150 federal drug agents,
police officers, defense attorneys and prosecutors.
They
also contacted more than two dozen accused cartel members or CJNG associates in
prison and traveled to Mexico City, Guadalajara and 15 U.S. cities to see
firsthand the far-reaching repercussions of El Mencho’s cartel.
The
investigation documented how in each new community, CJNG uses local traffickers
who can blend in to sell their drugs, with no regard for their race or
ethnicity.
"If
it’s coming from a cartel, they could have sold a pound to Asians, black guys,
outlaw motorcycle gangs, white trash," said Lt. Jeremy Williams, of the
Ashe County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina. His testimony helped convict a
trafficker connected to CJNG in 2014.
"Once
the cartel brings a huge load across (the border) and throws it out there for
everyone to sell, it’s out of their hands. They’ve got their money,"
Williams said.
El
Mencho and his cartel, with more than 5,000 members worldwide, have a clear-cut
objective:
"They
want to control the entire drug market," said Matthew Donahue, who
oversees foreign operations for the DEA.
"If
that takes them killing other cartels or killing innocent people, they will do
it."
CJNG's
rapid rise to power and its expansion have stunned and stymied America’s top
drug fighters.
"I
was surprised that CJNG’s efforts and tentacles were reaching into Kentucky,
that they had expanded their reach that rapidly,” said Evans, who previously headed
the Louisville Field Division.
He
got his first glimpse of CJNG’s success when he was overseeing drug cases in
Los Angeles, a key cartel hub.
"I
still expected that they would be in markets in the Southwest, a little bit
into some of the other major corridors, such as Atlanta and Chicago,” Evans
said.
Instead,
The Courier Journal’s investigation documented cells where CJNG members moved
in, settling into a luxury condo near downtown Nashville’s honky-tonk district;
an upscale Hollywood high-rise apartment near Sunset Boulevard; and
sidewalk-lined suburbs in Cairo, Illinois; Johnson City, Tennessee; and Kansas
City, Missouri.
CJNG
even established a cell in south-central Virginia, buying or renting a cluster
of modest homes in Axton — an unincorporated community of roughly 6,500.
In
Mexico, a DEA investigator said he was stunned when he learned CJNG cells were
popping up in communities as small as Axton.
"What
are they doing way out in the middle of nowhere?" he asked his team.
Hearing
more details, the investigator, who asked not to be identified to protect his
work, acknowledged to The Courier Journal: "It’s a great strategy."
CJNG
members have followed relatives or friends who left Mexico for the U.S. to find
jobs. The cartel exploits its connections with otherwise hard-working
immigrants, said Dan Dodds, who leads DEA operations in Kentucky, Tennessee and
West Virginia.
And
court records detail how the cartel lures those who need money to serve as drug
or cash couriers or money launderers.
For
example, a Lexington waitress seeking cash to pay for dental assistant courses
ended up making bank deposits that she didn’t know were for CJNG, according to
court transcripts.
She
got her older sister, a struggling single mom, involved to make quick money.
Both
are now in prison for money laundering, and her sister, who has two children
living in Kentucky, faces deportation.
In
cases in which immigrants resist the cartel's offer, CJNG members often
threatened violence — to them or their loved ones back in Mexico, according to
court cases and law enforcement officials.
Sheriff's
investigators say a Paducah, Kentucky, business owner who fell behind on a drug
debt was warned last year by the cartel: "If we don’t get our money, we’re
gonna kill you and your family.”
The
cartel's expansion into smaller, unexpected communities began to mushroom about
five years ago as U.S. intelligence analysts tracked its movements far beyond
border towns and major hubs.
Smaller
towns. Smaller police forces. More unchecked opportunities.
"Big
cities have big police departments and DEA, FBI and (Homeland Security
Investigations) and an ability to look at intelligence and focus on their cells
and contacts,” said the DEA's Donahue.
"But
it’s a little different when you go to Boise, Idaho, and other small towns
where they don’t have the resources to really focus on an international cartel."
Americans
who may not know of CJNG today should take note, Dodds said.
"I
promise, you will hear more about El Mencho."
Filling
America's drug demand
The
Courier Journal's investigation into CJNG's surge comes during a recent wave of
significant violence among warring drug cartels in Mexico.
In
mid-October, 13 Mexican police officers were killed in an ambush in El Mencho's
home state of Michoacán in western Mexico. Attackers in armored vehicles opened
fire with high-caliber weapons, gunning down officers driving five SUVs.
CJNG
took credit on social media for the massacre.
In a
Nov. 5 tweet, after nine people — including six children — with dual
U.S.-Mexican citizenship were killed by cartels (though different ones than
CJNG), President Donald Trump vowed to assist Mexican officials "in
cleaning out these monsters."
"The
cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to
defeat an army!"
But
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declined Trump's offer for U.S.
troops, saying his country doesn't need help.
Critics
say the Mexican president, known as AMLO, seems more concerned about using
federal troops to keep South American immigrants out of his country than
challenging the cartels.
The
cartels, including CJNG, are feeling empowered because of the rampant violence
in Mexico, said Paul Craine, a retired DEA supervisor who oversaw the U.S. hunt
for El Chapo.
"That’s
why these guys are flourishing.”
A
high-ranking state official in Jalisco said Americans are too quick to blame
Mexico for the U.S. drug crisis.
“We
have all had a drug consumption problem," said the official, who asked not
to be identified for his protection. "A very big, increasing problem.
"Your
weapons laws (in the U.S.) are too weak," with American guns often ending
up in the hands of cartel members in Mexico, he said.
"We
have a problem of corruption. So instead of blaming, we should look for
solutions.”
In
America, Hispanic workers find themselves looked at with suspicion because of
political rhetoric that brands the drug trade and immigration as one and the
same, say advocates for those workers.
Immigrants,
some fleeing criminal violence themselves, can be victimized by cartels on both
sides of the border and unfairly targeted by U.S. political rhetoric or
perceptions stoked by cartel crime.
"Our
community is paying a steep price," said Carlos Guevara, a senior policy
adviser for UnidosUS (LA RAZA), America’s largest Latino civil rights
organization.
The
rise of El Mencho and CJNG
For
53-year-old El Mencho, success did not come early. He dropped out of sixth
grade to help his family pick avocados.
The
teenager sneaked into the U.S. and tried to build a customer base as a
street-level dealer. But he kept getting caught.
As a
young adult, he and his older brother, Abraham Oseguera Cervantes, sold heroin
to two undercover police officers at a San Francisco bar in 1992 and were sent
to federal prison on drug trafficking charges.
El
Mencho was deported in 1997 and then traveled to Tijuana. There, he built a
thriving drug trafficking business, but the city's dominant cartel ordered him
to leave when leaders became threatened by his success.
He
briefly worked as a police officer in Tomatlán, a small town in Jalisco,
learning the inner workings of law enforcement, said DEA Special Agent Kyle
Mori, who is heading the U.S. criminal investigation against El Mencho from Los
Angeles.
El
Mencho eventually joined the Milenio Cartel, gaining a reputation as a cunning
sicario, or hitman, and then a boss of hitmen in Guadalajara, Jalisco's capital
city.
Passed
over for promotion, El Mencho teamed with his in-laws who ran an affiliated cartel
and forged his own criminal organization in early 2011 — CJNG.
He
quickly amassed a private army, with CJNG members recruiting or kidnapping
hundreds of men in their 20s and boys as young as 12. The DEA's Donahue said
many were taken to remote paramilitary camps where they were trained as
assassins.
Those
who tried to run were tortured, killed and sometimes cannibalized by fellow
recruits in what U.S. federal agents describe as a disturbing rite of passage.
His
followers have spread to nearly all of Mexico's 32 states, including the cities
of Guadalajara and Tijuana, both crucial to moving drugs into the U.S.
From
there, El Mencho's empire went global, with a steady — and growing — customer
base in the U.S., as well as in Australia, Europe and Japan.
In
2015, El Mencho flexed that power to strike back at law enforcement who tried
to stop him.
Tipped
off that a police caravan was on its way to grab El Mencho, CJNG hitmen hid
along the route in April 2015 and ambushed four police vehicles. Cartel members
fired hundreds of rounds and hurled grenades and jugs of gasoline.
Fifteen
officers died.
A
month later, Mexican authorities learned of El Mencho’s new hiding spot and
organized a secret mission to capture him.
Federal
police officer Ivan Morales, his partner and soldiers with the Mexican national
defense climbed aboard helicopters and headed toward a CJNG compound in the
Jalisco mountains.
As
they hovered over a cartel convoy, CJNG members fired Russian-made
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, shooting down Morales’ helicopter into a
cluster of trees.
Eight
soldiers and Morales’ partner died. Flames left Morales disabled and disfigured.
"I
thought I was going to die," he said.
Just
hours after the crash, the cartel carried out coordinated attacks in 39 cities,
blowing up banks, gas stations and setting cars and semis on fire on major
highways to slow down police reinforcements.
"When
they shot the helicopter out of the sky is when everyone respected CJNG as a
powerhouse cartel and a rival of Sinaloa," Donahue said.
The
violence of 2015 was a wake-up call, said Terry Cole, a former New York City
police officer who oversees DEA agents in Guadalajara as the assistant regional
director for North and Central America.
"That's
the type of terrorists we’re dealing with here."
CJNG's
diversified business operations
Through
corruption and intimidation, CJNG has thrived, even as it found additional ways
to make money.
The
cartel has run brothels in Mexico, often using teens and women forced into
CJNG's web.
It
also operated a tequila label, casinos, two shopping centers, a medical clinic,
real estate companies and a Pacific Ocean resort frequented by Americans,
according to U.S. Treasury Department records.
Adults
and children are forced to work in CJNG's crude meth super labs — vats on
patches of dirt hidden in the jungle. Entire families who resist have been
slaughtered, Donahue said.
The
cartel also recruits spies in the Mexican government and police to keep its
leaders out of jail and avoid drug busts. Those who refuse bribes are
threatened or killed.
A
veteran Jalisco police officer, who asked not to be identified for his safety,
said CJNG has officials on its payroll at the local, state and federal levels.
The information leaks make catching El Mencho extremely difficult, he said.
He
shares intel with the DEA, but not his own people.
"If
you provide information to the Mexican government, it’s probably the last thing
you would say."
A
violent cartel in an unsuspecting town
CJNG's
plan to move into small-town America and cash in on the country's addiction
crisis played out in Lexington, Kentucky.
There,
amid the lush pastures and white rail fences, a Mexican immigrant with a
sinister secret quietly groomed prized thoroughbreds at historic Calumet Farm,
according to court records.
Ciro
Macias Martinez was praised by his supervisor and fellow farmhands alike for
his punctuality, work ethic and soothing manner with horses at the breeding and
training farm in the heart of Kentucky.
But
when the day’s chores were done, Macias didn't socialize with others over
drinks or dinner.
At
night, from 2015 through April 2017, Macias directed the flow of $30 million
worth of heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, crystal meth and fentanyl from Mexico to
Kentucky's two largest cities: Lexington and Louisville.
During
that time, overdoses sent more victims to Kentucky's morgues than bullets and
car crashes combined — with the commonwealth suffering the fifth-highest
overdose death rate in the nation.
Agents
say Macias didn't involve Calumet in his drug crimes. His boss, Eddie Kane,
Calumet's general manager, declined repeated requests for comment.
Macias'
associate, Imanol Pineda Penaloza, headed a cell in Louisville while running
his drug business through his used tire shop, Los 3 Hermanos.
Macias
found success following the cartel's three-pronged business model:
• Selling
drugs in bulk to local traffickers, who then sold to area dealers.
• Paying
semitruck drivers to haul hidden caches of drugs into the U.S. and return cash
to Mexico.
• Using
others to deposit drug profits in cartel-controlled bank accounts.
Macias
recruited Brizeida Janett Sosa, the mother of his youngest child, to help
organize the money laundering scheme, court records would later show.
She
recruited helpers, too, and they frequently made deposits of less than $10,000
— amounts small enough to dodge federal reporting requirements — at bank
branches in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, as well as Greensboro and
Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
In
eight months, Sosa’s crew laundered about $1 million for CJNG, stacking drugs
and cash behind a wall of their trailer.
Kentucky
Department of Corrections Ciro Macias Martinez (left) led a dual life, working
hard in the daytime as a groomer at famed Calumet Farm, home to Triple Crown
and Derby winners. At night, prosecutors say he served as CJNG's Kentucky
cartel boss. He's now in prison. Brizeida Janett Sosa (right), Macias'
common-law wife, headed up the money laundering arm of the cartel's Kentucky
cell. Her crew funneled more than $1 million for CJNG.
To
help Macias smuggle drugs into the U.S., cartel leaders used a Toyota Camry
with a secret compartment on the armrest that opened through a sequence of
steps: Turn on the heater. Close the air vents. Pull up the seat.
It
could hide 9 kilos of drugs and a pile of cash.
Betrayal
led to the drug ring's collapse.
Someone
aware of the Lexington-Louisville operation talked to a DEA agent in 2016, who,
in turn, flagged investigators in Kentucky.
On
April 13, 2017, federal agents arrested Macias on his way to Calumet Farm. They
seized more than $1 million in drug money his couriers were hauling to Mexico.
Macias
and Sosa were convicted of meth trafficking and money laundering and are
serving 31 and 15 years, respectively, in federal prison.
Eleven
months after the Lexington raid, a SWAT team crept in the darkness and blasted
the front door to the Los 3 Hermanos tire shop in Louisville.
Pineda
Penaloza and his crew were convicted of drug trafficking and are now in federal
prison.
"The
threat of Mexican cartel violence and the drugs they bring into our nation
can’t be overstated," said Russell Coleman, the top federal prosecutor for
the Western District of Kentucky. His office has prosecuted Sinaloa and CJNG
members.
Yet,
no sooner had authorities busted Kentucky's CJNG ring than the cartel replaced
Macias, sending in another team. It hauled in more than 3 kilos of fentanyl,
the synthetic opioid so potent that an amount as small as Abraham Lincoln's
cheek on a penny can be fatal.
CJNG
wasn't the only cartel in the Bluegrass State in 2017, but authorities say it
was the main supplier of fentanyl — when Louisville's Adam Cooley, who sought
heroin, snorted 20 times a lethal dose.
CJNG's
network moves into more unsuspecting towns
CJNG's
Kentucky strategy has been repeated in town after town across America, in
places better known for cheese, cows and corn.
Pointing
to more than 70,000 Americans who overdosed and died in 2017, Coleman said,
“We’re fighting a war for our families, and (the cartels) are winning.”
That fight has been waged across America over the past seven
years, federal court records show:
• In Hickory,
North Carolina: CJNG used local drug dealers to move meth into the poor,
addicted mountain region. One couple created their own small "redneck drug
dealing" ring before law enforcement shut it down.
• In Axton,
Virginia: Investigators uncovered a hidden hub of stash houses run by alleged
CJNG members, part of a drug trafficking web in Virginia that stretched to
other mid-Atlantic states.
• In Omaha,
Nebraska: Cartel members bought cars with drug profits and sent them back to
Mexico for resale, another way to launder the cartel's wealth. The FBI broke up
the ring in a case that is still active.
• In Gulfport,
Mississippi: A state trooper working with a DEA task force nearly brought down
El Mencho after tracking messages the cartel boss' girlfriend texted to him at
his Mexican hideout. He sent her $1 million worth of meth.
CJNG
is also using a mix of street gangs and white-collar
businessmen
to move the drugs and hide the money.
In
Illinois, the cartel teamed with Vice Lords gang members to
grow
a drug network that stretched from Southern California
through
the Midwest and into Nashville and Paducah,
Kentucky
— known for its riverwalk murals and the National
Quilt
Museum.
After
agents toppled the drug ring, the cartel turned on the gang. Chicago
prosecutors allege in court filings that Luis Alderete was a “high-level cartel
operative” who shopped for a hitman on Facebook to “take care” of a gang member
in Cairo, Illinois, to silence him.
Alderete
also is accused of asking a criminal informant in Paducah for assault rifles
and a grenade launcher to supply a cartel "war" in Mexico, said Jesse
Riddle, the Narcotics Unit captain with the McCracken County Sheriff’s Office
in Paducah.
Alderete
was indicted in September 2019 in Chicago on charges of trafficking more than a
kilo of heroin and at least 400 grams of fentanyl from May to June of this year.
While
Luis Alderete maintains his innocence, court records show that his brother,
Roberto Alderete, identified Luis as a cartel lieutenant. Roberto is awaiting
sentencing in Paducah in August for trafficking meth while armed with a gun.
Further
details Roberto Alderete revealed about CJNG remain hidden in sealed documents.
CJNG
also has enlisted white-collar expertise.
In
an international operation that stretches back to 2011 dubbed "King's
Gold," Homeland Security investigators in Chicago uncovered a money
laundering organization that funneled more than $101 million to CJNG and
another cartel.
Court
documents outlined how it worked:
• Two
masterminds now in prison orchestrated the scheme from Guadalajara: Carlos
Parra Pedroza, alias “Walt Disney,” who owned a jewelry store; and Diego Pineda
Sanchez, an accountant.
• CJNG
members or associates would sell drugs to traffickers in Wisconsin, Indiana,
Ohio, Georgia, California, Texas, Kentucky, Illinois and North Carolina.
• Dozens
of couriers throughout the U.S. would then collect the drug profits and use the
dirty money to buy scrap and fine gold.
• Businesses
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Los Angeles would buy the gold and then send
the payments through wire transfers to Mexico — including to Parra Pedroza's
precious metals business.
• Prosecutors
say Parra Pedroza and Pineda Sanchez would keep a percentage, with the rest
going to cartel members in Mexico.
Parra
Pedroza and Pineda Sanchez received 13 and 15 years, respectively, in prison
after both pleaded guilty to money laundering.
Pineda
Sanchez's attorney, Lawrence Beaumont, disputed his client's involvement.
"He
was very minutely involved. He was not a millionaire," Beaumont said.
"If he was, I didn’t charge him enough."
To
build their lucrative drug networks in the U.S., CJNG bosses mandated
discretion to dodge police attention. In America, El Mencho expects cartel
members and associates to avoid violence, hide wealth and disguise their CJNG
affiliations, agents say.
But
some CJNG bosses didn’t follow those rules.
Members
of a cartel cell in Kansas City, with drug houses in both Kansas and Missouri
between 2013 and 2016, splurged on $10,000 tickets to rapper Pitbull’s concert
and a Louis Vuitton purse.
And, in a 2019 case pending in federal court, an accused cartel
lieutenant connected to Chicago drug trafficking settled into a $2 million
Nashville condo.
Other
bosses used threats of violence in the U.S., despite El Mencho's warnings
against it.
In a
Chicago money-laundering case, a Guadalajara businessman working with CJNG
urged an informant to settle his drug debt quickly, describing how cartel
members settled another man’s debt: "They chopped off his fingers."
And
federal prosecutors alleged in court that convicted drug trafficker Jesus
Enrique Palomera, the leader of a cartel cell in Tacoma, Washington, ordered
the kidnapping and murder of a man whose fingers and toes were chopped off — a
common method of torture in Mexico.
During
a brief telephone call from prison in August 2019, Palomera said he is a family
man who never harmed anyone.
"I
know I’m not that person," he said, refusing to elaborate. "My family
knows I’m not that person. I don't really care what the prosecutor says.”
U.S.
takes aim at cartel
Alarmed
by CJNG's surging violence in Mexico and continued expansion across this
country, U.S. officials have pushed back.
Beginning
in 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department designated El Mencho a
"kingpin," along with his brother-in-law, Abigail González Valencia,
leader of the Los Cuinis cartel.
That
designation allowed the department to levy sanctions against Mexican businesses
linked to the cartels, including a sushi restaurant, a tequila business,
shopping centers, a medical clinic, two newspapers and famed Hotelito
Desconocido, visited by Hollywood stars.
The
strategy: Make it illegal for any U.S. citizen or company to spend money at a
cartel-affiliated business. It also forbids any U.S. bank to approve loans or
credit card transactions for those CJNG-backed enterprises.
While
some moves targeted the cartel’s finances, others were more personal.
In
June 2015, the Mexican military arrested El Mencho’s son and second-in-command,
Rubén Oseguera Gonzáles. Unlike his reclusive father, the 25-year-old lived in
a luxury high-rise apartment in downtown Guadalajara and often stepped out in
designer clothes to eat in fancy restaurants.
When
authorities arrested him, they found two assault rifles, one inscribed with
"Menchito" — little Mencho — and another engraved with "CJNG 02
JR."
American
authorities are still seeking his extradition to the U.S. to face drug charges.
Mexican
marines almost captured El Mencho in October 2018. They stormed a hideout west
of Guadalajara, but the cartel leader climbed into a vehicle and was rushed to
safety.
After
his escape, the U.S. took its manhunt public.
On
Oct. 16, 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, standing next to a large
"Wanted" poster of El Mencho, announced a $10 million reward for his
capture and unveiled detailed indictments against him and CJNG.
Treasury
Department officials stood with Sessions and announced more sanctions on
businesses linked to CJNG and its affiliate, Los Cuinis. More than 60 were
targeted, including a biotech consulting company, a bakery and hillside
vacation cabins.
"We
consider this cartel to be one of the five most dangerous transnational
criminal organizations on the face of the Earth, and it is doing unimaginable
damage to the people of this nation," Sessions said.
Officials
in Attorney General William Barr's office declined to comment on The Courier
Journal's findings.
Will
El Mencho ever be captured?
On
the run and out of sight, El Mencho is described by some veteran agents as a
ghost. From the shadows, he continues to lead CJNG with ruthless authority.
U.S.
drug agents believe he's in western Mexico, hiding in remote jungles or
mountains of Jalisco, Colima or Michoácan.
"All
intelligence indicates he’s still there, moving regularly," said Craine,
the retired DEA supervisor who led the successful hunt for El Chapo.
Even
if U.S. and Mexican investigators can track El Mencho's location, capturing him
won't be easy.
Agents
say he typically travels in a convoy, surrounding himself with dozens of
well-trained mercenaries armed with military-grade weapons that can tear
through tanks, even aircraft.
"It's
gonna be hard to catch him slippin'," said Mori, the DEA agent overseeing
the U.S. criminal investigation against El Mencho.
"He
doesn't make a lot of mistakes."
Moreover,
the U.S. lacks the authority to make arrests in foreign countries, said Evans,
a senior DEA official.
"If
an agent saw him, we couldn’t say, 'Hey, we’re gonna grab El Mencho right now,
take him and put him into custody.' We're guests in their country.”
But
DEA agents across the border are sharing intelligence and working with their
Mexican counterparts to devise ways to dismantle CJNG and arrest its leaders.
Throughout
Mexico, more than 40,000 children and adults remain missing. Ransom-seekers and
other cartels are responsible for many of those disappearances, with CJNG to
blame for thousands, DEA agents say.
Still,
El Mencho’s empire is growing.
"It
was almost unbelievable, the things we were hearing, the amount of drugs,"
said Benjamin Taylor, who oversees investigations for Homeland Security in
Gulfport, Mississippi.
Even
after El Mencho's girlfriend went to prison, the cartel quickly returned to the
Gulf Coast with more loads of drugs.
Make
no mistake, Taylor said. CJNG is "among us."
"That’s
kind of hard to believe, but it’s true."
Reporters
Jonathan Bullington, Kala Kachmar, Chris Kenning and Karol Suarez contributed
to this story.
Investigative
reporter Beth Warren spent three days in Mexico City and Guadalajara with the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexican police and government
officials. Warren traveled to six cities in the U.S. and reviewed thousands of
documents in more than 100 court cases and sought prison interviews with more
than two dozen cartel members and associates.
This
article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: A ruthless Mexican
drug lord’s empire is devastating families with its grip on small-town USA
JUDICIAL WATCH:
“The greatest criminal threat to the
daily lives
of American citizens are the Mexican
drug
cartels.”
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other”
terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the
United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from
within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.”
JUDICIALWATCH
“Mexican authorities have arrested the former mayor of a rural
community in the border state of Coahuila in connection with the kidnapping, murder
and incineration of hundreds of victims through a network of ovens at the hands
of the Los Zetas cartel. The arrest comes after Breitbart Texas exposed not
only the horrors of the mass extermination, but also the cover-up and
complicity of the Mexican government.”
SAN DIEGO:
THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS OPERATING IN
AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS
Overall, in the 2017 Fiscal Year, officials revealed that a
record-breaking 455,000 pounds plus of drugs had already been seized. In 2016,
that number amounted to 443,000 pounds. The 2017 haul is worth an estimated
$6.1 billion – BREITBART – JEFF SESSION’S DRUG BUST ON SAN DIEGO
“Heroin is not produced in the United
States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal
evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was
smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that
Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need
to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler
THE ILLEGALS’ AND THEIR CRIME TIDAL WAVE!
Heather Mac
Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional
committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los
Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail
inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest
street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens.
HIGHLY
GRAPHIC!
IMAGES OF AMERICA UNDER LA RAZA MEX OCCUPATION…
gruesome!
BEHEADINGS LONG U.S. OPEN BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX:
The La Raza Heroin Cartels Take the Border and Leave Heads
HIGHLY
GRAPHIC VIDEO!
LA RAZA DRUG
CARTELS CUT OUT HEART OF LIVING MAN.
MARK LEVIN:
‘THERE IS A BIG, UGLY SIDE TO ILLEGAL
IMMIGRATION
NARCOMEX DRUG CARTELS OCCUPY
TEXAS
MCALLEN, Texas --
The capture of three top Mexican drug cartel bosses on the U.S. side of the
Texas border helps to illustrate the irony of how even narco's seek refuge from
the violence in Mexico.
LOS ANGELES –
GATEWAY FOR THE LA RAZA MEX DRUG CARTELS
NARCOMEX in LA RAZA-OCCUPIED LOS
ANGELES – Western gateway for the MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS and MEXICO’S SECOND
LARGEST CITY.
Federal agents
raided Q.T Fashion and numerous other businesses in the downtown fashion
district Wednesday, cracking down on a scheme that cartels are increasingly
relying on to get their profits — from drug sales, kidnappings and other
illegal activities — back to Mexico, authorities said.
Nine people were
arrested in raids targeting 75 locations, and $90 million was seized — $70
million in cash. In one condo, agents found $35 million stuffed in banker
boxes. At a mansion in Bel-Air, they discovered $10 million in duffel bags.
"Los Angeles
has become the epicenter of narco-dollar money laundering with couriers
regularly bringing duffel bags and suitcases full of cash to many
businesses," said Robert E. Dugdale, the assistant U.S. attorney in charge
of federal criminal prosecutions in Los Angeles.
SHOCKING IMAGES OF CARTELS ON U.S. BORDERS:
“Heroin is not produced in the United
States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal
evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was
smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that
Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need
to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler …..FrontPageMag.com
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