March 15, 2007: A haul of about $206 million is seen with confiscated weapons after the money was found stashed in closets, suitcases, and drawers in a house in an upscale neighborhood of Mexico City.
MEXICO CITY – Mexico's government allowed a group of undercover U.S. anti-drug agents and their Colombian informant to launder millions in cash for a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian cocaine supplier, according to documents made public Monday.
The Mexican magazine Emeequis published portions of documents that describe how Drug Enforcement Administration agents, a Colombian trafficker-turned-informant and Mexican federal police officers in 2007 infiltrated the Beltran Leyva drug cartel and a cell of money launderers for Colombia's Valle del Norte cartel in Mexico.
The group of officials conducted at least 15 wire transfers to banks in the United States, Canada and China and smuggled and laundered about $2.5 million in the United States. They lost track of much of that money.
In his testimony, the DEA agent in charge of the operation says DEA agents posing as pilots flew at least one shipment of cocaine from Ecuador to Madrid through a Dallas airport.
The documents are part of an extradition order against Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, a Colombian arrested in Mexico in 2010 on charges of supplying cocaine to Arturo Beltran Leyva. A year earlier, Beltran Leyva was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in the city of Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City.
The documents show Mexico approved Poveda-Ortega's extradition to the United States in May, but neither Mexican nor U.S. authorities would confirm whether he has been extradited.
U.S. and Mexican officials did not respond to requests for comment...[Full Article]
WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.
The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.
They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents...[Full Article]
Guns illegally purchased under the ATF operation were found in April hidden in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, court records show.
This arsenal uncovered by police in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in April turned out to include weapons from the ATF's ill-fated Fast and Furious operation. (Associated Press)
Reporting from Washington—
High-powered assault weapons illegally purchased under the ATF's Fast and Furious program in Phoenix ended up in a home belonging to the purported top Sinaloa cartel enforcer in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, whose organization was terrorizing that city with the worst violence in the Mexican drug wars.
In all, 100 assault weapons acquired under Fast and Furious were transported 350 miles from Phoenix to El Paso, making that West Texas city a central hub for gun traffickers. Forty of the weapons made it across the border and into the arsenal of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, a feared cartel leader in Ciudad Juarez, according to federal court records and trace documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The smugglers' tactics — quickly moving the weapons far from ATF agents in southern Arizona, where it had been assumed they would circulate — vividly demonstrate that what had been viewed as a local problem was much larger. Six other Fast and Furious guns destined for El Paso were recovered in Columbus, N.M.
"These Fast and Furious guns were going to Sinaloans, and they are killing everyone down there," said one knowledgeable U.S. government source, who asked for anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. "But that's only how many we know came through Texas. Hundreds more had to get through."...[Full Article]
Two former law enforcement officials who worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as confidential informants on probes into police corruption have come forward with allegations of drug cartel ties to top cops, judges and elected officials.
Greg Gonzales, a retired sheriff's deputy, and Wesley Dutton, a former New Mexico livestock investigator, told The El Paso Times that the FBI uncovered some "big names" in the course of one investigation, but it was dropped without result.
Both men helped with several investigations during their 18 months as confidential informants, the report says, including one that ended with the arrest of FBI special agent John Shipley, who was allegedly selling guns to cartel members.
But far from a sole bad apple, these two whistleblowers claim drug cartels wield tremendous influence over law and elected officials, even throwing fundraisers and parties attended by "bankers, judges, and law enforcement officers." Large campaign contributions, they added, have been made to help influence key appointments.
And perhaps one of the most outrageous claims in their report: law enforcement is said to have personally escorted drug shipments, dropped from small aircraft onto private ranches near the border, to their next stops along the distribution chain...[Full Article]
U.S. federal agents allegedly allowed the Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic several tons of cocaine into the United States in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.
The allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago. He is also a top lieutenant of drug kingpin Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman and the son of Ismael "Mayo" Zambada-Garcia, believed to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel.
The case could prove to be a bombshell on par with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' "Operation Fast and Furious," except that instead of U.S. guns being allowed to walk across the border, the Sinaloa cartel was allowed to bring drugs into the United States. Zambada-Niebla claims he was permitted to smuggle drugs from 2004 until his arrest in 2009.
Randall Samborn, assistant U.S. attorney and spokesman for the Justice Department in Chicago, declined comment.
The court in Chicago had a status hearing on Wednesday and ordered the government to respond to allegations in Zambada-Niebla's motion by Sept. 11...[Full Article]
U.S. federal law enforcement officers allegedly granted the Sinaola cartel permission to smuggle several tons of cocaine into the U.S. in exchange for information on rival cartels.
According to the El Paso Times, the accusation is part of Vicente Zambada-Niebla's defense against drug trafficking charges in Chicago.
The federal court in Illinois held a status hearing Wednesday, ordering the government to respond to Zambada-Niebla's accusations by September 11...[Full Article]
Targeted journalist hero, the late Gary Webb was further vindicated Wednesday with news parallelling Fast and Furious and California's prison snitch or be tortured policy, that several tons of cocaine were brought into the United States by U.S. federal agents allowing asset Sinaloa drug cartel to traffic the haul, reportedly in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to court documents filed in a U.S. federal court.
"The latest allegations are part of the defense of Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who was extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago," according toEl Paso Times.
It took a Chicago court holding a status hearing today to order the U.S. government to respond to Zambada-Niebla's motion containing the allegations by Sept. 11.
Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, son of Ismael “El Mayo,” is a top leaders of the Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization.
How in the world are Americans living in the southwest United States supposed to sleep peacefully at night when the U.S. government has given thousands of guns to Mexican drug cartels and continues to leave the border completely wide open? The brutality and viciousness of Mexican drug cartels is almost beyond description, and yet the U.S. government has armed them to the teeth and does next to nothing to stop their incursions into U.S. territory. "Project Gunrunner" was supposed to be a U.S. government initiative to fight the flow of guns into Mexico. Instead, it has now come out that ATF agents were ordered to facilitate the acquisition of thousands of U.S. guns by Mexican drug cartels and then halt surveillance on where those guns where going. One of these operations was known as "Fast and Furious" and the revelations that are now coming out have Congress in an uproar. If the full truth about what has been going on is revealed to the American people it is going to turn Washington D.C. upside down. (Read More.....)
It's true that Mendez's arrest probably dealt the final, fatal blow to La Familia, which once controlled most of the drug trade in Mexico's Michoacan state.
But it's also true that La Familia's power has dwindled dramatically since the December 2010 death of its founder, the quasi-messianic Nazario "El Mas Loco" Moreno (he wrote his own Bible that La Familia members are required to follow).
Mendez's capture likely won't have any effect on reducing the drug violence in Michoacan. The fact that he was arrested at a police checkpoint indicates that Mendez probably wasn't that hard to nab in the first place.
Mendez and the remaining La Familia members have been under attack by a new gang of narco-evangelicals calling themselves the Knights Templar, who are led by La Familia's former operational chief Servando "La Tuta" Gomez. The rival factions are now vying for control of La Familia's lucrative meth business.
The Knights subscribe to La Familia's ruthless brand of narco-Christianity — Gomez and the late Moreno converted to Evangelical Christianity while working as migrants in the U.S. and have referred to their be- headings and assassinations as "divine justice." The Knights have already gained a reputation for extreme brutality – the gang displayed at least 9 bodies last week with warnings that they would take down any allies of La Familia or Los Zetas, another powerful Mexican cartel.
The WSJ notes today that the inconsequence of Mendez' arrest once again calls into question Mexico's drug war strategy targeting cartel leaders. The country has caught or killed 21 of the 37 most-wanted cartel bosses since 2009, but the leadership vacuum seems to spawn increasingly brutal cartel factions.
Cartel expert David Shirk compares it to the 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' - every time you break a broom, the problem just gets worse.
One of the kingpins of the infamous Los Zetas drug running gang has told Mexican federal police that the group purchased its weapons directly from U.S. government officials inside America, a revelation that will only serve to heighten suspicions that the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious program was a deliberate attempt to undermine the Second Amendment by stealth.
Under Operation Fast and Furious, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “Sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.” Some of the weapons were later used to kill US Border Patrol agents like Brian Terry.
However, according to the testimony of Rejón Aguilar, one of the original seven members of Los Zetas who was recently captured by police, in some cases Mexican drug gangs did not have to wait until the firearms reached the border – they purchased guns directly from the US government itself inside America.
In an interview with Mexican federal police that was later uploaded to You Tube and translated, Aguilar sensationally blows the whistle on how the Zetas’ weapons were obtained straight from U.S. federal authorities.
“They are bought in the U.S. The buyers (on the U.S. side of the border) have said in the past that sometimes they would acquire them from the U.S. Government itself,” Aguilar told police.
The video interview can be seen at the bottom of the page.
Some have questioned the legitimacy of efforts on behalf of the US government to catch drug smuggling kingpins in Mexico by way of sting operations involving firearms, the reason offered by the Obama administration as the motivation behind Fast and Furious, given the fact that those same kingpins are in many cases working for US intelligence itself.
With the gang having first been trained at the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, Castillo affirms that Los Zetas are still working for the US government in protecting drug routes to keep the wheels of Wall Street well-oiled. Castillo has gone on the record to state that the commandos are working directly for the US government drug cartel in carrying out hits on rival drug smugglers who aren’t paying their cut.
The Obama administration has repeatedly invoked rhetoric about the flow of guns being smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico as a talking point with which to chill gun rights of American citizens, repeating the demonstrably false myth that 90% of weapons confiscated by Mexican authorities originate in the U.S.
Despite the establishment media attempting to debunk the notion that Fast and Furious was a deliberate effort on behalf of Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder to demonize gun rights by pointing to the flow of guns from the U.S. to Mexico, a process now revealed to have been largely overseen by the federal government itself, the fallout from the scandal, with no one in the administration willing to admit culpability, is starting to confirm precisely that premise.
Indeed, during a March 30 meeting between Jim and Sarah Brady and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at which Obama “dropped in,” the president reportedly told Brady, “I just want you to know that we are working on it (gun control)….We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.” The quote appeared in an April 11 Washington Post story about Obama’s gun control czar Steve Croley.
Given the fact that arrested Mexican drug runners are now admitting that they both worked directly for and bought weapons from the US government, the notion that Fast and Furious was an Obama administration plot to attack the second amendment by stealth is perfectly plausible.
Watch the video interview in Spanish with Rejón Aguilar below.
Narco gangster reveals the underworld Cartels have taken cruelty up a notch, says one drug trafficker: kidnapping bus passengers for gladiatorlike fights to the death
The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the death.
In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.
In an in-person interview arranged by intermediaries on the condition that neither his name nor the location of his Texas visit be published, the trafficker also admitted to helping push cocaine worth $5 million to $10 million a month into the United States.
Law enforcement sources confirm he is a cartel operative but not a fugitive from pending charges.
His words are not those of a federal agent or drawn from a news conference or court papers.
Instead, he offers a voice from inside Mexico's mayhem — a mafioso who mingles among crime bosses and foot soldiers in a protracted war between drug cartels as well as against the government.
If what he says is true, gangsters who make commonplace beheadings, hangings and quartering bodies have managed an even crueler twist to their barbarity.
Members of the Zetas cartel, he says, have pushed passengers into an ancient Rome-like blood sport with a modern Mexico twist that they call, "Who is going to be the next hit man?"...[Full Article]
Washington (CNN) -- Mexican drug cartels have used cash and sexual favors as tools to corrupt U.S. border and customs agents, an inspector general investigation has found.
In exchange, agents allow contraband or unauthorized immigrants through inspection lanes, protect or escort traffickers or leak sensitive information, said Charles Edwards, acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.
Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, Edwards cited the Zetas drug cartel as one of the leaders "involved increasingly in systematic corruption."
He did not elaborate on how non-cash methods of corruption, like sexual favors, have been used to corrupt agents.
Since October 2004, 127 Customs and Border Protection employees have been arrested or indicted for acts of corruption, said agency Commissioner Alan Bersin, speaking at the same hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery and Intergovernmental Affairs...[Full Article]
On Friday, Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Paul Babeu released part of the memo he received from the Department of Homeland Security. The memo warns about assassins crossing the border from the narco state of Mexico and killing anybody in the United States who interferes with the trafficking of drugs by the cartels.
“The competing cartels are actually working in concert together to protect drug loads in America,” Babeu told KSAZ Fox 10. The rival drug cartels held a meeting at Rocky Point, also known as Puerto Penasco, in Pinal County earlier this year, according to the Department of Homeland Security memo. Sheriff Babeu said Rocky Point is a dangerous place to visit.
Babeu confirmed that the memo came from Janet Napolitano’s office. Babeu said “this information came from Janet Napolitano’s office. She knows exactly what the citizens of Arizona are faced with, yet she continues to publicly state how much safer we all are.”
The DGS memo informed several local law enforcement agencies that assassins from the Mexican drug cartels were “being sent to take out bandits in Vekol Valley.” Vekol Valley is in a remote part of western Pinal County. Pinal County Deputy Louie Puroll was shot in the area by drug smugglers on April 30. The DHS memo cites a “credible confidential source.”
According to the source, during the meeting at Rocky Point it allegedly had been decided “that the cartel would send a group of fifteen, very well-equipped and armed sicarios [killers] complete with bulletproof vests, into the Vekol Valley… [The cartel] will then send groups of simulated backpackers carrying empty boxes covered with burlap into the Vekol Valley to draw out the bandits…. Once the bandits have been identified, the sicarios will take out the bandits.”
“This particular information proved to be inaccurate,” Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said after Sheriff Babeu released the information. “At this time, DHS does not have any specific, credible information on intra-cartel violence taking place in Arizona. Over the past 20 months, this administration has dedicated unprecedented manpower, technology and infrastructure to the Southwest border.”
In September, Napolitano said an unprecedented amount of manpower and technology has largely secured the Southwest border and clears the way for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, according to the San Antonio Express-News. She said the border “is as secure as it has ever been,” and Congress should now pass and implement meaningful immigration reform.
“With the Obama administration’s refusal to secure our border, and their opposition to Arizona’s new immigration law, it has become painfully obvious that this president has made a conscious decision to abandon the American Southwest… the rest of the country can’t be far behind,” Dave Gibson wrote for the Examiner in June.
Mexican drug cartels now distribute illegal drugs across the United States in cooperation with criminal gangs such as MS-13, the Mexican Mafia, the Latin Kings, the 18th St. Gang, the Bloods, and Crips.
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (Reuters) – Two car bombs exploded in northern Mexico early on Friday, days after marines found the bodies of 72 people gunned down in the country's escalating war with powerful drug cartels.
The blasts, the second and third modest-sized bombs planted in a vehicle this month in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern Gulf state of Tamaulipas, and the fourth in Mexico since late July, caused no casualties but damaged buildings.
The attacks came the same day officials discovered the body of a police officer investigating the massacre of dozens of migrants in the latest attack linked to Mexico's drug war.
"I'm told of the explosion of two car bombs here in the state, one in the offices of local traffic police and the other in the installations of Televisa," Tamaulipas Governor Eugenio Hernandez told local radio, referring to Mexico's top broadcaster...
The bodies of 58 men and 14 women have been discovered in Mexico - the latest victims of the country’s brutal drugs war.
Soldiers made the gruesome find in a raid on a remote ranch near the border with Texas.
The victims are thought to have been executed by a rival gang in a turf war for control of the region and drug routes into the United States.
The Golfo cartel and rivals Los Zetas, composed of elite soldiers who deserted the Mexican army, are former allies who fell out a few months ago.
Their feud is one of many increasingly violent battles between drugs cartels that have been blighting Mexico since the government began its crackdown on the illegal trade four years ago.
The ranch, which is on the Gulf coast south of the border city of Matamoros, is the third mass grave to be uncovered in Mexico in the past three months...
Mexico Under Siege Business Heads Plead as Drug Gangs Terrorize Wealthy City
MONTERREY, Mexico—A surge of drug violence in Mexico's business capital and richest city has prompted an outcry from business leaders who on Wednesday took out full-page ads asking President Felipe Calderón to send in more soldiers to stem the violence.
The growing violence in Monterrey, long one of Mexico's most modern and safe cities, is a sign that the country's war against drug gangs is spreading ever further from poorer battlegrounds along the border and into the country's wealthiest enclaves.
Residents opened their newspapers Wednesday morning to find the ads taken out by Mexican business leaders, begging the government to send more military into the city. "Enough already," said the notice that ran in national and local papers, criticizing what it said was a slow response of police against "criminal bands that in every act look to establish a new boundary of terror."...
PHOENIX - He's been at the center of the discussions and controversies surrounding illegal immigration enforcement in Arizona for quite a while.
On the day parts of Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070, went into effect, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is in the news for another reason: there's a price on his head - allegedly offered by a Mexican drug cartel.
The audio message in Spanish is a bit garbled, but the text is clear.
It's offering $1 million for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's head and $10,000 for anyone who wants to join the Mexican cartel...
Investigators in Mexico say a deadly attack by suspected drug cartel members in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez was a car bomb set off by mobile phone.
It is believed to be the first attack of its kind since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006, promising to curb powerful drugs gangs.
Three people including two police officers died in Thursday's attack.
Police said the blast was retaliation for the arrest of a leader of the La Linea drug gang, Jesus Acosta Guerrero.
La Linea is part of the Juarez drug cartel.
"There were 10kg (22lb) of explosives, activated from a distance by a cell phone," Enrique Torres, a spokesman for the army in Ciudad Juarez, said.
At least 16 other people were injured in the attack, police said.
Ciudad Juarez is just across the border from El Paso, Texas. It has long been the battleground for cartels fighting for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes into the US.
More than 7,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico so far this year. Almost 25,000 have died in the past three and a half years, according to figures released by the office of Attorney General Arturo Chavez on Friday.
[Webmaster - Compare this with the U.S. casualties in Iraq since 2003: 4,414]
Mr Chavez said the rising figures demonstrated that the cartels were under pressure from the government crackdown.
He said 75,000 weapons had been decommissioned in the same period and 78,000 people had been detained in drug trafficking operations.
President Calderon has despatched thousands of troops to regain control of areas of the country long dominated by powerful cartels.
At least 21 people have been killed after a fierce gun battle in the latest explosion of violence between rival Mexican drugs gangs.
The bloodshed took place only 12 miles from the U.S. border in Arizona in an area that is one of the main transit routes used by the powerful drug cartels.
Mexican authorities said the shoot-out in the state of Sonora was a showdown between rival drugs and migrant trafficking gangs.
Already this year more than 5,000 people in Mexico have been killed in drug-related violence.
The total death toll since the Mexican government launched an all-out war on the drug cartels in 2006 stands at 23,000.
The border towns have been gripped by increasing violence over lucrative drug routes in regions like Sonora, Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez.
The ruthless cartels have killed hundreds of police officers, military officers, top officials and politicians with 2010 likely to be one of the worst year yet...
MEXICO CITY — The Mexican police said Friday that they had arrested a gang leader who confessed to ordering some of the most horrifying killings in the border city of Ciudad Juárez, including the killing of a pregnant American consular employee and her husband.
Jesús Ernesto Chávez Castillo, 41, confessed that he ordered the murder of Lesley A. Enriquez at the command of La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Juárez drug cartel, the federal police said. The motive, he said, was revenge, because the consulate had issued visas to members of a rival gang...
Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.
They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.
The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its August 2010 issue...
Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, federal agents tell Fox News.
The scouts are supplied by drivers who bring them food, water, batteries for radios -- all the items they need to stay in the wilderness for a long time.
“To say that this area is out of control is an understatement," said an agent who patrols the area and asked not to be named. "We (federal border agents), as well as the Pima County Sheriff Office and the Bureau of Land Management, can attest to that.”...
