Beyond The Horizon
ICYMI: How The DOJ Infiltrated The Sinaloa Cartel (Part 1)
The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world. It is based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa and has a global reach, with operations in several countries, including the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. The cartel is known for its ruthless tactics, including violence, bribery, and corruption.The Sinaloa Cartel was founded in the late 1980s by a group of drug traffickers, led by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, who is now serving a life sentence in the United States. Since then, the cartel has grown into a powerful criminal organization with a complex hierarchy and sophisticated operations.The cartel's primary source of income is the trafficking of illegal drugs, primarily cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine.
The Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for a significant portion of the drugs that enter the United States from Mexico, and it has been estimated that the cartel's annual revenues exceed $3 billion.The cartel operates through a network of cells and affiliates, each with its own area of operations and responsibilities. The top leadership of the cartel is believed to be composed of a small group of individuals, including Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, who is considered the current leader of the cartel.The Sinaloa Cartel is known for its brutal violence, and it has been responsible for numerous assassinations, bombings, and other violent acts.
The cartel has also been accused of using bribery and corruption to maintain its power and influence, and it has been reported that the cartel has bribed law enforcement officials and politicians in Mexico and other countries.Despite efforts by law enforcement to dismantle the cartel, it remains a significant force in the global drug trade. The Sinaloa Cartel continues to adapt and evolve, using new technology and tactics to evade law enforcement and expand its operations.
In this episode we get a peak behind the curtain at how the United States government infiltrated the Sinaloa cartel.
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Secret recordings, million-dollar rewards and family betrayal: How the US hunted down El Chapo’s sons | International | EL PAÍS English
- Duration:
- 14m
- Broadcast on:
- 11 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
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See site for details. Everyone, and welcome back to the program. Recently, we found out that the Department of Justice was cracking down on the Sinaloa cartel and, in fact, indicted 28 members of their organization and their associates with a wide range of charges. Well, in this episode, we're going to take a little bit of a look behind the curtain and see how that all came into play. And to do that, we have an article from El Pius, headline, secret recordings, million-dollar rewards and family betrayal, how the U.S. hunted down El Chapo's sons. The judicial crackdown against relatives, old partners and informants has been decisive in detaining top members of the Sinaloa cartel. The evidence collected will be key to putting the capo heirs on trial. This article was authored by Elias Kammhaji. On Friday, April 14, the U.S. Justice Department announced charges against the Sinaloa cartel's global operations. Eight senior U.S. officials publicly disclosed the judicial offensive, including the Attorney General for the Biden administration, as well as the directors of the DEA and the FBI. After Joaquin El Chapo Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in 2019, U.S. authorities are now formally targeting the heirs of his criminal empire. Well, targeting them and actually bringing them to justice are two very, very different things, and history has shown us time and time again that people like El Chapo's sons well, they get away in places like Mexico. Our sons of the Capo, Alfredo, Ivan Archivaldo, Joaquin, and Ovidio Guzman and 24 collaborators have been accused of an extensive battery of charges such as organized crime, drug trafficking, illegal possession of weapons, and money laundering. They are also named as the leaders of a global network involving murder, torture, and transnational smuggling. So the DOJ unleashing these charges gives themselves a little bit more room to operate, and they're able to use some of the tools that are in their toolbox now against these people that have been named in this indictment. So they're going to be able to freeze their accounts, any kind of legit money that's getting seized, and as far as operating in any sort of a legit manner? Well, that's out the window now. Just ask the Kinahan cartel how it worked out for them. The three cases designed to deal a devastating blow against Las Chapitos were made public only in the last couple of weeks. However, court documents obtained by El Bias suggest that the hunt dates back to 2008, targeting relatives, former partners, and informants within the criminal network. The investigations that sank El Chapo are now more alive than ever. In fact, they're the weapons being used by prosecutors against the successors. You notice they're not talking about El Mayo here, right? My guess is, and folks, remember, this is just a guess. El Mayo has cut some deals with government officials and maybe people all the way high up in Amlo's administration, and he's probably feeding them information about the Las Chapitos. And that's how it works, right? You have these guys down here in Mexico. They have no problem feeding their informants who are part of the military or the police information about their enemies. That's not snitching to them, that's clearing people off the chessboard, and it has been a very, very effective strategy for the Sinaloa cartel basically forever. The indictment offers the most comprehensive look at the operations of the Sinaloa cartel dating back 15 years, reads the statement released by the Justice Department. The American government's crusade against Las Chapitos includes at least five criminal cases filed before the courts of the Northern District of Illinois in the Chicago metropolitan area, the Southern District of New York, Manhattan, and the District of Columbia. And if you notice, all of those districts and all of those offices have some of the most heavy hitting prosecutors that the United States government has on staff. And there's a reason why they brought those indictments in these places. They're looking to come down heavy as hell on the Las Chapitos and the Sinaloa cartel. More than 130 pages of court documents have come to light, detailing how cartel members fed their enemies to tigers, set up clandestine laboratories to traffic fentanyl, created a Pan-American drug trafficking corridor from Peru to the United States and Wolf alliances in Asia using cryptocurrency payments that didn't leave a trace. Meanwhile, DEA agents infiltrated the criminal group for a year and a half. That's a pretty crazy job to have. And I don't know if it was an agent who actually infiltrated the group, but I wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked for a minute. When you're talking about the DEA and their clandestine types of investigations, they're pretty good at that stuff. And I'm not a big fan, as you all know, of the DEA in general. But when it comes to getting snitches and getting information, they're very good at what they do. The injection of new blood into the organization was intended to revolutionize the business. The founders of the cartel, Ishmael El-Miles Ambata and El Chapo Guzman began the operation decades ago, trafficking in marijuana and cocaine. Since 2014, his children have been focusing on fentanyl, a drug that, less than a decade later, has plunged the U.S. into a public health crisis, causing tens of thousands of overdose deaths each year. And as bad as cocaine is, you're not finding people dropping dead of overdoses from cocaine, not unless they have pre-existing health conditions, a heart problem, something like that. But for the most part, nobody's dropping dead from an overdose on cocaine. But when you're talking about fentanyl, forget it. The reason that people have started to die doing cocaine is because it has fentanyl in it, and you want the worst of the worst drugs out there right now? Folks, we all know fentanyl is it. And the problem with fentanyl in my opinion, the major problem, is the fact that it comes in so many forms and that it's present in so many knock-off drugs that people have no idea what they're even taking. And if you have no idea what you're taking, and you've never done opiates before, and you get a fentanyl pill with a .1 gram milligram more than it should have, well guess what? It could be lights out for you, and we see that playing out in the streets of America on a day-to-day basis, and the numbers are absolutely mind-numbing. The amount of people that are dropping dead from this poison is just staggering. The vast majority of information remains classified, but there is one exception. The prosecution's case in Illinois, decisive during the trial of El Chapo in New York, dates from 2009, and contains more than 950 documents in its file, such as arrest warrants, plea agreements, and negotiations to facilitate confessions and accusations. Prosecutors first targeted the top rungs of the Sinaloa cartel, launching themselves against Guzman and Elmao Zambada, who remains a fugitive with a $15 million reward hanging over his head. I highly doubt that they're ever going to come close to catching Elmao. This guy has been the master of the skies, the master of hiding out, and the master of not flashing his money on social media like a jackass. We're talking about one of the last remaining, true OGs of the cartel world. Long before going against the heirs of El Chapo, the US Justice Department, went after Jesus Vincente Zambada, Vincentio Elmao's eldest son. He was arrested in Mexico City in March 2009, and extradited almost a year later to the United States, which identified him as responsible for trafficking $1 billion in marijuana and cocaine into the country. Behind bars, the authorities forced him to make the most difficult decision of his life. They offered him a deal to rat on his father and his former associates in exchange for a reduced sentence. He accepted. "I began to realize how everything was done," said Elmao's son, recalling how he got started in the business meeting with other drug lords and corrupt police officers. "Little by little, I began to get involved," he added, when he testified during El Chapo's trial in 2018. By then, he was about to complete almost a decade, collaborating with authorities, although his lawyers hinted that he was already working with the DEA long before his arrest. And remember, this is Elmao's son, right? The leader of the Sinaloa cartel. "Do you really think that he did this without Pops, okay?" I highly doubt it, and my guess is this was to remove a couple more pieces from that chessboard, meaning El Chapo out of the way. And now with El Chapo's sons, same kind of method here, is being played out. We've already seen one of El Chapo's sons get arrested recently, and of course right away, who did they blame? Well, Elmao. Vincent Dio told the Justice Department how assassinations were ordered in the cartel, how profits were distributed, how El Chapo escaped from prison, and how he met with top-level Mexican politicians. The scandal made headlines in the international media. At El Chapo's trial, a son betrays his father and the cartel, read a headline in the New York Times, or is that what they wanted us to believe? Don't think that these cartels are stupid, don't think that the men running these cartels are stupid, and don't think they don't know about disinformation campaigns that help them further their goals. By providing the jury with a unique look from inside the cartel, he has not only exposed the leadership of El Chapo Guzman, but also that of his own father, which seems unique to me, said Amanda Liskam, who was part of the prosecution during the trial. Liskam said the kingpins' cooperation was comprehensive, adding that he also spoke about how other relatives of the leaders were involved. Visitio Zombada ultimately received fifteen years in prison, although it was discovered that he was already free by April of 2021. "I made bad decisions, which I accepted and continue to accept responsibility for," Zombada stated during his trial. "You were one of the highest people they have ever sent me since I've been on the bench," said Ruben Castillo, district judge for the Northern District of Illinois. "If there is a so-called drug war, we have lost it," he said. "It is time for this country to do something different." Well, it seems like Judge Castillo gets it that he understands what's going on here, that the war on drugs is absolutely lost, and what we're doing does not work, but I know what does he know, right? It's not like he's a federal judge who deals with this on a regular basis or anything like that. During the administration, a former president, Donald Trump, the judge struck down arguments proposing the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall as a solution to drug trafficking. He also criticized those who called the son of El Mayo a rat or a traitor. Well, the wall is not going to stop drug trafficking. If you want to frame it as helping to staunch the flow of illegal immigration in some spots, fine. But to try and frame it, like a border wall is going to be the be-all-end-all of stopping drugs coming into this country is a straight-up lie. Sometimes we all know that most of the drugs are coming in, packed into trucks, or on boats, or on planes. Now, don't get me wrong, there are people who are smuggling these drugs in on their bodies, but in the grand scheme of things, how many drugs do you think those kinds of folks can bring in? When we're talking about a boat, though, or we're talking about a 53-foot truck, we're talking about tons and tons of fentanyl, and the border wall is not going to stop that. To cooperate with the United States of America, that is what happened, and if we didn't have cooperators, the Department of Justice simply would not win cases. "Perhaps we have lost the war on drugs, but we cannot afford ourselves the luxury of losing the war on crime," said Castillo, after sitting down with authorities dozens of times, some bought a vow to continue cooperating with authorities even after he was sentenced. And any time you're committing crimes with other people, you're taking the risk that somebody is going to snitch on you. And more times than not, when people are caught, they're quick to throw somebody under the bus, if that means they're going to be saved. And that's certainly what happened here with Baby Zombada, or could it be, that he was told to do this by his father. Now, look, I have no direct information saying that's what happened, but there has been so much scuttlebutt, so much rumor that El Mayo has been snitching on El Chapo and the reverse El Chapo and the Chapitos trying to set it up with their contacts in law enforcement to have El Mayo and his people get hemmed up. Meanwhile, at the same time, they're engaged in a bitter struggle with CJNG. And while historically, Sinaloa Cartel has shown dominance, they have to be very, very careful here because the in-fighting can easily lead to the whole organization crumbling. All right, folks, we're going to stop right here, and in the next episode, we're going to pick up with part two. All of the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.