Category Archives: Gangs

Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, led by fugitive Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, boasts such a strong presence in the Windy City that the Chicago Crime Commission has labeled him “Public Enemy No. 1,” an epithet first bestowed on Al Capone.

The Mexican cartels that are the principal source of illicit drugs coming into the United States have managed to extend their tentacles to the U.S. heartland, where they represent a significant threat to public safety, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration agent told Efe on Friday.

The battle against drug traffickers and organized crime was a major theme of President Barack Obama’s just-concluded visit to Mexico.

Mexican cartels have a presence in more than 1,000 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department.

“Obviously those numbers present some issues … in some sense, certainly that’s going to provide some security issues in places where they probably haven’t had to think about it yet, but on the strong side of that … we’re in a much better position to share information and intelligence,” Jack Riley, the head of DEA operations in Chicago, told Efe.

“We’ve been able to attack those criminal Mexican organizations, stopping the way they operate here (Chicago) and that, in a very distinct way, has really made a difference in terms of the violence of the street gangs,” he said in a telephone interview.

The success, Riley said, is largely due “to great intelligence and information originating from the border region and in some cases from Mexico.”

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“The inmates literally took over ‘the asylum,’ and the detention centers became safe havens for BGF,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt, using shorthand for the prison gang’s name.

Black Guerrilla Family indictees

More than a dozen Maryland state prison guards helped a dangerous national gang operate a drug-trafficking and money-laundering scheme from behind bars that involved cash payments, sex and access to fancy cars, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Thirteen female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders, prosecutors said. The officers were charged Tuesday in a federal racketeering indictment.

The indictment described a jailhouse seemingly out of control. Four corrections officers became pregnant by one inmate. Two of them got tattoos of the inmate’s first name, Tavon — one on her neck, the other on a wrist.

The guards allegedly helped leaders of the Black Guerilla Family run their criminal enterprise in jail by smuggling cellphones, prescription pills and other contraband in their underwear, shoes and hair. One gang leader allegedly used proceeds to buy luxury cars, including a Mercedes-Benz and a BMW, which he allowed some of the officers to drive.

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Testimony is expected to continue Monday in the trial of José Treviño Morales, the brother of Zetas leader Miguel Treviño Morales; Francisco Colorado Cessa, a Mexican businessman who made a fortune contracting for that country’s state-owned oil company; Fernando Solis Garcia, a Rio Grande Valley-born quarter horse expert; Jesus Maldonado Huitron, an Austin-area homebuilder; and his brother, Eusevio Maldonado Huitron, a sought-after horse trainer.

Fernando Solis Garcia arrives for a money laundering trial at the U.S. Federal Court in Austin, Monday, April 15, 2013.

The story of the Gulf Cartel’s territory grab, led by its then-enforcers the Zetas, began in 2001.

The cartel, led at the time by Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, now serving time in a U.S. prison, began expanding from its base in Matamoros, at the confluence of the Rio Grande and the Gulf of Mexicoaccording to testimony last week at a federal money laundering trial.

Witnesses testified that, over the next six years, they watched as the Zetas, former Mexican special forces soldiers, who worked as Cárdenas Guillén’s enforcers, expanded up the Rio Grande and south along Mexico’s Gulf coast.

They didn’t just get prime real estate. The Zetas and the Gulf Cartel also absorbed the local traffickers, who brought with them knowledge of the region and U.S. contacts.

Jose Carlos Hinojosa, a former accountant for the cartel, testified that in 2001 the gang sent a founding member of the Zetas, Efraín Teodoro “Z-14” Torres, to take over the Miguel Alemán plaza. “Plaza” refers to a region, usually around a town or city, assigned to a certain trafficker or group of traffickers. Miguel Alemán is the border city across the Rio Grande from Roma.

A clerk at the federal prosecutor’s office at the time, Hinojosa said the government controlled drug trafficking in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas from Brownsville to Laredo, charging smugglers fees to use the Miguel Alemán plaza.

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