El Chapo/Sinaloa Cartel 2013 Updates - Page 5

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08/05/2013 -- Seven Die in Shootouts in Mexico

"Seven people died in shootouts between gunmen and the security forces in the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Durango, officials said.

Four gunmen were killed and seven others wounded in the gunfight, while five soldiers, a police officer and a civilian were also wounded, the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office said.

One of those killed was a man known only as 'El Mayito,' a suspected gunman on the payroll of Sinaloa drug cartel leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' (Shorty) Guzman, media reports said."

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07/30/2013 -- Treasury Targets Sinaloa Cartel Facilitators and Money Laundering Operation

"Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman announced today that the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reported the designation of three individuals and three entities linked to Ismael Zambada Garcia, one of the principal leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel.  Those designated include Jose Antonio Nunez Bedoya, a Mexican attorney and notary public who helps to create front companies in order to conceal and launder assets related to Zambada Garcia, members of Zambada Garcia’s family, and other members of the Sinaloa Cartel.  Nunez Bedoya incorporated Estancia Infantil Nino Feliz and Establo Puerto Rico on behalf of Zambada Garcia and he notarized real estate purchases on behalf of Santa Monica Dairy, all of which were previously designated by OFAC in May, 2007.  Additionally, Nunez Bedoya notarized real estate purchases on behalf of Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin Guzman Loera and his wife, Griselda Lopez Perez, who OFAC designated in September, 2012. 

 

'The Sinaloa Cartel cannot hide behind front companies like a water park or agricultural business,' said DEA Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman.  "We are working with OFAC to expose these traffickers’ front companies for what they really are—not legitimate businesses, but illegal enterprises that fuel the drug trade, its violence and corruption.  As we continue to follow the money trail, we starve these traffickers of their assets and eventually put their global criminal networks out of business.' "

 

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07/18/2013 -- Mexico: High-ranking Sinaloa cartel leader fatally shot

 

"Alfredo Álvarez Zepeda, who worked as a lieutenant for Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera, was fatally shot along with another man while they were sitting in his vehicle at a traffic light in the city of Culiacán in the state of Sinaloa.  Martín Robles Armenta, the state’s deputy attorney general, confirmed the killing after Álvarez Zepeda’s body was identified. Cash and narcotics were found inside his vehicle."

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06/14/2013 -- Drug world unveiled after alleged cartel bodyguard's El Paso arrest

 

"The former bodyguard of a high-ranking leader in a Mexican drug cartel offered insight into border drug smuggling after his arrest in El Paso, according to federal court documents.  Rigoberto Ruiz Alatorre is accused of being a former bodyguard for Gabino Salas Valenciano, an alleged narcotrafficker known as 'El Ingeniero' (the engineer) who is reputed to run the Sinaloa cartel's operations in the Valley of Juárez.  Ruiz is awaiting trial in U.S. District Court in El Paso on charges of murder, drug trafficking, smuggling and drug conspiracy. Ruiz was arrested Feb. 16, 2012."

 

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05/21/2013 -- El Chapo Launders Money Through Colombian Financial Market

 

"The Colombian financial market became a personal laundering money operation for the ubiquitous Mexican drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera and for other criminal organizations, according to a joint Colombian and U.S. investigation.  The Sinaloa Cartel, the Venezuelan Soles Cartel, and the Envigado Office, a drug trafficking organization originally formed as an enforcement group by Pablo Escobar, legalized millions of dollars through eleven Colombian brokerage firms that control nearly half of the country's stock market, according to Simón Gaviria, a congressman who is familiar with the probe. 

 

'More than $10 billion were laundered for drug dealers and FARC by these businesses,' Gaviria, the son of former Colombian president César Gaviria, said during a congressional hearing.  Chapo Guzmán's role was discovered as part of a larger investigation into Interbolsa, a Colombian brokerage firm that was looked at by the government last November following allegations of fraud, market manipulation, and widespread corruption."

 

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05/03/2013 -- DEA issues poster seeking information about alleged drug traffickers in San Diego area

 

"The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Friday released a poster that it says identifies the most significant drug traffickers in San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, replacing one it issued more than four years ago when rivals were embroiled in a violent turf war over the lucrative corridor.  The poster features six men, including Sinaloa cartel leaders Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman and Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada. The cartel is believed to have vastly expanded its influence in the region in recent years with efforts that include construction of sophisticated cross-border tunnels."

 

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05/01/2013 -- Mexico: El Chapo's father-in-law arrested

"Mexican authorities say they've detained the father-in-law of one of the country's most wanted drug lords.  Police Tuesday morning detained Ines Coronel Barreras, 45, on drug-related charges, officials told reporters.  He is the father-in-law of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, authorities said.  In January, the U.S. Department of the Treasury described Coronel as a 'key Sinaloa cartel operative.'  Weapons and packets of marijuana were seized in Tuesday's operation, but no shots were fired, said Eduardo Sanchez Hernandez of Mexico's interior ministry.  Authorities said Coronel is the father of Guzman's third wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, whom he married in 2007."

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04/13/2013 -- Suspected Sinaloa cartel member deported from U.S. to Mexico

 

 

"Mexican prosecutors said a close associate of senior Sinaloa cartel figure Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada has been deported by the United States and still has charges pending against him in his homeland.  Attorney General Jesus Murillo said in a press conference Friday that Javier Torres Felix faces 'a large number' of charges in Mexican courts dating back 'quite a long time' and will be held for trial, although he did not give specifics.

 

Torres Felix was arrested in 2004 in Culiacan, capital of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, during a clash with army soldiers. He was jailed in Mexico City until being extradited on Nov. 29, 2006, to the United States, where he was wanted on drug charges.  Murillo said authorities have not yet determined what position Torres Felix held within the Sinaloa cartel, a powerful drug-trafficking organization headed by Joaquin 'El Chapo' (Shorty) Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted fugitive."

 

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04/09/2013 -- U.S. Treasury Freezes Assets of Honduran Drug Trafficking Family

 

"The U.S. Treasury Department named Honduran Jose Miguel Handal Perez and his family as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers, freezing any assets they have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting transactions with U.S. residents.  Handal, known as “Chepe Handal,” heads a Honduran-based organization that coordinates and distributes multiton shipments of cocaine from Colombia into Honduras, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement. Handal’s wife, father and several of the family’s companies in San Pedro Sula were also designated in accordance with the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, according to the statement.  Handel coordinates receipt of narcotic shipments from Venezuela and distributes them to Mexican drug trafficking organizations such as the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas via Guatemala, the Treasury Department said. Around 79 percent of cocaine smuggling flights from South American first land in Honduras, according to a U.S. State Department international narcotics report last year.

 

'Chepe Handal plays a critical role in the transportation and distribution of drug shipments between South America and the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas,' U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control Director Adam J. Szubin said in the statement. 'Today’s action underscores OFAC’s commitment to targeting and disrupting key facilitators of the drug trade wherever they may be.' "

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04/02/2013 -- Sinaloa Cartel Controls 80 Percent of the U.S. Meth Trade, Study Finds

 

"The Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organization headed by Mexican kingpin Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, controls a lucrative synthetic drug trade and money laundering route that begins in Asia Pacific and travels through Mexico to the United States, according to a new study.  Guzmán's drug trafficking organization accounts for 80 percent of the U.S. meth trade and is a key player in both the legal and illegal global economy, writes José Luis León, a researcher for Mexico's Autonomous Metropolitan University who wrote the section on the meth trade in the study. Called 'Methamphetamine Traffic: Asia-Mexico-United States,' the study was published this week by Seguridad con Democracia, a Mexican think tank that focuses on security issues." 

               

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03/28/2013 -- Phoenix DEA: Top member of Sinaloa Cartel busted

 

"Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman announced today the unsealing of an indictment against Jose Guadalupe Tapia-Quintero, 42, a Mexican national and high ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel.  Tapia-Quintero was indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2013 on various counts including Conspiracy to Distribute Methamphetamine with Intent to Import, Conspiracy to Possess with the Intent to Distribute Methamphetamine and Conspiracy to Commit Concealment Money Laundering.  

 

'Our strategy of targeting the highest level of the Sinaloa Cartel continues to pay off,' said DEA Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman.  'DEA and our law enforcement partners on both sides of the border remain committed to using every law enforcement tool to attack these criminal organizations so they are put out of business, and their leaders are brought to justice.'

Jose Guadalupe Tapia-Quintero, aka 'Lupe', is a resident of Sinaloa, Mexico and owned various businesses including bus and tractor-trailer companies in Mexico.  As a transportation coordinator for the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, Tapia Quintero used his businesses to move large quantities of methamphetamine at a time from the interior of Mexico to the U.S/Mexico border including Arizona."   

 

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02/24/2013 -- Despite reports, Joaquin Guzman, the world's most wanted man, was not killed

 

"A Guatemalan official said Friday there was no evidence that Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, had been killed in a shootout in the rural north, calling such reports a misunderstanding.  Officials have been eager to capture the infamous 'El Chapo,' a.k.a. 'Shorty,' who replaced Osama bin Laden atop the world's most wanted fugitives list in 2011, and who has been on the lam since escaping a maximum security prison in Mexico in a laundry cart in 2001.  Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla told local media that the original account was based on testimony from residents in San Valentin near the Mexican border, but that soldiers and police scanning the area found no sign of any confrontation."

 

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01/13/2013 -- U.S Treasury Targets Sinaloa Cartel leaders with financial sanction