Next to the bodies, members of Cartel Jalisco New Generation (CJNG) left a poster board taking credit for the scene, labeling the victims kidnappers and rapists. Having abandoned her family to go and live with the CJNG in 2017, she had commanded her own squad of assassins and regularly posted photographs to Instagram that showed off her cartel lifestyle. In 2009, Federal Agents apprehended Santiago Meza Lopez, known as The Soupmaker, or El Polozero. In 2017, the Mexican government extradited Joaqun "El Chapo" Guzmn, a known member of the Sinaloa cartel, to the US. Within hours, Vargas CRIM Squad was handing off the brothers to their Mexican counterparts at the border. Over there, off H Street, is the mini mart where Vargas CRIM Squad ambushed Furcio and a woman. Lists about punishments, penalties, systemic harm, and execution methods used then, now, here, and all around the world. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Pelons crew had kidnapped Escobar-Lunas brother, then killed him despite being paid a ransom. They arrested 21 suspects and seized 14 guns that day, and confiscated 60 keys of coke and methamphetamine over the course of the operation. According to local authorities, three police officers were killed and one was wounded during the shooting. Those ledgers which Tigre parsed for Group One were far more useful than profit-and-loss sheets. Texas law enforcement apprehended Marciano Chano Millan Vasquez in 2015. Then we found the ledgers at his place.. Lazcanowas reportedly felled in a 2012 shootout with Mexican military officials. Read more about cookies here. But its also home to the busiest border crossing of any land-based port outside of China. A 16-year-old mother, her 10-month old son and the baby's grandmother and great-grandmother were among the victims, police and family say. Joe Manganiello on Discovering Hes Part-Black and Descended From Slaves The tranquilizer gun was protection for hiking in the desert; the .45 kept him safe in the barrio. The worst of said butchers was the monster called El Teo. The grisly video shows 20 alleged La Bandera gangsters kneeling on the ground, held at gunpoint by masked men with assault rifles who identify themselves as people from the mountains. The response among U.S. cops was rather more restrained. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. His parents, Mexican migrants, slaved for their sons and sent both of them into public service. So when he was promoted, in 2004, to a plainclothes desk job at a station near San Diego, the first thing he did was attach himself to investigators in the Anti-Smuggling Unit of CBP. I had just put my sunshade up for [a long surveil] when here came Furcio walking toward him. Even bad guys who werent on our radar, says Steve Duncan, a retired special agent for the California Department of Justice. A Mexican who thought he was Mormon! Sito cackles. Rather than make Pelon stew, however, Escobar-Luna stored his remains in a freezer. Another was abducted. Because we were on wires, we knew when a hit was coming: We stopped at least 20 murders from taking place, says Contreras. Well hunt anyone we think might know you. (AP Photo/Antonio Sierra), A wall with bullet holes is seen next to photos and other things sitting on a bed in an apartment in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009. No one told them how those captures linked to El Teo or his enemy, Fernandito, of the AFO. The best bunch of hunters you ever saw. Second: They were the lucky ones. Four of the dead men - including a wanted murder suspect - were dumped outside the new mayor's campaign office in Iguala, in Too much time, too much manpower, too much money invested. This story has been shared 209,091 times. #Celaya #Guanajuato La tarde de este sbado se registr un ataque armado en una iglesia mientras se efectuaba una boda en la comunidad de Pelavacas en Celaya. The AFO sent their hit squads here to try and take them out, says Duncan, who led the Palillos investigation. They never told us more than we had to know.. Finally, that November, they caught up with Furcio, after a yearlong manhunt. According to the army, two suspected hit men were killed during a shootout with soldiers along the highway to Reynosa after refusing to stop at a military checkpoint. In his confession, Yeyo admitted to heinous acts with deadpan indifference. On evenings and weekends, hed prowl the web for open-source leads on fugitives. Hed go on to make CRIM Squad in his image: six guys whod show up, no questions asked, to tail a narcos car at 3 a.m. Chapo held the plaza following the fall of the AFO, but his capture in 2016 put the town up for grabs and narcos, like nature, abhor a vacuum. I brought in CRIM Squad cause those guys were regulators. There were drunken Friday dinners at Vargas house, the wives inside at the kitchen table, the cops on the patio, laughing their way through cases of Tecates. They were narco-juniors working their way up the line: moving loads across for AFO, Vargas says. (AP Photo/Valente Rosas, Agencia El Universal), The body of an unidentified man hangs from his neck under a bridge on the old Rosarito highway as authorities stand by in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009. The footage of the massacre was released Wednesday and is part of the increasing violence in the southern Mexican state of Geurrero, reports said. According to police at the scene gunmen shot against four men outside a house, killing three and injuring one. The murder rate has soared to peak-Teo levels. To those boys, their Uncle Mayel was a saint., I havent met a fed as empathetic as Vargas in 20 years of covering the War on Drugs. Vargas, who retired last summer as a special agent with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, doesnt despise the cartels or demonize the killers who did their grunt work. The bride was also the sister of Jos Antonio Ypez Ortiz, alias El Marro, who leads the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, which is embroiled in a long-running feud with El Menchos CJNG. The former alleged leader of the Los Zetas cartel forced his victims into cages and allowed an audience to view the proceedings. But Vargas had no use for parochial nonsense and would help anyone who helped him. One of them was a capo called Timmy. He lived part time in San Diego, worked in Tijuana and killed several TJ cops on Teos behalf. The assassins who undertook the savagery are believed to have come from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) led by feared boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, a former policeman People from Iguala, here are all those who extorted money and who were killing innocent people and women, the man says. The footage shows a masked man taunting the doomed men, who are cuffed behind their backs. Toothpicks were their calling card. (Palillo, of course, is toothpick in Spanish.). Mexican Cartel Violence. Plus a pat on the back from Uncle Sam., Days later, he met Timmy himself at a mall in San Diego. The second was that he never again wanted to wait around for his target to come at him. No suspects were named. Instead, its one investigator in the back seat of his car, laying under a sheet perfectly still. 19 Mar 2021 0. He announced his intention to seize the plaza with a shootout that left 13 people dead. Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited. Raised in a barrio east of Los Angeles, Vargas saw how thin the line was for brown-skinned boys. I speak to Vargas shortly after the Tijuana burnings. At the bottom was a phone number. And to this day my kids know: If something happens to me, the first call they make is to these guys.. Dozens of men in armor crashed his door; Blackhawk gunships circled overhead, anticipating a shootout with his men. If Mayels such a badass, whats he doing in a cell? snarked the visitor, misreading the room by a mile of blow. The courts convicted him on 10 counts, including murder and drug trafficking. He killed doctors and the middle class, even when they paid the ransom, says a Mexican official well call Seven. That night, after taking the long way home he always changed his route after a face-to-face with narcos Vargas got down on his knees and prayed. This execution style entails taking live victims and putting them in a 55-gallon drum. But we were the first to say, Hey, there are cartel murderers here. We've received your submission. This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. That kid they called Pelon? The assassins are said to have been wearing bullet-proof vests emblazoned with the logo of the CJNG vests which have shown up at a number of cartel massacres in Mexico in recent times. That enraged Herrod and his Group One agents but it didnt surprise them at all. The assassins who undertook the savagery are believed to have come from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) led by feared boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, a former policeman known as El Mencho, who has overtaken the jailed Joaquin El Chapo Guzman as Mexicos main criminal bogeyman. According to the police a message to an alleged rival gang was found next to the body. The Mexican cartels that rose to meet the demand might be new, but they are undeniably vicious. We know who you are and what youve done: You called in a hit on a TJ cop. Kingpins like Chapo are now imprisoned or dead, their empires a jumble of chockablock shards that their successors kill to reclaim. It was the DEAs Most Wanted List, bearing the photos of 32 kingpins and their capos. Los escritores recibiran una muerte segura a manos de los carteles que operan en esas reas incluyendo a el Cartel Del Golfo y Los Zetas si no usaran un seudnimo. Ranked among Americas safest, cleanest towns, its praised for fiscal health by good-governance groups, and exalted for both its beaches and civic stability. obsessed over the top-of-org-chart types the kingpins, lieutenants, and logistics wizards of the cartels Vargas went after their murderous gunsels on the streets of San Diego. Alma Antonia Caldern Garca, who is the wife of a leader in one Vargas checked in with his cartel sources: There were three kidnap crews in San Diego. But faced with overwhelming force, says Herrod, the butcher stood down without a peep. Este artculo fue escrito por Tony Aranda from Nuevo Leon. Through those durable holes pour billions of dollars a year in fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the tainted pharmaceuticals that kill U.S. teens on campuses every day. At the wheel of his seven-seat Escalade a car that drives like an opium dream and is fancied equally by narco bosses and the retired federal agents who chased them Vargas speaks of the Camacho-Higuera brothers like promising kids who made a rash mistake. It was lonely, joyless labor, as Vargas learned. A recent banner or narcomanta reportedly left by the group in Salamanca, Guanajuato is said to have ordered the president to take his security forces out of the area, or else innocent people would die. El Marro denied placing the banner, InSight Crime reports, and instead blamed El Menchos crew for setting up the stunt to make him look bad. They do what youd call enhanced interrogations, which may or may not feature a shaken can of Coke sprayed up the nostrils of detainees. Next to the bodies, that had their feet and hands tied and a plastic bag covering their heads, police also found a message allegedly from a drug cartel. With the PEPOS information, he put an alert out on Timmy at all the border crossings. Hes sitting on the veranda of his very handsome house, a few miles north of the border fence. A rift between drug gangs near the U.S. border is terrifying Mexico's richest city Monterrey, once a poster child of development, forcing a quarter of its export factories to freeze investment. It was into this crucible that Vargas stepped when he took over the CRIM Squad in 2007. His cousin was among the six slain, along with a schoolgirl hit by stray gunfire. Hours before the video was released, a car with four corpses in the boot was dumped outside the mayor-elect's campaign office in Iguala. Poblete was part of a three-man crew for Los Zetas who grabbed a worker from Mexicos state-owned oil company Pemex as the man was coming leaving a bar in Coatzacoalcos. EL PASO A Mexican national was sentenced today to life in prison and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine for his role in the Sinaloa Cartels operations. It is a curious spot for federal drug cops to dine: a high-end Hooters knockoff catering to narco-juniors and the surgically souped-up women they prefer. Theyd earn it, and then some, in the months to come. Cartel violence in the Mexican border state of Sonora continues to escalate. The kidnap wasnt the story, but its punchline was: The victim wound up captive in Tijuana. He showed up armed, expecting the unexpected. Chris Selley: Harper misquote shows why regime change needed in some Canadian newsrooms, Its not safe at all: Iran harassing families of plane crash victims, sources say, We put Fables ceramic dishes, glassware and flatware to the test, Shania Twain, Ed Sheeran, Blink-182 and Depeche Mode are on sale now. In February 2008, Furcio was drinking with some friends at a condo in the Camelot Apartments. One of the La Bandera mobsters is seen on camera apparently admitting Brito has a direct "line" with the mayor's office. It took months, but CRIM Squad got a fix on its target by way of a gangland slaying. And he goes, Yeah but I only held the camera!. Furcio (cartel slang for big ears; real name: Andrs Ramos Castillo) ran a crew of hit men who were hunting for Los Palillos, according to Vargas. Harrison Tenpas. Even killers with forged IDs left footprints to follow: a time stamp of arrival; an alias to cross-check; a set of known associates to surveil. Authorities identified one of the four victims as Rey Jose Poblete Ramos, a man with a lengthy criminal history. And it is where, after the brothers arrests or violent deaths one of them, Ramon, was shot by a cop; a second, Francisco, was shot by a clown at his 64th-birthday party war broke out between a series of butchers who broke the golden rule: Dont kill civilians, especially rich ones. Those soldiers would eventually go rogue and form a rival cartel of their own (more on this later). TikToks True Crime Community Is Turning on Idaho Murder Survivors. Each morning, before work, he would cold-call different shops, chatting up the point man on an anti-gang task force or a higher-up at the FBIs off-site. Then his cellphone rang: It was Teo. Most victims' bodies were never found in a case that has haunted Mexico for seven years. In 2010, CRIM Squad joined a bigger unit, the Border Crime Suppression Team. Theyre supposed to charge you within six years, but sometimes they forget, he says, laughing. JUST WEEKS AFTER clocking in as CRIM Squad chief, Vargas got pinged by an FBI buddy about a very odd kidnap in San Diego. The honor that mattered most, though, came from CBP: It founded a weeklong school in CRIM Squad tactics. Back at the station, feds lined up in Vargas office. We told them and the time came, this turf already has an owner.". Since the big-bang moment of mob butchery in 1993 the unintended murder of Archbishop Posadas by a crew of hit men aiming for El Chapo narco warfare has claimed or poisoned millions of Mexican lives. Tigre eyed her: Why should I ever trust you? From his tone, it isnt clear which nation he has in mind: Mexico, the worlds lead supplier of narcotics, or America, the worlds lead consumer. Youre the guys that sacked Furcio! The body of an unidentified man hangs from an overpass in the city of Cuernavaca, some 90 km., 60 miles, south of Mexico City, early Tuesday, July 13, 2010. The other It remains unclear if Poblete Ramos worked with a particular cartel. Weeks before that dinner, Tijuana went up in flames: Men in balaclavas stormed buses and vans and put them to the torch all over town. The best bunch of hunters you ever saw., For that op, the hunt was tracking killers for months, then bagging them up just hours before a murder. Afterward, the alleged Sinaloa cartel leader removed Hernandezs face. (AP Photo/Antonio Sierra), The body of a man lies dead on the street covered with a plastic sheet after being shot by unknown gunmen on the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, July 9, 2010. ________________________________________ So, too, did the other cops on his squad who spoke to me for this story, out of concerns for their safety and that of their loved ones. Seven, a former police chief of Tijuana, worked closely with Vargas for most of a decade. The mass killing is the latest in a Murders came down big-time; we set a record low that year, says Seven, the former police chief of the town. But Furcio went to ground after the botched hit, and the trail promptly stopped cold. The trash that terrorised this beautiful city. Also known as Z-40, Morales reportedly executed perceived enemies of the cartel using the method of The Stew, or El Guiso. No one at Group One would give me specifics on the nature of Timmys assistance: Hes still a protected informant 12 years after Teos capture. He had all the leverage you could ask for with a perp. The bride, Karem Lizbeth Ypez Ortiz, was at the altar with her beau, himself an alleged narco named El Calamardo, when the shooting started at around 2.30 on Saturday. In exchange for a stipend and a new place to live, hed help them locate Teo and his lieutenants. 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