JALISCO- Responding to a series of anonymous tips, Mexican soldiers discovered nearly 15 tons of methamphetamine at a ranch outside the western city of Guadalajara this week. The sheer quantity of meth discovered inside blue plastic barrels at the ranch is estimated to have a street value of nearly US$4 billion and is equal in scope to half the amount of meth seized worldwide in 2009.
A Mexican Army spokesman said that the product appeared ready for packaging and shipment but provided no information on where the meth was likely heading. There was nobody present at the ranch when the Army showed up, but investigators believed the size of the massive cooking operation would require anywhere from 10-15 people to run it.
Although officials said they hadn't determined who the clandestine lab and methamphetamine belonged to, law enforcement on both sides of the border believe that the industrial scale of the operation along with the Jalisco location indicate that it was part of fugitive Sinaloa cartel head Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's operation.
The Sinaloa cartel, headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, is equipped to produce and distribute drugs "for the global village," said Antonio Mazzitelli, the regional representative of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.An unnamed police official speculated that the Sinaloa cartel could be moving away from relying on cocaine trafficked in from Colombia by saturating the market with methamphetamine produced on an industrial scale in superlabs.
"Such large-scale production could suggest an expansion ... into Latin American and Asian markets," Mazzitelli said. But he also noted, "it may be a product that hasn't been able to be sold, and like any business, when the market is depressed, stockpiles build up."
Prior to this week, the largest bust announced by the Mexican military was a June 2010 raid in Queretaro on three interconnected warehouses that netted nearly 3 and ½ tons along with hundreds of tons of precursor chemicals.
Police on the American side of the border said that the sheer size of the Jalisco seizure may lead to an increase in small-scale clandestine meth labs on the USA side of the border to fill in whatever shortfalls there are in the supply.
[When the sheer numbers behind this raid were being bandied about, that got the little wheels in my noggin turning. If this superlab the Mexican Army raided belonged to 'El Chapo', could the fugitive billionaire afford it? Perhaps Guzman wanted police and the military to find it because he felt there was no way he could move such massive quantities with a declining market. Then when word got out about the massive amounts of meth being confiscated and a massive chunk ripped out of the supply chain, that would drive up the value of his organization's remaining inventory. Just a theory- NANESB!]
NUEVO LEON- An elderly north Texas couple was found murdered in their home outside the city of Monterrey earlier this month.
John and Wanda Casias were found strangled to death in their Santiago, Nuevo leon home by John's brother Shawn on February 1st. The couple's Chevy Suburban was missing along with a wall safe, a plasma screen TV and some computers.
The couple moved down to the village of El Cercado, about an hour south of Monterrey, in the early 1980s and ran the First Fundamentalist Independent Baptist Church. There, they would collect clothes and shoes and provide services for the poor. After a funeral in their own church, the two were laid to rest a few days later.
According to the Attorney General for Nuevo Leon, the nature of the crime and the missing items indicates that John, 76, and Wanda, 67, were assaulted and robbed by somebody they knew.
TAMAULIPAS: According to a filing in a US District Court in San Antonio, TX, the DEA has obtained ledgers detailing payments the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas made to members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in exchange for protection and influence in the state of Tamaulipas since 1999. The findings could have an effect on the outcome of Mexico's presidential elections in July.
Confidential informants told Drug Enforcement Administration investigators that leaders of the Zetas and Gulf cartels made payments to Institutional Revolutionary Party members including Tomas Yarrington, who served as governor of Tamaulipas state in 1999-2004, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio, Texas.Cavazos is now running for a seat in the Mexican Senate while President Calderon's National Action Party (PAN) seized on the DEA filings as evidence the PRI party has extensive links to organized crime.
The affidavit says the DEA also has obtained ledgers documenting millions of dollars in payments to Yarrington's representatives.
The 13-page affidavit lays out in detail the DEA's case against Antonio Pena-Arguelles, an alleged cartel money-launderer who was arrested Wednesday in San Antonio.
It accuses him of using U.S. bank accounts to funnel millions to Yarrington from leaders of the Gulf and the Zetas. In 2004-2005 alone, it says, he and his brother received $4.5 million from the No. 2 leader of the Zetas, Miguel-Angel Trevino Morales.
One of the DEA's four informants told investigators that "during early 2000, Antonio Pena-Arguelles began receiving large amounts of drug proceeds on behalf of Osiel Cardenas, head of the Gulf Cartel, in exchange for political influence within the government in Tamaulipas," the complaint says.
Mexican prosecutors said late last month that they were investigating former Tamaulipas officials in connection with unspecified federal crimes, a category that includes money-laundering and drug-related crimes. Yarrington and two other former PRI governors, Manuel Cavazos, who served until 1999, and Eugenio Hernandez, who left office in 2010, publicly acknowledged that they were subjects of the probe but denied any links to crime.
The PRI was the dominant political party in Mexico until the 2000 Presidential elections.
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