Quickie Borderline Psychosis Update- Mexican Army Helicopter Opens Fire on US Border Patrol Agents; Crisis in Rio Grande Valley Grows

ARIZONA- The FBI is investigating a June 27th incident in which a Mexican Army helicopter crossed the border and fired shots at uniformed US Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona. According to Tucson Border Patrol Sector union president Art del Cueto:

The incident occurred after midnight and before 6 a.m. Helicopter flew into the U.S. and fired on two U.S. Border Patrol agents. The incident occurred west of the San Miguel Gate on the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation. The agents were unharmed. The helicopter went back into Mexico. Mexico then contacted U.S. authorities and apologized for the incident.

Mexico claims that the helicopter was pursuing drug traffickers, but offered no explanation on why uniformed Border Patrol agents near a marked Border Patrol truck on the US side of the border came under fire from one of their military choppers. Although the Mexican government reportedly issued a brief apology for the armed incursion, the US Customs and Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security have questioned Mexico's version of events.

This is not the first incursion by Mexican troops into southern Arizona this year. In January, uniformed Mexican soldiers armed with H&K G3 rifles pointed their weapons at a US Border Patrol agent while they were 50 yards across the US border near Sasabe, AZ. The soldiers reportedly told the lone agent they had gotten lost while pursuing a suspected drug smuggler.

While it is possible the helicopter could've veered off course in the dark, some have speculated they were providing cover for a drug shipment making its way across the border. In a 2006 incident, Sheriff's deputies in rural Hudspeth County, Texas chased a drug laden-SUV to the Rio Grande. The drivers attempted to cross back into Mexico but the vehicle got stuck on the opposite bank. As the drugs were offloaded into another vehicle, men in desert fatigues and driving Humvees fanned out and took up defensive positions on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, pointing automatic weapons at the Hudspeth county deputies as the smugglers continued offloading the stuck vehicle.

This isn't the first incursion into US airspace by a Mexican military helicopter in recent years. Throughout 2010 and 2011, Federal and state lawmen as well as homeowners, sportsmen and journalists reported seeing helicopters with the Mexican Navy insignia fly across the border unimpeded throughout the Rio Grande Valley in southeastern Texas. In March 2010, a Mexican Navy helicopter with the ramp down and armed men visible inside was photographed on the US side of the border in Falcon Heights, TX where the border is clearly marked by the Falcon Reservoir and dam.

TEXAS- In response to an unprecedented influx of unaccompanied minors illegally crossing into the Texas via northern Mexico, Lone Star State governor Rick Perry has ordered additional officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety- including the Texas Rangers, Texas Highway Patrol and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife- to patrol the border area in the Rio Grande Valley in what lawmakers are referring to as 'saturated patrols'. The influx of minors- primarily from Central America- is said to have been sparked by fliers distributed in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that promised asylum in the United States to anyone who showed up. In addition to the flyers, the rumors were further bolstered by a White House executive order from late last year in which Barack Obama de-prioritized the deportation of children in the USA illegally.

According to Border Patrol officers, the illegal immigrants were apparently coached on questions they were likely to face once they turned themselves in. More disturbingly, a number of the minors who have turned themselves in are gang members. However, unless they have a criminal record in the USA, they will reportedly be processed by INS like any other unaccompanied minor.

Meanwhile, the smugglers are becoming bolder and more aggressive, either physically attacking officers or firing shots at them from the Mexican side of the border.

Borderline Psychosis, Psychose de Frontière Edition- Canadian, US Officials Raid Cross Border Tobacco Smuggling Ring

Officers from the Sûreté du Québec, RCMP and US Customs and Border Patrol arrested 28 people and seized more than $450,000 in cash and 40,000 Kilograms of tobacco in a raid on a tobacco smuggling ring in southwestern Quebec- said to be the largest of its kind. Investigators say that mobsters from Montreal's Rizutto crime family teamed up with Mohawk smugglers on the Akwesasne Reservation which straddles the US/Canada border south of Montreal to manufacture contraband cigarettes.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Joyce Kemp said Montreal's Italian Mafia teamed up with aboriginal organized crime to illegally import the bulk tobacco.

The tobacco made its way into Canada in big trucks after being purchased by the Mafia in North Carolina, she told reporters.

"It was hidden with other merchandise (and) often what was used was cedar mulch to hide the (odour) of the tobacco."

Police said the tobacco was imported into Canada through the Lacolle border crossing or through the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve.

Kemp said that after crossing the border, the truckloads were hidden for two or three days in a warehouse to ensure they hadn't been spotted. The tobacco was then transferred to factories where the contraband cigarettes were made.

The cigarettes were then allegedly sold on the Kahnawake reserve south of Montreal.

The strategically located Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation has been a hotbed of smuggling since the Great Depression. Drug trafficking organizations have employed savvy native smugglers to move all manner of contraband across the border- in recent years cocaine and untaxed cigarettes into Canada and ecstasy or hydroponically grown pot into the USA.

On the USA side of the border, the Akwesasne Reservation is in the northernmost reaches of New York State where the cigarette tax is $4.35 per pack- plus an additional $1.50 per pack in local taxes in New York City. However, a New York State Department of Taxation and Finance directive allows cigarettes made on one reservation to be transported to other reservations without the state excise tax. Unsurprisingly, this has led to cigarette smuggling in New York City and other high-tax jurisdictions in the northeast and state and local officials in St Lawrence County have seized truckloads of cigarettes produced on the reservation despite the clause allowing the transport of untaxed cigarettes from reservation to reservation.

Trafficking cigarettes from low or no tax jurisdictions like southern tobacco producing states of Indian reservations to high tax locales like New York or Boston is a very simple and lucrative way for organized crime and even terrorist organizations to make money. A combined federal and provincial sales tax in Quebec and Ontario means cigarettes can cost as much as $13 per pack, making much of eastern Canada a lucrative destination for cigarette smuggling as well.

One possible disincentive for smugglers would be for states and provinces to cut tobacco taxes, but not only have places like New York City shown an unwillingness to do so, but they have proposed restricting and taxing sales of e-cigarettes in the same way as tobacco products.

Blue State Graft Watch- California State Senator Who Authored Gun Control Laws Arrested on Charges of Weapons Trafficking, Ties to Organized Crime

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Look for the Union Label- NLRB Accuses Longshoreman's Union of Threatening to Rape Family Members of Grain Terminal Manager; Buffalo Area Union Boss Found Guilty of Racketeering

The National Labor Relations Board has accused striking dockworkers from the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Union of assaulting security guards hired by United Grain at the port of Vancouver, WA and in at least one instance, locked out ILWU workers had threatened to sexually assault the daughter of a United Grain manger during a yearlong lockout.

The most shocking accusations are contained in Hooks’ case against International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 4 in Vancouver.

After investigating charges filed by the company, Hooks alleged longshore picketers shone spotlights into vehicles entering and exiting United Grain’s terminal, blocking drivers’ vision and causing permanent eye injury to a security officer. Hooks alleged locked-out workers recklessly pursued company vans, threatened to harm Columbia River pilots and pinned a security officer’s leg under a moving vehicle.

Hooks alleged that Local 4 members “threatened to rape the daughter of one of the employer’s managers,” and implied threats to harm a manager’s children by telling him they would “see his children at school” and asking, “are (his) children okay today?”

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this is not that members of the international Longshoreman and Warehouse union were capable of this, but the accusations come from a NLRB board perceived by critics as being packed with individuals far more sympathetic to labor bosses than business.

This would not be the first time in recent years an ILWU Local in Washington state resorted to threats, extortion and intimidation during a contract dispute. In 2011, members of the ILWU Local 21 in Columbia, WA blocked trains, cut air lines and dumped grain from rail cars, vandalized vehicles belonging to non-union employees at the port and threatened security guards with baseball bats and axe-handles during a dispute with EGT Grain in Longview. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against ILWU Local 21 and the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Department arrested more than 100 workers on various charges. The Longshoreman's Union then attempted to launch a recall campaign against Cowlitz County Sheriff Mark Nelson, which went absolutely nowhere.

Meanwhile, on the other side, the president of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 17 in Buffalo, NY was found guilty in a federal court of running a criminal enterprise out of the IUOE Local.

Prosecutors claim the criminal conduct by Operating Engineers Local 17 touched many of the region’s biggest construction projects, including Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Ralph Wilson Stadium, and added millions of dollars to the cost of those projects.

The verdict, which came after a six-week trial featuring 80 witnesses, ends a prosecution that began with the indictment of 12 union members in 2008.

Most of those defendants eventually pleaded guilty, but five elected to stand trial, and four of those five were found not guilty Friday.

At the heart of the case was the allegation that a “Local 17 Criminal Enterprise” operated from 1997 through 2007 with the intention of forcing construction companies into hiring its members and punishing those that refused.

The defendants were accused of vandalizing work sites by pouring a sandlike abrasive into the engines of heavy machinery and throwing sharp metal objects called “stars” under the tires of trucks.

In one instance, a Local 17 member, Michael J. Caggiano, was accused of stabbing the president of a local company in the neck with a knife.

The verdict followed a trial in which the prosecution painted Local 17 as a union knee-deep in corruption.

Dozens of contractors and former union members, many of them testifying as part of plea deals with the government, took the witness stand to tell stories of threats, fear and vandalism.

In the end, the jury found Kirsch, the union’s longtime president and business manager and a well-known figure in government and political circles, responsible for much of the wrongdoing.

They also found him to be part of a racketeering conspiracy that prosecutors claim existed at Local 17

The FBI, which also played a major role in the investigation, said the verdict is simply the last chapter in a story of how Local 17’s “pompous attitudes and violence-riddled acts had a tremendous impact on this city.”

“The union members who pleaded guilty and were found guilty in this case made honest working people go to work in fear of being stabbed or assaulted, even more so than I do as a law enforcement officer,” said Brian P. Boetig, special agent in charge of the FBI in Buffalo.

Kirsch will be sentenced at a later date- the charges carry a maximum of 20 yeears.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Mexican Marines Capture Elusive Sinaloa Cartel Head 'El Chapo'; Colombian Police Seize 'Game Changing' Coca Paste

MEXICO- Elusive Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman- who has been on the run from US and Mexican authorities since escaping prison in 2001- was captured by Mexican Marines in the resort town of Mazatlan on Saturday.

While on the run, Guzman had enough assets to be named to a list of wealthiest billionaires in the world according to Forbes magazine- although he recently dropped off the list. Some quarters of Mexico viewed him as a sort of Robin Hood figure- so much so that the hashtag #FreeElChapo was trending internationally on Twitter within hours of his arrest.

According to Mexico's Secretariat of the Navy, El Chapo's capture was facilitated by the capture or killings of his top lieutenants and their family members starting in 2013. The son of the Sinaloa cartel's #2 man was arrested in Nogales, AZ in November 2013 while the cartel's top enforcer was detained by Dutch border police in January.

Acting on information from wiretaps, Mexican troops and federal police combed through the streets of the Sinaloan capital of Culiacan earlier this month. While El Chapo initially evaded the dragnet, each raid seemingly turned up cartel safehouses containing weapons, drug caches and cellphones. The day before Valentine's Day, police arrested the Sinaloa cartel's new top enforcer on the highway outside the resort city of Mazatlan. Days later and in two separate arrests, two men who were reportedly part of Guzman's personal security detail were arrested along with hollowed out produce stuffed with cocaine. Between the wiretaps and information gleaned from the arrests of Guzman's inner circle, police and Mexican marines focused in on a beachfront condo in Mazatlan.

Agents learned that Guzman, 56, had started coming down from his isolated mountain hideouts to enjoy the comforts of Culiacan and Mazatlan, said Michael S. Vigil, a former senior DEA official who was briefed on the operation.

"That was a fatal error," Vigil said.

Working on the information gleaned from Guzman's bodyguards, Mexican marines swarmed the house of Guzman's ex-wife but struggled to batter down the steel-reinforced door, according to Mexican authorities and former U.S. law-enforcement officials briefed on the operation.

As the marines forced their way in, Guzman fled through a secret door beneath a bathtub down a corrugated steel ladder into a network of tunnels and sewer canals that connect to six other houses in Culiacan, the officials said.

Guzman fled south to Mazatlan. On his heels, a team of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents set up a base of operations with Mexican marines in the city, according to the current U.S. law-enforcement official.

Early Saturday morning, Guzman's reign came to an end without a shot fired. Marines closed the beachside road in front of the Miramar condominiums, a 10-story, pearl-colored building with white balconies overlooking the Pacific and a small pool in front.

Smashing down the door of an austerely decorated fourth-floor condo, they seized the country's most-wanted man at 6:40 a.m., a few minutes after the sun rose.

The arrest of El Chapo will likely quell US official's concerns that the office of Mexican president Peña Nieto will be reluctant to directly take on the cartels or aid US law enforcement in Mexico's ongoing narcoinsurgeny.

However, the arrest of Joaquin Guzman also raises questions about possible extradition to the United States, a succession battle within the Sinaloa cartel itself or rival organizations such as Los Zetas or the Knights Templar aggressively moving in to seize territory from a now-vulnerable rival organization

COLOMBIA- In what law enforcement is calling a game-changer, police in Colombia seized more than 1000 lbs of an unrefined coca paste from an aircraft that was getting ready to take off in Southern Colombia earlier this month.

Police found the paste in a Cessna airplane at Ipiales airport in Narino province, close to the border with Ecuador. Intelligence shows it was destined for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, according to the police. Discovering coca paste shipments is rare, says Steven Dudley, a director at InSight Crime, a research group that studies organized crime in Latin America.

“We’ve seen some laboratories in Honduras and there are rumors of them being in other places, Mexico being one of them,” Dudley said by telephone from Washington D.C. “It’s not common, that’s for sure.”

Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel and other Colombian crime gangs imported coca paste from Peru and Bolivia in the 1980s, transforming it into cocaine before exporting it. Mexico could now be traveling down the same road, Restrepo said.

Drug gangs would lose less if a shipment of paste were seized, he said, since its wholesale price is only about a fifth of the value of refined cocaine. A difference in the cost of precursor chemicals such as acetone or the Colombian police’s success in finding and blowing up labs are possible explanations for the change, [Colombian police General Ricardo Restrepo, head of antinarcotics] stated.

In the 1990s, Colombian coca output soared, often in areas where the presence of Marxist guerrillas made it hard for police to enter. The farmers turn the leaves of their coca bushes into paste in jungle shacks, in a bucket chemistry process using gasoline, caustic soda, sulphuric acid, ammonia and cement. They sell the paste to mafia groups for about $1,250 per kilo, Restrepo said, who process it into pure cocaine in laboratories hidden in the jungle.

The country’s largest Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, currently controls about a quarter of the country’s annual 309 metric tons cocaine output, according to Restrepo.

The government is holding peace talks with the FARC in Havana in a bid to end a five-decade civil conflict. Negotiators have reached partial agreement on agricultural policy and political representation, with discussion now centering on illicit drugs.

As well as the FARC, Colombia’s cocaine trade is controlled by offshoots of illegal paramilitary “self-defense” groups, such as the Urabenos gang, which has its roots in the border zone near Panama, Restrepo said.

A peace deal will make it easier for security forces to enter some coca-producing regions, although it won’t end the cocaine trade, he said.

“Drug trafficking is going to continue, with or without the FARC,” the counter-narcotics chief said. “The business is constantly changing and mutating. As long as it’s economically productive, drug traffickers will be looking for ways to earn more profits with less risk.”

The seizure means that at least one Mexican drug trafficking organization has switched from trafficking to manufacturing cocaine- intelligence indicating that the Sinaloa cartel was the likely recipient. Should other cartels follow suit and begin manufacturing cocaine from coca paste in Mexico's borders, this would change Mexico from a strategically-placed way station for trafficked cocaine to an active producer, even though the raw ingredients originate in the Andean countries of South America.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Dutch Cops Nab Top Sinaloa Enforcer; Cartels, Law Enforcement Take Wait and See Approach to Colorado's Legalized Pot Sales;

THE NETHERLANDS- A Sinaloa Cartel enforcer by the name of El Chino Antrax was arrested by Dutch authorities on drug trafficking charges on Jan 3rd. Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa is believed to be the leader of a group of Sinaloa cartel hitmen known as 'Anthrax' and is wanted on charges of trafficking methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana by US Officials.

The suspect, Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa, was captured Monday in Amsterdam's Airport Schiphol. He is accused of trafficking methamphetamines, cocaine and marijuana.

Arechiga is presumably a top enforcer for Ismael Zambada, who co-heads the Sinaloa drug organization along with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Dutch police arrested the Mexican man at the request of U.S. authorities after he landed under a different name on a flight from Mexico City. The U.S. government had asked Interpol for help with his arrest.

The man is being held in a Dutch jail, while the U.S. Attorney is seeking his extradition to face charges in a federal court in San Diego.

The Mexican Embassy in the Netherlands said it was aware of the detention of a Mexican citizen and that it was willing to offer consular assistance if he requested help. It did not specifically say it was referring to Arechiga's arrest.

According to local media, Arechiga is also known as "El Chino Antrax," one of the two leaders of a group of hit men who call themselves the Anthrax, like the deadly disease.

Authorities have blamed the cell for a series of murders, including the killings of three men who were hung off a bridge in 2011, which were seen as revenge attacks after one of their leaders was murdered. The Anthrax helped the Sinaloa organization as it engaged in a bloody war with the Beltran Leyva cartel, when the latter decided to splinter in 2008.

El Chino Antrax has been reportedly celebrated and mentioned by name in narcocorridos- popular folk corrido ballads whose lyrics romanticize outlaws and drug traffickers.



CALIFORNIA- A Mexican national is in custody in central California's Madera County after allegedly shooting two men while posing as a police officer. The victims were reportedly carrying a sizable quantity of crystal meth.

The case is "highly unusual" for Madera County because of the amount of "crank" and police regalia found in connection with the crime, Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said Tuesday.

One suspect was arrested for attempted murder -- Elias Lopez-Martinez, 25, of Mexico. A second suspect has not yet been found.

During a news conference, Anderson summed up the Dec. 30 incident by pointing to two vehicles on display for reporters.

"Semi-bad guys," Anderson said, pointing to a car driven by alleged drug-runners. Then, pointing to the suspects' truck: "Really bad guys."

"These guys are dopers -- these guys are shooters," he said, continuing the comparison, "... coming out to the dope exchange, they didn't bring money, they brought guns. That simple."

Those allegedly transporting the meth initially told authorities they were on back roads near Chowchilla because they were going to "buy a horse," Anderson said, but later admitted "we were kind of out there to do a drug deal."

Anderson gave the following account :

The victims said they pulled over near Avenue 18 1/2 and Road 10 because they thought the truck behind them was police, seeing its blue lights. Once pulled over, two men reportedly ordered the three young men inside to lay on the ground, and then shots were fired.

A 17-year-old from Madera was shot in the liver and remained in critical condition at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno as of Tuesday. A 22-year-old from Chowchilla was shot in the face, breaking his jaw and most of his teeth. A third passenger, also 17 and from Madera, was unharmed. Names of the victims were not released.

The 22-year-old drove away from the scene and was found about eight miles away after he called 9-1-1.

Detectives followed a blood trail from the scene, to a bloodied dog food bag containing nine pounds of crystal meth worth $45,000. It was hidden beneath a bridge.

"The way this (meth) is wrapped we know it came from Mexico," Anderson said, "which involved Mexican drug cartels."

Anderson said the driver told detectives he picked up the illegal drug in Los Angeles and "my job was to get it up here and get it sold."

The day after the shooting, detectives found the suspects' truck at a gas station on Highway 145 and Avenue 13 in Madera and arrested Lopez-Martinez.

Based on evidence gathered by investigators, a multiagency SWAT team later searched an apartment near Madera South High School, believed to be used by the suspects as a storing place. One pound of crystal meth was found with weapons, ammunition, more than two pounds of marijuana, $2,500, and law enforcement equipment, including tactical gear and body armor, along with fake badges and clothing donning words like "police" and "U.S. Marshals."

Posing as police officers is a common tactic for 'rip crews'- armed robbers who actively seek out and rob drug couriers and storehouses- along the Mexican border in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, but as Sheriff Anderson stated, is quite unusual for California's Central Valley.


COLORADO- Although Mexican drug cartels had a presence in Colorado before this year's legalization of marijuana, officials believe it's only a matter of time before organized crime adapts and take advantage of the situation.

Taking over a trade once ruled by drug cartels and turning it into an all-cash business could make pot shops prime targets for extortion, black-market competition and robbery. One veteran border narcotics agent told FoxNews.com Colorado's legal pot industry will find it hard to keep the criminals from horning in on a lucrative business they once controlled.

"Mexico is already in Colorado without the risks," the agent, who requested anonymity, said of the state's heavy pre-existing cartel presence. "Legal businesses will likely see a rise in extortion attempts while law enforcement will see a lot of backdoor deals being made."

Violent cartels could force their way in as black market wholesalers or simply rob pot dispensaries, which take only cash and have not been able to establish accounts with banks because of lenders' fears of violating federal laws. But the general consensus is that the Mexican cartels will not quietly relinquish the Denver market.

A 2012 report from the Mexican Competitive Institute estimated that Mexican drug trafficking organizations could lose as much as $1.4 billion dollars with legalized pot in the Denver market. Law enforcement believes that the cartels could extort owners of the newly legal pot dispensaries or set up legal shops of their own using straw buyers with clean backgrounds.

TAMAULIPAS- A former governor for the border state of Tamaulipas has been indicted by the US on charges of corruption and drug trafficking. According to the unsealed indictment last month, Tomas Yarrington served as governor of the Mexican state across the Rio Grande from the southern tip of Texas between 1999 and 2004 and took bribes from the Gulf Cartel and laundered drug money into campaign coffers in exchange for turning a blind eye to cartel activity.

In the indictment unsealed Monday, Yarrington is portrayed as an old-style PRI politician, for whom being cozy with drug traffickers was the way to do business.

Starting in 1998, “Yarrington received large bribes from major drug traffickers” in Tamaulipas, including the then-dominant Gulf Cartel, the U.S. attorney’s office of southern Texas said in a statement. The bribes began as he campaigned for governor, continued through his six-year term and afterward, the statement says.

In return, prosecutors allege, Yarrington “allowed them to operate their large-scale, multi-ton enterprises freely, which included the smuggling of large quantities of drugs to the United States for distribution.”

The indictment also alleges that Yarrington, 56, took bribes from local businesses and skimmed public money as well to pad his private accounts.

With suspected accomplice Fernando Cano, a builder, Yarrington then acquired numerous “valuable assets,” mostly across Texas, including homes, airplanes, bank accounts, vehicles and other real estate, worth around $7 million, the indictment states.

The 11-count indictment was returned in May, but for reasons not explained, was not opened until this week. It says Yarrington eventually became involved in the smuggling of drugs.

Like many politicians in Tamaulipas, Yarrington “abetted, enabled and profited from a symbiotic relationship with the Gulf Cartel,” said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at Virginia’s College of William & Mary.

Yarrington’s whereabouts are unknown, although his attorneys insisted this week that he is not a fugitive. The U.S. government has not yet formally sought his extradition. Mexican Atty. Gen. Jesus Murillo Karam said: “Whoever they ask us to look for, we will. They have had and will continue to have our cooperation.”

Yarrington’s Houston-based attorney, Joel Androphy, said in a news conference this week in Mexico City that the allegations against Yarrington were bogus and based on “false witnesses and testimony” by people attempting to make deals with the prosecution.

He refused to disclose Yarrington’s current location, except to repeat that he was in the United States a year ago when asked to leave because his visa had expired.

Accusations that Yarrington was receiving drug money first surfaced early last year, in connection with a U.S. case involving an associate, and then in a Mexican investigation. The PRI, in the middle of an election campaign, suspended him. Then-Atty. Gen. Marisela Morales ordered him arrested. But he managed to secure an injunction that left him free, and he threatened to take on the attorney general.

Yarrington was elected as a member of the PRI- the same political party that recently elected Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. During the 2012 election, the PRI party sought to distance itself from Yarrington and other corrupt politicians in Tamaulipas. Since 2006, the situation has become much more dire in Tamaulipas, with mass graves and the remnants of the Gulf Cartel fighting with their former allies, Los Zetas.

Fears of a Clown Borderline Psychosis Update- Former Baja Cartel Head Gunned Down By Clowns; Devices Linked to ATF 'Grenade-Walking' Used in Jalisco

JALISCO- Explosives used during a fierce firefight between state police in Jalisco and gunmen from the New Generation Jalisco cartel may have been provided by a fugitive arms trafficker who had been under US surveillance for nearly a decade and was part of a lesser-known 'grenade walking' operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The ATF began watching Kingery in "2004 related to AK47 purchases" he was believed to be trafficking to Mexico.

In 2009, ATF also learned Kingery was dealing in grenades; weapons of choice for Mexico's killer cartels. Documents show they developed a secret plan to let him smuggle parts to Mexico in early 2010 and follow him to his factory. Some ATF agents vehemently objected, worried that Kingery would disappear once he crossed the border into Mexico. That's exactly what happened.

Kingery resurfaced several months later in 2010, trying to smuggle a stash of grenade bodies and ammunition into Mexico, but was again let go when prosecutors allegedly said they couldn't build a good case. In 2011, Mexican authorities finally raided Kingery's factory and arrested him -- they say he confessed to teaching cartel members how to build grenades

According to local officials, local police in the city of Tepatitlan were responding to complaints of gunshots being fired in the air earlier this month when they came under fire from the gunmen before their assailants barricaded themselves in a nearby building.

According to the government account, the local police, while under attack, called state police for backup just before 7 p.m. The state police arrived to find the suspects holed up in a house, where, according to news reports and witnesses on Twitter, they kept up a gun battle with the police for three or four hours. Officials said the men threw a number of grenades at the officers.

Sometimes referring to themselves as the 'matazetas' [translates to 'Zeta killers'- NANESB!], the nascent Jalisco New Generation Cartel is one of Mexico's newest cartels, formed after a 2010 break with the Sinaloa Cartel.

BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR- A flamboyant narco who's crime family was reportedly the inspiration for the 2000 Steve Soderbergh film Traffic was gunned down at a children's birthday party in the resort town of Cabo San Lucas. However, what made the assassination of one of the heads of a cartel in decline newsworthy was the fact that the gunmen were disguised as clowns to get close enough to Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix- one of the three brothers that oversaw operations of the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix Cartel [what are the odds his dying words were "Gunned down by clowns in Cabo! *gurgle* The old fortune-teller was right....."?[NANESB!].

Two bands were entertaining the more than 100 guests, while some local newspapers reported that the party was attended by famous Mexican sports stars.

The gunmen, guests told police, approached him calmly then shot him in the head - with another bullet in the chest to finish him off.

"He was hit by two bullets, one in the body and one in the head," said Isai Arias, prosecutor for the Baja California region.

He was shot at around 8pm on Friday, in the Casa Oceano holiday resort complex, and relatives had identified the body, he added.

Photographs said to be of the scene showed a corpse covered in a blood-soaked sheet, lying on the floor of a grand dining room with tables covered in lurid blue satin. The gunmen, it is said, escaped in a waiting four-wheel drive vehicle.

Francisco Rafael, the eldest brother of the infamous Arellano Felix clan, which ran the Tijuana Cartel, was in his heyday head of the family that for 20 years controlled the most powerful smuggling route from Mexico into the United States. American authorities once described the seven well-dressed and well-spoken brothers as "dashing, multimillionaire, savage criminals".

Arellano Felix was one of 11 children born to a modest family in the Sinaloa region. Alongside his brothers he began by smuggling contraband into the US, before graduating to cocaine.

He also found time to form a band called Los Escorpiones – the scorpions – which played throughout the region. The animal became a symbol of Arellano Felix's, and he took to wearing a four-inch-long diamond-encrusted scorpion pendant around his neck.

To launder the funds through trafficking, he paid for theatre shows and cultural performances in Mazatalan, a sprawling coastal city in Baja California. He also ran what was billed as "the world's largest disco" – a club called Frankie Oh's, emblazoned with scorpion designs.

In an interview with El Noreste newspaper in 1992, he described himself as "a fearless businessman, who risks a huge amount without the fear of losing everything".

For decades, Arellano Felix was seen as untouchable – detained three times for drugs and gun offences, yet miraculously escaping each time. Many believed that the law enforcement officials were in his pay.

With his brothers Benjamin - the brains behind the cartel - and Ramon, the brawn of the organisation, Francisco Rafael was seemingly beyond the law.

He is thought to have masterminded the assassination of the Archbishop of Guadalajara, Cardinal Juan Posadas Ocampo, in 1993 – although authorities were never able to pin the high profile murder on him.

"Wanted by Mexican police since 1978 and on the run from the American law enforcement agencies since 1980, Arellano Felix rubbed shoulders with film stars, television personalities and radio songstresses," said a feature on the drugs capo in Mexican magazine Proceso.

Arellano Felix was eventually captured in 1993, and sent to prison. In 2006 he was extradited to the US, but was released two years later for good behaviour and repatriated to Mexico where he was thought to be living quietly.

In the meantime the power of the Tijuana Cartel had waned, with most of the Arellano Felix brothers either killed or arrested, and rival cartels taking over its territory.

Benjamin was arrested in March 2002, and extradited to the United States in 2011 - where he is currently serving a 25-year sentence. Ramon, the most ruthless of the brothers, had died in a shoot out in Mazatlan a month previously.

With the Tijuana cartel in decline thanks to the arrest and extradition of the Arellano-Felix brothers, the Sinaloa cartel eventually moved into northwestern Mexico to take over the lucrative smuggling routes.

Brothers Benjamin and Eduardo were extradited to the United States in 2012 to face charges of racketeering and conspiracy to launder money.

Breaking Bad, Gangham Pyongyang Style- North Korea Reportedly Manufacturing Crystal Meth for Export

Thai Prime minister displaying seized methamphetamine in June 2012

With the series finale of Breaking Bad - AMC's popular drama about a New Mexico high school chemistry teacher who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and decides cooks meth with a former student- coming up this weekend, it seems as though North Korea wants to get in on the act. But can it really be considered Breaking Bad if you're already in the most despotic nation on the face of the earth to begin with?

A report from South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper from earlier this year alleges that North Korean diplomats have been ordered to sell drugs to give Kim Jong Un's government foreign currency reserves with which the regime uses to reward loyal officials and further their nuclear weapons program.

The drugs in question are said to be locally manufactured crystal methamphetamine produced in state-run facilities, which is then reportedly smuggled across the border and sold in China.

However, some of that meth has made its way back into North Korea or never even left, creating an epidemic of drug users on the most totalitarian state in the world. With a scarcity of medicine, North Koreans have reportedly taken to using meth to alleviate ailments and some defectors claim parents encourage their children to take the drug to help them stay alert for their studies.

Despite official denials from Pyongyang, North Korea has been allegedly raising funds to shore up their foreign currency reserves for years through illicit means- including drug trafficking, counterfeiting, money laundering, arms trafficking and insurance fraud. Many of these activities are said to be overseen from a mysterious agency known as Bureau 39 headquartered inside the ruling Worker's Party headquarters in Pyongyang.

Boston Mob Boss Whitey Bulger Found Guilty of 11 Murders, Racketeering,

Elise Amendola; U.S. Marshals Service/AP Photo

A jury at the Federal Courthouse in Boston, MA found captured fugitive mob boss James 'Whitey' Bulger guilty of racketeering and 11 counts of murder last week.

The elusive Bulger was captured with girlfriend Catherine Greig at a luxury apartment complex in Santa Monica, CA in June 2011 after more than 16 years on the run. Bulger was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for most of those 16 years, was also a source of embarrassment for the agency when it was made public that the Boston office of the FBI allowed Bulger's Winter Hill Gang to continue their criminal activities unimpeded in exchange for information on rival gangs, including the Providence, RI based Patriarcha crime family.

Bulger and his associates in the Winter Hill Gang were hired by former World Jai Alai president and Boston businessman John B Callahan to kill Oklahoma businessman Roger Wheeler- Callahan's successor at World Jai Alai. Callahan was reportedly worried that Wheeler would discover his embezzlement from the organization and report it to the FBI. One of Bulger's FBI handlers had retired and became head of World Jai Alai security, but would instead report on Wheeler's whereabouts to Bulger and the Winter Hill gang. Wheeler was shot and killed in his car outside a Tulsa, OK country club in May 1981.

Another FBI handler warned Bulger that Callahan was unlikely to hold up under questioning and one of the triggermen in Wheeler's killing was offering information to the Feds to try and get out of a separate murder charge. In July 1982, Callahan's bullet-riddled body was found stuffed in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami International Airport. Two months earlier, Bulger and associate Stephen 'the Rifleman' Flemmi shot and killed suspected FBI informant Brian Halloran and a bystander named Michael Donahue in South Boston.

In addition to tipping off Bulger on the whereabouts of potential witnesses or other Winter Hill gang members ready to turn informant, agents from the Boston office of the FBI has been accused of lying to detectives in Oklahoma and Florida investigating the Jai Alai slayings and pressured an eyewitness in the Halloran and Donahue murders to identify the wrong man.

Bulger and Flemmi also extorted Southie liquor store owner Stephen Rakes into selling his business to them and then intimidated him into changing his story when the matter initially went to court in the early 1990s. The 2013 trial of Whitey Bulger took a dramatic turn when  Rakes turned up dead in Lincoln, MA last month. An autopsy showed that Rakes was poisoned and the Middlesex County DA charged a 69 year old man who reportedly owed Rakes a large sum of money with the murder.

Bulger and his girlfriend went into hiding in 1995 after FBI Agent John Connoly Jr tipped him off that a racketeering indictment was coming down. The FBI made hardly any headway until they ran a series of public service announcements focusing on Greig on daytime women's talk shows- within days, a tipster in southern California recognized Greig and Bulger as their neighbors, leading to their arrests.

Middlesex County DA Charges Man With Poisoning of Former Bulger Witness

Police have made an arrest in the death of  59 year old Stephen Rakes, who's body was found in Lincoln, MA last month. Initially ruled a suicide, an autopsy revealed that Rakes had died after drinking an iced coffee laced with cyanide.

William Camuti, 69, of Sudbury, is charged with attempted murder, misleading police, and unlawful disposition of human remains in Rakes' death. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Friday and was ordered held without bail until a hearing Tuesday.

At a press conference Friday afternoon, Ryan said Camuti lured Rakes to a McDonalds restaurant in Waltham. Ryan said Camuti put two teaspoons of potassium cyanide in Rakes' iced coffee and then drove around with Rakes in the car until he died. Ryan said he then dumped the body and removed all his identification.

Ryan said investigators believe Camuti acted alone and Rakes' death was not connected to the Bulger trial.

Camuti was convicted in 1993 of 11 counts of mail fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud investors. Court records show Camuti was soliciting money from a group of Waltham businessmen, promising to invest their money in mortgages and never following through.

Investigators say that Camuti owed Rakes a substantial amount of money and that was a likely motive in the poisoning. The Middlesex County DA's office believes the Bulger connection was a coincidence, since Rakes wasn't even on the prosecution's witness list for the current trial.

In the 1980s, Rakes owned a South Boston liquor store that he alleged Bulger and his right-hand man Steve Flemmi extorted him into selling for $67,000 in cash one night in 1984. Rakes and his family briefly fled to Florida before being summoned back to Boston by Bulger. Rakes then-wife reported the case to her uncle, a Boston Police detective, who in turn reported the takeover of the store to FBI agent John Connolly- unaware that Bulger and Flemmi were informants for the FBI and that Connolly was their handler.

Rakes said that Bulger then threatened him into changing his testimony and perjuring himself when an earlier criminal complaint was brought against Bulger in 1991, claiming the sale was voluntary. When Whitey went on the run, Rakes was charged with perjury.

Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig were arrested by the FBI in Santa Monica, CA in June 2011 after more than 15 years on the run. Agents were following up on a tip from one of their neighbors [a former Miss Iceland pageant winner, no less!- NANESB!]. The agency broke the case open shortly after they decided to air a series of announcements focusing in Greig on daytime TV talk shows geared more towards women.

Potential Witness in Whitey Bulger Trial Found Dead in Lincoln, MA

Before the Patriot's Day bombing of the Boston Marathon finish line and capture of Chechen islamist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Boston's 'Trial of the Century" was supposed to be the prosecution of former Winter Hill capo and FBI informant Whitey Bulger in South Boston's US District Court.

With all the uproar surrounding Rolling Stone's rock-star treatment of the younger Tsarnaev brother on the front cover of their latest edition, the Bulger trial got second billing in Boston until an odd and disturbing development on Thursday.

One of the witnesses who was scheduled to testify against Bulger was found dead on Wednesday along the Mill Street area of Lincoln, MA. Authorities still have to determine a cause of death.

Given the advanced age of some of the participants in the Bulger trial, I'd say this death looks 95% fishy, as opposed to 99.9% fishy. However, Federal Prosecutors claim they had not plans to call Stephen Rakes to the witness stand.

Far from being a reluctant eyewitness, Rakes appeared eager to testify how he was victimized by Bulger and his accomplices.

Rakes, 59, was one of the most determined of Bulger’s alleged victims, still furious at the notorious South Boston gangster and his allies, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi and Kevin Weeks, for allegedly extorting his South Boston liquor store from him at gunpoint in 1984 — while Rakes’s daughters were in the same room.

In a 2001 interview with the Boston Globe, Rakes said that Bulger and his right-hand man Steve 'The Rifleman' Flemmi accosted him at his South Boston liquor store one night in 1984. Rakes claimed the two introduced themselves and said they had been hired to kill him, but wouldn't go through with their contract if he sold the store to them. As the conversation moved into the kitchen, Rakes claimed Flemmi pulled a gun and put it on the table before putting Rakes' infant daughter on his lap while Bulger pulled a switchblade, asking what it would be like for Rakes' daughter to grow up without a father.

Threatened with death if he reported the shakedown, Rakes insisted the sale was voluntary when he testified before federal grand juries targeting Bulger in 1991 and 1995. A jury convicted Rakes of perjury and obstruction of justice in June 1998, but he escaped prison after agreeing to cooperate with authorities.

After losing the store, Rakes said he went to Disney World with his family, only to be ordered back by Bulger, who forced him to stand on a South Boston corner for two days to quell rumors that Bulger had killed him.

Rakes's wife sought help from her uncle, Boston Police Detective Joseph Lundbohm, who reported the takeover of the store to FBI Agent John J. Connolly Jr., unaware that Bulger and Flemmi were informants and Connolly was their handler.

In a 1998 Globe interview, Connolly confirmed that Lundbohm had told him that Bulger and Flemmi had seized the store, but Connolly said he didn't take action because the Rakeses "did not want to get wired up and they did not want to be witnesses. How do you make a case like that?"

A day after Connolly was warned about the shakedown, Rakes said Bulger paid him a visit and warned him that he'd better tell Lundbohm to "back off."

"I was more scared then than I ever was," said Rakes. "I figured he had a pipeline right to the FBI."

After Rakes lied to the grand jury in 1991, Bulger confronted him on his way home from the courthouse and revealed that he knew everything that had happened in the secret, closed-door proceeding, Rakes said.

"He had a piece of paper in front of him and he had all of the questions that the prosecutor had asked me," said Rakes. "I said, `Thank God I went in there and lied like crazy or I'd be dead by now.' "

Bulger fled Boston after a January 1995 racketeering indictment. By that time, Rakes was a track inspector with the MBTA. A few months after Whitey became a wanted fugitive, Rakes said he panicked and fled when he saw Bulger protégé Kevin Weeks standing at a platform at the Red Line's Broadway station, accidently brushing up against the third rail as he fled. Rakes was hospitalized for several days afterwards.

Associates of Bulger claim that Rakes had approached them through an intermediary about selling the store, but threatened him after they said he kept raising the asking price for the liquor store.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Mexican Marines Nab Fugitive Zetas Capo in Border Town; The Deer Hunter(s); Gunmen In Chihuahua Resort to Chasing Ambulances

TAMAULIPAS- Officials south of the border confirmed on Tuesday that Mexican Marines had captured fugitive Zetas leader Miguel Angel Treviño Morales- also known as "Z-40".

Even in a nation jaded by years of violence stemming from ongoing narco violence, Z-40 had earned a reputation for ferocity and depravity on both sides of the border. While not actually pulling the trigger, he is believed to have ordered the 2010 massacre of more than 70 Central American immigrants, a 2010 arson attack on a Monterrey casino that led to the deaths of 52 patrons, the death and disappearance of more than 200 people in Tamaulipas after gunmen abducted passengers off of intercity buses and a 2012 prison riot in Nuevo Leon that killed 44 and was used as cover for a jailbreak.

However, after years of aggressive incursions into territory controlled by the rival Gulf, Sinaloa and La Familia Michoacána cartels, the Zetas began suffering a number of setbacks recently. In June 2012, a federal judge in Texas ordered the seizure of more than 400 racehorses stabled in New Mexico's Ruidoso Downs racetrack as part of a money-laundering investigation against Jose Treviño Moreals- Miguel's brother.

Around the same time, Mexican troops arrested the Zetas "piracy czar" in Nuevo Leon. Gregorio Villanueva Salas oversaw the lucrative video, music and software piracy arm of the Zetas and was said to be involved in a number of grenade attacks.

In October 2012, Mexican Marines shot and killed then-Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano outside a ballpark in Coahuila- although at the time the Mexican military initially thought they had simply encountered some low-level sicarrios. However, in a bizarre development a group of men broke into a funeral home and stole Lazcano's body the following day.

Despite the Zetas fearsome reputation, Treviño and two associates- a bodyguard and accountant- were apprehended without firing a shot. A Blackhawk helicopter from the Mexican Navy was used to cut off Z-40's escape route and after a brief foot chase in which he reportedly fell into heavy brush, he was captured.

The Zetas had originally started out as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel recruited from the ranks of the Mexican army or various police departments. However, after the 2003 arrest of Gulf Cartel capo Osiel Cardenas, the Zetas broke away from the Gulf cartel and usurped much of their territory, leaving the remnants of the Gulf Cartel a sliver of territory in Tamaulipas while they aggressively expanded into territory controlled by the Sinaloa and La Familia Michoacána (later the Knights Templar) cartels. Like other criminal organizations, the successfully managed to intimidate police, journalists and prosecutors into compliance with a high-profile campaign of arson and murders- often leaving the bodies of their victims mutilated and on display in public along with a warning written on a banner hung nearby.

However, the Zetas were able to separate themselves from others for random attacks on civilians not involved in the drug trade, forcibly conscripting illegal immigrants transiting through Mexico to become drug mules (or executing them if they refused), armed themselves with military grade weaponry from armories in Central America and even began recruiting members of the Guatemalan Army's elite Kabiles special operation unit as they expanded their operations in Central America.

MICHOACAN- The uprising in Guererro that has seen armed civilians in small villages oust public officials accused of co-operating with drug traffickers has spread to the mountainous state of Michoacán. Once home to the enigmatic and cult-like La Familia Michoacána cartel, the state had mostly fallen into the hands of the Knights Templar cartel- an offshoot of La Familia when much of their leadership was killed or arrested in late 2010.

Despite the apparent demise of La Familia, Michoacán remains prime real-estate for organized crime with arable land to grow export-grade marijuana and opium poppies as well as the port of Lazaro Cardenas, which can be used to import cocaine from South America or precursor chemicals for methamphetamine from Asia.

“The problem started when they began messing with the population: extortion, rapes, killings," Mayor Rafael Garcia, 42, says of the Knights Templar, the fancifully named cartel of thugs who control many of western Michoacan state's 113 counties. "We were terrified. We are still terrified.”

“We are a very small town raising its voice,” he says. “Hopefully it will have an impact.”

Following the lead of two nearby counties, Coalcoman's people two weeks ago armed a makeshift militia with assault rifles and shotguns and drove the Templars out.

The gangsters responded by besieging the town from its outskirts. They set fire to trucks and cars trying to leave and attacked men working the forests and ranches.

Wielding a quasi-religious code of conduct and a cynical vow to defend communities against outsiders, the Templars are Michoacan's latest incarnation of a deeply rooted and politically protected criminal culture.

But this latest threat of impending slaughter proved a watershed, forcing President Enrique Peña Nieto to backtrack on vows to demilitarize Mexico's fight against its heavily armed and murder-minded gangsters.

He named an army general on May 16 to take control of Michoacan's public security and deployed as many as 6,000 soldiers to the state with orders to disarm the militias and force the Templars to retreat.

“I still don't understand how the government let this go on so long," Garcia says. "They didn't imagine the town would take up arms. The army is here because the people rose up."

Coalcoman joins a spreading movement across violence-plagued Michoacan and neighboring Guerrero state, where towns and villages have formed volunteer “community police” to depose corrupt local police and draw a line in the dirt against the gangs.

Similar but more poorly armed militias formed in late February in the towns of Buenavista Tomatlan and Tepalcatepec, forcing the mayors of both towns to flee and sparked deadly clashes with the Templars.

"It's not possible to continue living this way," Michoacan's five Roman Catholic bishops declared in a call to action two weeks ago. "There is a permanent feeling of defenselessness and desperation. To that is added anger and fear because of the forced or voluntary complicity between authorities and organized crime."

Mexico's civil-war-like criminal violence began in Michoacan more than six years ago when then-President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to subdue La Familia Michoacana drug cartel.

The troops didn't stay long and the gangsters waited them out, returning stronger than ever. By one estimate, the Templars — who emerged several years ago as a breakaway faction of La Familia — now hold sway in nearly three-quarters of the state's counties.

The Knights Templar has become the state’s leading crime syndicate.

As long as they stuck with the drug trade the Templars were tolerated and even admired by many here. But in recent years the gang's local cells began heavily extorting communities and business people, reportedly raping women at will and killing on a whim.

Local officials and police either cooperated openly with the Templars or felt themselves powerless to oppose them. State and federal officials reacted sporadically, their operations often sparking open combat and gangsters blockading towns and cities.

Extortion fees were collected as taxes, just as formalized but far more hazardous to evade, the Coalcoman mayor and other residents say. The Templars took 10 percent of municipal budgets, and similar cuts from cattle, lumber and lime producers. They levied taxes on meat, tortillas and other groceries and charged “protection quotas” from anybody they came across.

Residents and companies refusing to pay face the Templars’ wrath.

Lumber yards, and fruit packing sheds and delivery trucks have been burned down, workers and citizens murdered. In April, gunmen twice attacked a convoy of lime growers and pickers who had traveled to complain to state officials about the extortion, killing 10 people.

For now the troops serve as peacekeepers, keeping Templars and militias separated but not really moving against either. The gangsters stay scarce, the militias keep their weapons out of sight but handy.

Most everyone expects the federal forces to pull out sooner rather than later. Then the troubles will begin anew.

"We are very aware that they can return at any time,” said the leader of unarmed militiamen manning the checkpoint on the highway entrance to Buenavista Tomatlan. “We know lives will be lost, but we are ready for that. The people don't want any more gangsters in this area."

The Templars and some federal officials have accused the militias of taking weapons and other support from a criminal cartel in neighboring Jalisco state, pointing to the assault weapons carried by many of the volunteers.

But Mayor Garcia in Coalcoman says local businessmen bought the weapons, though he won't say from whom.

"How are you going to fight these people, with slingshots?" Garcia asked in an interview Tuesday.

A sprawling county of just 10,000 souls, Coalcoman huddles near the Pacific coast in a valley surrounded by forested mountains a six-hour drive from Morelia, the state capital.

The area's independent-minded people work mines, cattle ranches and lumber mills. Coalcoman’s people long have had little use, or regard, for state and federal government.

Coalcoman earned a footnote in history for its fierce guerrilla resistance against occupying French soldiers in the mid-19th century.

A leftist guerrilla movement sprang up near here in the 1970s. Well-armed militias here again have set nerves on edge in Morelia and Mexico City.

“We are living this, we are fighting this in perhaps an old fashioned way," said rancher Misael Gonzalez, 48, a leader of Coalcoman's community police. "We are a grain of rice, but we are doing what we can."

Things are peaceful for now. Hundreds of soldiers and federal police man checkpoints on the highway leading to Coalcoman through Buenavista and Tepalcatepec. Armored troop convoys are about the only traffic on the road. Two propeller driven air force attack planes overflew the area last week in a show of force.

“Our fear is that days and months will pass and they will be here without finishing off the Templars," Mayor Garcia says of the troops.

“They haven't managed a single capture. We are not going to put down our arms. We are not going to drop our guard until this is resolved."

Meanwhile Garcia and his townspeople hunker down. The mayor says he sleeps in different houses every night, and doesn't dare leave town.

Should the Templars return, he says half jokingly, he might be forced to seek asylum in the United States. But Garcia stresses that he has few regrets about leading his town in confronting the gangsters.

"It's not about money any more. We were used to paying money,” he says of the Templars endemic extortion. “This is about honor and dignity.

“Either you serve God or you serve the Devil," Garcia says. "I am with the people.”

Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the newly-sworn in government of Enrique Peña Nieto sent Mexican troops to intervene in the mountainous regions of Michoacán and Guererro. Some government officials have expressed concerns that rival cartels may be manipulating anti-government to oust the Knights Templar from some of the territory they hold.


CHIHUAHUA- An ambulance carrying individuals wounded in a shootout was intercepted by gunmen in southern Chihuahua last week. The abductors reportedly abducted four men from paramedics at gunpoint and bundled them into a dark SUV before driving off.

The four patients, who had been wounded in a firefight pitting two groups of gunmen in the town of Guadalupe y Calvo, were being rushed to a hospital when they were forced off the ambulance Thursday night in the town of Parral and taken away in an SUV, Carlos González, spokesman for the Chihuahua state Attorney General's Office, told Efe.

TEXAS- A group of east Texas hunters setting up blinds for the upcoming deer season stumbled across more than 18,000 marijuana plants in rural Madison County this week.

Madison County Sheriff Travis Neeley says a group of hunters were setting up deer blinds when they discovered the plants on Friday. The sheriff's office eventually confiscated 18,400 marijuana plants with an estimated street value of $9 million.

Authorities say they also found 13 bags of fertilizer, 3,000 feet of irrigation piping and a generator. Neeley says hygiene products, tents and batteries were also found at a nearby campsite

While no arrests have been made, local police believe the operation has been in use for the past three or four years and was likely funded by one of the Mexican cartels.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Fast and Furious Gun Reportedly Used to Kill Police Chief in Jalisco; Narcos Carry Out Cross Border Abduction of Innocent Man in Texas

Aftermath of deadly ambush in Jalisco that killed the police chief for the town of Hostotipaquillo

JALISCO- About the only honest assessment from the Justice Department and Obama Administration during the 2011 Fast and Furious hearing on Capitol Hill was that the weapons that were allowed to 'walk' in the ill-advised ATF operation would continue surfacing at crime scenes on both sides of the border for quite some time.

Another weapon lost in the Obama administration's failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation has purportedly been traced to two more killings, including the fatal shooting of a police chief in Mexico.

The officer was killed Jan. 29 in the city of Hostotipaquillo when gunmen intercepted his patrol car and opened fire, according to Justice Department records obtained by The Los Angeles Times. The chief’s bodyguard was also killed and a second bodyguard and the chief’s wife were wounded.

The semi-automatic rifle that killed the police chief in central Mexico has been traced to the Lone Wolf Trading Company, a gun store in Glendale, Ariz.

The gun was purchased in February 2010 by 26-year-old Jacob A. Montelongo, of Phoenix, who purportedly bought more than 100 guns connected to Fast and Furious. He is now serving 41 months in prison on charges including making false statements and smuggling goods from the United States.

The murder weapon was identified as a WASR- a Romanian made semi-automatic variant of the AK-47. The gun was similar to another weapon that could be traced back to Fast and Furious in November 2012 when a Mexican beauty queen was reportedly used as a human shield by her narco boyfriend in a shootout between cartel gunmen and Mexican soldiers.

TEXAS- At a time when President Obama and DHS head Janet Napolitano assured us that the border with Mexico was safer than ever, Mexican cartel gunmen abducted an innocent man in Texas and smuggled him across the border before he was murdered in northern Mexico.

The abduction took place more than two years ago at a rural intersection in Mission, TX when Gulf cartel gunmen dressed as policemen abducted 35 year old Ovidio Olivares Guererro at gunpoint before tying him up and taking him to a nearby cartel stash house, then a ranch in Starr county before being smuggled across the border to Mexico.

Police believe his abductors had mistaken Olivares for his cousin, Gerardo Olivarez. The abduction was reportedly ordered by a Gulf Cartel underboss Miguel Villareal Jr- also known as 'Gringo Mike' who believed that Gerardo had stolen large amounts of cocaine from one of the cartel's nearby stash houses.

Court records show that the whole kidnapping plot began to unravel when Mission police busted a party inside a hotel room at the Hawthorn Suites off Plantation Grove Boulevard back in June 2011.

Mission police arrested 23-year-old Gerardo Villarreal on drug charges but investigators learned he participated in the kidnapping.

Villarreal told investigators that he got paid $1,000 dollars by a man nicknamed “Pecueka” to participate in the crew.

Federal court records show that Villarreal is expected to be sentenced in August but FBI agents identified five more suspects named in a second, but related case.

FBI agents arrested suspects Jose Lorenzo Davila, Roel Garza and Orlando Hernandez last week but the names of the two others suspects in their case remain sealed.

Records in both cases show that the intended target in the kidnapping was Guerrero’s cousin Gerardo Olivarez.

Olivarez could not be reached for comment on Wednesday but records show that the gunmen were hired to kidnap him.

Court records show that the gunmen knew Olivarez by the nickname “Lin” and they believed he stole a large amount of cocaine from a Gulf Cartel stash house in the Rio Grande Valley.

Villarreal told FBI agents that they had Olivarez’s Mile 8 North home under surveillance in the days before the kidnapping.

Court records show that the kidnapping was one of several ordered by Miguel Villarreal, Jr.

Villarreal was killed during a March 2013 gun battle in Mexico but at the time of the kidnapping, he was a Gulf Cartel plaza boss who went by the nicknames “Gringo Mike” or “El Gringo.”

FBI agents reported that Guerrero was taken from Mile 8 North and taken to a ranch owned by Villarreal at 1012 N. Trosper Rd. in Alton.

The gunmen questioned Guerrero and realized that he was not the right man.

Although the ranch was registered to a woman named Dominga De La Torre, court records show Villarreal was the owner.

The ranch was reportedly used as a Gulf Cartel stash house for drugs and other illegal activity.

Those who stayed at the ranch were charged with guard the drugs but a 100 kilograms of cocaine were stolen from there just two weeks prior to the kidnapping.

Villarreal had hired the gunmen to kidnap those who believed had stolen the drugs.

Once at the Trosper Road ranch house, the gunmen beat Guerrero but realized that he was the wrong man.

Court records show that Guerrero saw the face of a suspect whose name has not been released.

That unnamed suspect told the gunmen that they could not free Guerrero because they had seen his face.

Court records show that the unnamed suspect told the gunmen that Guerrero would be taken to Mexico.

They drove Guerrero to a home in Rio Grande City and then to the Rio Grande River where he was smuggled across to Mexico.

The gunmen delivered Guerrero to a man nicknamed “Mocho,” who was the plaza boss for the Gulf Cartel across from Rio Grande City in Camargo.

Court records show that “Mocho” delivered Guerrero to “Gringo Mike” in Reynosa.

One of the gunmen arrested in the case told FBI agents that he ran into another unnamed suspect in the case in Reynosa.

That unnamed suspect showed the gunmen a large amount of cash and told him that Guerrero had already been murdered.

FBI agents reported that Guerrero was a lawful permanent resident of the United States and had no involvement in the theft or sale of cocaine.

Guerrero has not been hear from or seen since the kidnapping. His body has never been recovered.

Ovidio's family reported his abduction after showing up at a local police station to find out more about his arrest, only to learn that he wasn't in custody.

CANADA- An internal assessment by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police indicates that at least 10 Canadians killed in Mexico since 2008 are suspected to have ties to organized crime  and were thought to be in Mexico to forge closer links to the Mexican cartels.

Some were known to be active in drug trafficking in Canada and all had extensive criminal backgrounds, says the RCMP analysis.

A copy of the May 2012 assessment, which takes a close look at the influence of corruption, and a related review of the implications for Canada — both heavily censored — were released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The Mounties say global borders have become blurred with the proliferation of transnational organized crime.

As a result, Canadian criminal networks have expanded, conducting business on an international scale with illicit organizations in other countries.

“Canadian criminal groups are now dealing directly with Mexican criminals and crime groups in Mexico, a country struggling with corruption and brutal violence,” says the assessment by the RCMP’s criminal intelligence program.

In April last year, Thomas Gisby, a B.C. man with known gang ties, was gunned down in a Nuevo Vallarta coffee shop.

At the same time, interceptions of Canada-bound drug shipments “point to possible connections between Mexican and Canadian-based crime networks,” the RCMP says.

A recently released Canada Border Services Agency report cites Mexico as the largest transit point for South American cocaine destined for North America.

The RCMP assessment says competition among drug trafficking organizations has made corruption endemic in Mexican society, reflected in weakened governmental institutions, an ineffective criminal justice system, and a deep-rooted fear and distrust of authorities by the Mexican people.

At least five of the Canadians mentioned in the report have extensive criminal backgrounds and are said to be associated with the Hell's Angels or British Columbia-based UN Gang. A number of Canadian criminal enterprises are said to be forging closer links to the Mexican cartels to increase their profit margin by eliminating middlemen and third parties.

Borderline Psychosis Update- Vigilantes Oust Police, Take Over Guerrero Village; Sinaloa Cartel Seeks More Direct Involvement in Colombian Cocaine Production; Dirty Peruvian Cops May Have Played Role in 2012 Mexico City Airport Shootout

GUERRERO- Hundreds of armed vigilantes in the town of Villa Colorado have detained police officers, seized weapons and set up checkpoints on the main highway through town after the body of one of the 'community defense' commanders was found dumped in the middle of a street last month.

The self described 'community police' and arrested 12 officers and the town's former director of public security, who they accuse of taking part in the killing of Guadalupe Quinones Carbajal, 28, on behalf of a local organised crime group.

The 1,500-strong force has also set up improvised checkpoints on the major road running through Tierra Colorado, which connects the capital Mexico City to Acapulco, a coastal city popular with tourists less than 40 miles away.

The takeover of the police station also enabled the vigilante group to seize far more modern weaponry- such as semiautomatic rifles and pistols- than the single shot hunting rifles or antiquated revolvers that many of these groups had started off with- some members were spotted with the much newer rifles at improvised roadblocks shortly after the officers and public security director were turned over to state officials.

At least one tourist was wounded after vigilantes opened fire on a carload of tourists destined for Acapulco for the Easter weekend after the car refused to stop for the checkpoint in Villa Colorado.


COLOMBIA- According to reports published in Colombian daily El Tiempo, the Sinaloa Cartel is assuming control of an increasing number of Colombia's illegal cocaine production facilities in anticpation of an accord between the Colombian government and leftist guerilla group FARC.

An anonymous official told the Colombian daily El Tiempo that a number of mid-level FARC commanders have sold off their shares in the drug trade in anticipation of the continuing peace negotiations between the guerrilla group and the Colombian government, which is taking place in Havana. Under the agreement, Sinaloa would own and operate illegal cocaine production facilities in South America.

The sale of the so-called drug trafficking franchises marks a move by the Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “ El Chapo” Guzmán into the production of cocaine. Mexico’s cartels had previously relied on processed cocaine to be transported to the country from various points in South and Central America.

Crackdowns by Colombian authorities have forced the Mexican drug trafficking organization to take a more hands-on approach on the trade in the Andean nation. The Sinaloa Cartel is allegedly operating processing labs near the border with Ecuador, in the departments of Antioquia, Córdoba and in Norte de Santander, near the country’s border with Venezuela.

The Colombian government and the FARC are looking for points of agreement upon which to build a peace accord. In a joint statement, they said talks will begin with agrarian reform, the first item on the agenda.

FARC- whose acronym translates to Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in English- is thought to be the western hemisphere's oldest active guerrilla army, having been started shortly after a bloody 1950's civil war in Colombia that was known only as La Viiolencia. The Marxist guerillas reportedly enjoyed financial and materiel support from the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. The armed group had turned to protecting cocoa plantations and production facilities as well as kidnapping and extortion to raise funds at least as far back as Pablo Escobar's heyday. FARC has most recently been active in south central Colombia as well as along the border with Venezuela.


TEXAS- Game wardens with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department have seized more than two tons of marijuana in the border county of Starr County this week.

A total of 409 bundles of marijuana weighing 4,719 pounds were seized at a home in Starr County near the U.S.-Mexico border in South Texas.

The Wednesday night drug seizure also resulted in the arrest of two individuals who were at the home. A third person escaped.

Officials say some of the marijuana was hidden in an underground bunker at the home.

The crop and two suspects arrested at the scene were turned over to the Border Patrol. The pot seizure is reportedly among the largest in the Texas state agency's history.

PERU- Prosecutors in Lima have charged at least ten Peruvian drug enforcement agents for allegedly conspiring to smuggle cocaine out of the country via Lima International Airport. The narcotics were reportedly destined for a group of Mexican federal officers assigned to Mexico City's Benito Juarez international airport on the payroll of the Sinaloa cartel.

Cocaine being smuggled in from Peru is what reportedly sparked a deadly June 2012 shootout between Mexican federal agents at Benito Juarez International Airport that killed three.

“The killers were part of a gang of officers on the payroll of the Sinaloa cartel that worked at the airport in the Mexican federal capital and allowed drugs arriving from Peru to pass through. They knew which flight the cocaine was arriving on because the criminal organization also included Peruvian drug enforcement agents assigned to the international terminal” at the airport in Lima, the newspaper said.

Mexican officials notified the Peruvian government after the incident and the Dirandro launched an operation in August 2012 to identify the agents allegedly working for the Sinaloa cartel.

Among those under investigation include a major, two captians, a lieutenant and six other officers in the Dirandro- Peru's anti-drug agency.

The charges were filed around the same time a Peruvian "mega comission" accused former president Alan Garcia of issuing more than 400 pardons to convicted drug traffickers.

FBI Says They Have Identified Theives From 1990 Gardner Art Muesum Heist

In recent years, Hollywood seems to have spawned a sub-genre of New England crime dramas with films like The Departed, Mystic River or The Town. But between the Whitey Bulger saga, the Bonded Vault heist and the Gardner Art Museum robbery, truth is stranger than fiction.

For those of you who didn't know, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Art Museum heist was the biggest art theft in modern history. On St Patrick's Day in 1990, two men dressed as Boston police officers overpowered security guards working the graveyard shift at the museum and after 81 minutes, made off with an estimated $500 million in artwork from Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet and Degas among others. According to investigators and art experts, while the theives expertly circumvented the museum's alarm system they did considerable damage to some of the paintings when they were removed from their frames. The stolen paintings included Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Gallillee, the artists only nautically themed work.



The museum offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the stolen artwork, but the trail quickly went cold despite all signs pointing to the heist being planned and carried out by locals. Carmello Merlino and Robert Guarente- two Quincy, MA-based mobsters- were considered suspects early on and were reportedly recorded on wiretaps discussing returning the stolen artwork to the museum to collect the reward- if they could only find it first. Interestingly, when the Feds had arrested Merlino on unrelated drug trafficking charges, the mobster offered to recover a $5000 painting stolen from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Museum in Cambridge, MA in exchange for leniency. Guarente passed away in 2004 and Merlino is also deceased.

However, there was never enough evidence to charge either Merlino or Guarente with the heist. Some journalists and investigators belive that the two were not intially involved, but were going to steal the paintings from the robbers and return it to the musuem.

But last weekend, the FBI had announced they had identified the theives from the 1990 heist and say that the stolen artwork had changed hands a number of times between east coast organized crime groups in the last decade.

In a stunning twist in a case that had frustrated investigators for decades, federal law enforcement officials said today that they had identified the people who stole $500 million worth of masterworks in a daring heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990.

The officials also said they had determined where the artworks had traveled in the years after the robbery, which is considered the greatest art theft in history. But the officials said they did not know where they were now and were appealing to the public for their help in finding them.

“The FBI believes with a high degree of confidence in the years after the theft the art was transported to Connecticut and the Philadelphia region and some of the art was taken to Philadelphia where it was offered for sale by those responsible for the theft. With that confidence, we have identified the thieves, who are members of a criminal organization with a base in the mid-Atlantic states and New England,” Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the Boston office of the FBI, said.

DesLauriers said that after the attempted sale of the paintings about a decade ago, the FBI did not know where the artworks — which included three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a portrait by Edouard Manet, and sketches by Renoir — had been taken.

Officials said at a Boston news conference they would not release the names of the individuals who masqueraded as police officers to gain entry in the early-morning robbery at the Gardner exactly 23 years ago.

Although the statute of limitations has run out on the original theft, the art theives or parties who purchased the stolen artwork could face federal charges of transporting stolen property across state lines.

My first thought is that a little like the Whitey Bulger manhunt- the Winter Hill Gang leader had eluded the FBI for decades, but the fugitive mobster and his girlfriend were arrested in Santa Monica, CA within days of an FBI Public Service ad airing on daytime talk shows showing girlfriend Catherine Greig. Like the Bulger PSA, there wasn't really any significant new information or developments in the Garder Museum heist announced at the press conference, but the FBI was using the internet and social networking in an attempt to steer the investigation towards something that might've been overlooked earlier that could ultimately break the case open.

The FBI also seems to be placing an emphasis on recovering the artwork- to that end, they've set up a dedicated website with more information on the heist, the investigation and the missing paintings.