[Good read] Devils, Deals, and the DEA

RV6 · Dec 17, 2015

This is about how the Arellano Felix Organization was taken down and the agents involved. Some events are already pretty well known, but it's got some interesting details about the cartel leaders and enforcers, as well the agents and their informants.

Devils, Deals and the DEA
Why Chapo Guzman was the biggest winner in the DEA's longest running drug cartel case

by David Epstein, ProPublica
December 17, 2015
This story was co-published with the Atlantic.
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Barron hired trainers — Mexican police officers and a Middle Eastern man whom recruits knew as “The Terrorist.” He equipped his men as though they were soldiers, with bulletproof vests, hand grenades, AK‑47s, and night-vision goggles. “He never asked his employees to do anything he wouldn’t do himself,” a former AFO lieutenant who worked closely with Barron told me. He ordered his men to keep their mustaches neatly trimmed and to dress in Dockers and polo shirts. This would be a refined gang of assassins. They would kill for drugs, but never use them. The AFO built detox holding cells where any enforcer caught using would be stashed for a month. The sentence for a second offense was 60 days. A third meant death.

In May 1993, Ramón summoned Barron and a dozen of his men to accompany him to Guadalajara to kill Chapo Guzmán. They searched the city but found no sign of Guzmán, and after a week they prepared to return to Tijuana. While Ramón passed through security for his flight home, five carloads of his soldiers, including Barron, sat in an airport parking lot. Suddenly, at about 3:30 p.m., an AFO lookout spotted Guzmán, right there at the airport. He and his bodyguards were getting out of a green Buick near the main entrance.
Barron grabbed a rifle. Guzmán’s bodyguards saw him. A firefight began. The AFO hit squad fired its AK‑47s indiscriminately. Bullets flew toward the terminal and struck a woman and her nephew while they were crossing the street. Barron and two other AFO shooters poured bullets into a white Grand Marquis — they knew Guzmán owned one — killing the driver and a passenger. Guzmán himself commandeered a taxi and sped away.
When the shooting ended, several AFO members tossed their guns in garbage cans and ran for Aeromexico Flight 110 to Tijuana. It was being held because of the commotion outside. Nonetheless, a group of anxious, sweaty men were allowed to board. Ramón was already in first class, spitting on the floor — a nervous tic. When the flight took off, seven people — five bystanders and two of Guzmán’s bodyguards — lay dead or dying in the parking lot.

In the passenger seat of the white Grand Marquis, a plump man dressed in black slumped to his side, a cross dangling from his chest. He had been hit 14 times. He was Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, the second-highest-ranking official in Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church. The brothers knew right away that the cartel had made an Escobar-size mistake. “The AFO instantly went from folk heroes to villains,” a former lieutenant in the cartel told me.
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Anyone seen a clip of this?

All this time, Ramón was hiding out in L.A., growing his belly and his hair — now shoulder-length and dyed blond. One day in Hollywood, while hanging out in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater, wearing a Nike cap, sunglasses, and a Michael Jordan jersey, he was approached by Rupert Jee, a New York City deli owner and a regular on the Late Show With David Letterman, who was taping a man-on-the-street segment. “No entiendo,” Ramón said, as he tried to shoo Jee away. In the segment, Jee draws attention to Ramón by yelling, “Hey, everybody, it’s Michael Jordan! Look!” to the great delight of the studio audience. Slung over Ramón’s shoulder was a black satchel in which he typically concealed a gun.
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https://www.propublica.org/article/devils-deals-and-the-dea

Roc Paint · Dec 17, 2015

I had enough of those fine fellas when I was managing strip clubs back in the day, between them and Vice there was never a dull moment.

countingcrow · Dec 18, 2015

Thanks for posting this. I love reading cartel related stuff...

RV6 · Dec 18, 2015

countingcrow said: ↑

Thanks for posting this. I love reading cartel related stuff...
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No problem..long read, but worth it.

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[Good read] Devils, Deals, and the DEA

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