The Mexican Cartel Thread - Anyone As Interested in Whats Going On Down There as Me?!

[itisme]

Right on bro. The US is directly responsible for that shit too. We have to relax these insane drug laws before they literally think they can just shot us on site for a joint. It's insane how our Gov't does not notice this. I have to assume they do since I see it plane as day.

 

[nahtanoj]

I saw this article the other day about the "cartels infiltrating Australia". I don't really know how much truth there is to it but I can only imagine it would only be worth shipping product here in huge quantities; just imagine the logistics involved in that.

I watched some of the cartel videos online where they take a chainsaw and butcher someone to death. I don't know how anyone could do such a thing.

 

[Dislexus]

That's interesting nahtanoj, my belief has been the Columbian cartels handed North American smuggling/distribution to over to the Mexican cartels so they could focus on expanding worldwide markets. Another form of globalism.

I guess its not so interesting considering any cargo or ship coming from Columbia is checked, and I bet there's not a lot of exports to sneak coke inside. Mexican goods exports to Australia I wouldn't doubt to be much higher volume.

The Columbians are getting around that problem one way, by transshipping thru West Africa to Europe.

Also Columbian FARC (essentially a politik-cartel) having a working relationship with The Real IRA. Bombmaking training in exchange for coke. The underworld version of the Iran-Contra deal.

The last debate Ron Paul was like Reagan negotiated with terrorists, remember Iran-Contra? that shit was funny, the crowd choked on it.

 

[motaco]

One of few pot related subjects that still interests me as I get older.

I don't know why but those guys who orchestrate massive growing and smuggling rings interest me. Not that I'm on their side in any way. I just think its interesting.

Anyway there is a lot of really misinformative stuff in here. Starting right at the post above me. The Colombians never handed it over, it was much more cost effective to simply sell the cocaine to the Mexicans, and let them smuggle it the rest of the way, then it was to try to smuggle it all that distance through foreign countries.

First they tried to split the difference, but Mexico started demanding to be paid in cocaine. And then eventually just refusing to smuggle someone elses cocaine. They had the money, and they just started buying it wholesale and making the money themselves. Ever since the 80's the mexicans have been looking for ways to cut out foreign suppliers and keep they profits for themselves. That is part of where "black tar" heroin came from. They even grow their own opium now.

2) Little wayne was saying they can't get much through. That is completely untrue. Its the same price it was when I was in high school and about triple the potency. That was true for about 2 years after 9/11. But now they have their shit straighter than ever. Have you seen the recent mexican weed?

This is $20 for 7 grams. Honestly for the money its hard to beat. It hardly ever looked this good 15 years ago. Now its pretty standard. Its about half the potency of standard 'dank weed", but its less than 1/4 the price. "Dank" is $20 a gram. This stuff is less than $3 a gram.



I've been told that the mexicans are for sure responsible for massive US park grows, but that its a mixed bag. There are some funded by cartels. But many that the cartels are very pissed about. Gangsters who have countrywide smuggling connections had some of their grower friends smuggled in, and together they do HUGE grows. They realized cartels have hardly any power in the US, and as long as they stay here and bring their families they can keep the profits to themselves and there isn't much the cartels can do about it.

What I hear about the violence also makes sense. With increased pressure from the government the cartels are pushing back harder. But more importantly with major cartel chiefs being arrested it creates a power vacuum in an area FULL of gangsters, drugs, and guns. When one big guy gets taken he's replaced by 5 smaller guys who all will fight for power.

Its a bit like the end of "City of God". Lil Ze gives all these weapons to street orphans. Then he gets arrested and all his money taken, and those orphans gun him down in the street. Then they all start talking about how they are going to be the next big dog, and all the people they need to kill in order to make that happen.

 

[Dislexus]

Yeah handed over was incorrect phrasing. NAFTA was a godsend for the Mexican cartels, I think that was a major factor in the shift.

The only mexican weed I've seen lately looks like someone dropped it in some mud... and I live in a major southern metropolitan area and drug hub. But maybe they're being smart and maximizing revenues by moving the higher quality to the northeast, as the good stuff used to sell for the same as the dirtweed here.

BTW anybody seen Coccaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' With The Godmother ? Pretty good... its gross he had to fuck her to get the connect tho lol

 

[longearedfriend]

dislexus said that was his belief (theory?) :

That's interesting nahtanoj, my belief has been the Columbian cartels handed North American smuggling/distribution to over to the Mexican cartels so they could focus on expanding worldwide markets.

 

[Dislexus]

Yeah like the belief in reincarnation or Heaven haha

 

[LiLWaynE]

u know whats real fucked up?

recently in mexico, the cartels have been killling this killing rampage of a lot of the mexican media including but not limited to journalists, bloggers, and writers down there...

and now this site where i get all my FRESH news: www.mundonarco.com has been down.... i hope the owners of the site werent mexican (or affiliated with the cartel for that matter)!

 

[TripleDraw27]

any of u ever read Blog Del Narco?

As Lil just mentioned, bloggers, facebook people have been targeted. It interests me, this Blog as been consistent. Guy must have big balls.

And Id suggest watching the latest Chainsaw event, find it on that blog if you think these guys are less brutal than the dea. Someone on page 3 said =)

 

[TripleDraw27]

.

 

[ChaosCatalunya]

The Colombian cartels do not work in unison, they are great rivals, kill each other for fun and business, the heads and organisations are constantly changing, right now, most of the capos are under 30, everybody else is dead or retired/in hiding.

Most of them realised it is better to sell tons of coke to the Mexican gangs without really messing with the DEA, US laws, extradition. The Mexicans have the massive numbers living in the USA, an endless supply of soldiers to power a cartel, they are happy taking the risks. Mexicans seem to be the most gung ho, balls out bad boys there, even the Colombians tellingly speak about them with great respect.

Some are using Africa, buying whole countries armies, moving it up to Morocco where it is becoming more common on the Morocco-Spain Hash smuggling routes. As more Moroccans become established in Spain, and moving into the market on this side, the Gangsters move more into the Coke, corrupt Army, Guardia Civil, Mossos d'Esquadra all happy to still take their cuts along the way.

FARC, like the IRA, claim they are Revolutionary Socialists, very anti drugs, they have killed friends of friends there for posession of a Rizzla, others for roaches, yet secretly earn their billions from Coke. Most of their shit leaves via Venezuela, partly under the control of the Army and Navy there, Chavez and his close buddies are robbing the big petro money, lesser hangers on get military positions and mess about with norcotics. Russian Naval maneuvers with the Venezuelan Navy off the coast might be related to the Russian Mafias [a.k.a the Russian Government] playing in the coke market.

That's interesting nahtanoj, my belief has been the Columbian cartels handed North American smuggling/distribution to over to the Mexican cartels so they could focus on expanding worldwide markets. Another form of globalism.

I guess its not so interesting considering any cargo or ship coming from Columbia is checked, and I bet there's not a lot of exports to sneak coke inside. Mexican goods exports to Australia I wouldn't doubt to be much higher volume.

The Columbians are getting around that problem one way, by transshipping thru West Africa to Europe.

Also Columbian FARC (essentially a politik-cartel) having a working relationship with The Real IRA. Bombmaking training in exchange for coke. The underworld version of the Iran-Contra deal.

The last debate Ron Paul was like Reagan negotiated with terrorists, remember Iran-Contra? that shit was funny, the crowd choked on it.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

 

[LiLWaynE]

Officials arrest 70 in major Arizona drug bust!!!!!!!!!!! this is BIG NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Reuters) - Law enforcement officials in Arizona seized thousands of pounds of narcotics and arrested at least 70 suspected drug smugglers with apparent ties to a violent drug cartel in Mexico, an official involved with the investigation in the U.S. Southwest told Reuters on Sunday.

The operation, which included three raids conducted jointly by local, state, and federal officials over 17 months, led to the arrests of Mexican and American nationals working with the notorious drug cartel based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Authorities confiscated drugs, money, weapons, ammunition, and bullet-proof vests, cracking a "sophisticated network" of international drug smuggling in one of the largest such operations conducted in the Southwestern United States, the official said.

Drugs were smuggled from Mexico into Arizona by car, plane, on foot, and through tunnels.

"This is one of the more substantial drug-smuggling operations going on right now. This is a billion-dollar drug trade organization linked to the cartel," the official said.

The cartel is headquartered in the northwestern state of Sinaloa on Mexico's Pacific coast, an area home to big marijuana and opium poppy plantations and considered the cradle of Mexican narcotics trafficking since the 1960s.

The cartel is believed to handle 65 percent of all drugs illegally transported to the United States, drug experts say.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in drug-related violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched his military campaign against the cartels after he took office in late 2006.

Further details of the operation will be released at a press conference at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration field office in Phoenix on Monday. The raids were overseen by the DEA, Arizona state officials, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The official said the operation will shed light on elaborate drug smuggling into the United States and said the contraband confiscated in the raids was "jaw-dropping."

Officials captured some of the key players in the smuggling operation, the source said, adding that the suspects will be prosecuted at the state level.

The official said law enforcement officials are still looking for dozens of people in connection with the operation.

(Reporting by Eric Johnson in Chicago; Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington; Editing by Eric Walsh)

http://news.yahoo.com/officials-arrest-70-major-arizona-drug-bust-001609052.html

 

[LiLWaynE]

number 2 in command of the zetas is captured....

number 2 in command of the zetas is captured....

The number two leader of the Zetas drug cartel -- one of the most violent in Mexico -- has been arrested in northern Nuevo Leon state, officials said.
Naval officials said they arrested on Thursday Rigoberto Zamarripa Arispe, known as "Comandante Chaparro" in the community of Cadereyta, after an anonymous tip-off.
Last month officials arrested four members of the Zetas cartel suspected of involvement in the August casino bombing in Monterrey that left 52 people dead.
Some 45,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since December 2006, when the government launched a massive military crackdown on powerful drug cartels, which are themselves locked in brutal combat.
The Zetas drug gang -- set up by ex-army officers turned hitmen in the 1990s -- are blamed for spreading extortion, kidnappings and murders, particularly around the Gulf of Mexico, as well as corruptly influencing politicians.

 

[trichrider]

...
Further details of the operation will be released at a press conference at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration field office in Phoenix on Monday. The raids were overseen by the DEA, Arizona state officials, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The official said the operation will shed light on elaborate drug smuggling into the United States and said the contraband confiscated in the raids was "jaw-dropping."

Officials captured some of the key players in the smuggling operation, the source said, adding that the suspects will be prosecuted at the state level.



http://news.yahoo.com/officials-arrest-70-major-arizona-drug-bust-001609052.html

wait, what?
a bust this size, with international implications, conducted by DEA, ICE, and Arizona officials, and it will be prosecuted at state level...no wonder they can't win this war.
imma gonna go clean myself now.

 

[TripleDraw27]

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/11/23/alleged-zetas-members-attack-undercover-operation-in-houston/

Los Zetas conducts attack on FBI operation.

Its all bad shit, but I did a real face palm to this quote for some reason..

"If it was a straight assassination, there were points in this controlled delivery where he would have just been a sitting duck," a law-enforcement source speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Chronicle. "Pretty brazen to kill a man over 300 pounds of grass.”

Like...shooting a mans dog in full body armor for a green plant right? It is brazzen and awful what they did. But it feels like he is saying like..."eh its just weed, why so crazy". I dont know, then they LEO, go and crush families trying to do good and make a living, etc.



This one is cute..

"We are not going to tolerate these types of thugs out there using their weapons like the Wild, Wild West,"

You sure they didnt buy those off you guys? nvm

 

[LiLWaynE]

Cartels use legitimate trade to launder money, U.S., Mexico say

Cartels use legitimate trade to launder money, U.S., Mexico say

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/19/world/la-fg-mexico-money-laundering-trade-20111219

this is a good 1! useful information right hurr

Fruit, fabric and toys are purchased and then exported south, generating paperwork that gives drug money the appearance of lawful proceeds from a transaction, authorities say.

December 19, 2011|By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Mexico City — It's fast becoming the money-laundering method of choice for Mexican drug traffickers, U.S. and Mexican officials say, and it involves truckloads not of cash, but of fruit and fabric.

Faced with new restrictions on the use of U.S. cash in Mexico, drug cartels are using an ingenious scheme to move their ill-gotten dollars south under the guise of legitimate cross-border commerce.

U.S. and Mexican authorities say trade-based money-laundering may be the most clever — and hardest to detect — way in which traffickers are washing and distributing their billion-dollar profits.

FULL COVERAGE: Mexico's drug war

"It's such a great scheme," said an undercover agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agency. "You could hide dirty money in so much legitimate business, and they do. You can audit their books all day long and all you see is goods being imported and exported."

Here's one way it works: Instead of smuggling the money the old-fashioned way, by simply carrying it south in bags and trucks, teams of money launderers working for cartels use dollars to purchase a commodity, and then export the commodity to Mexico or Colombia. Paperwork is generated that gives a patina of propriety. Drug money is given the appearance of legitimate proceeds from a trade transaction.

By turning their mountain of proceeds into tomatoes, say, or bolts of Chinese fabric shipped and resold in Mexico, cartels accomplish two goals at once: They transfer earnings back home to pay bills and buy new drug supplies while converting dollars to pesos in a transaction relatively easy to explain to authorities.

Long used by Colombian cartels, the scheme is becoming more popular with Mexican traffickers after new efforts here to combat laundering by restricting the use of dollars. Those restrictions, plus proposed limits on cash purchases of big-ticket items such as houses and boats, make it less attractive for traffickers to hold trunks full of U.S. cash.

After many years of using dollars to buy luxury items and pay their suppliers and dealers, cartel capos have suddenly found themselves in need of pesos. Trade-based money-laundering solves that problem.

"It's a better way to conceal proceeds," said Raymond Villanueva, head of an ICE unit that investigates international money-laundering. "It's not going to raise so many flags."

The pioneer in the trade-based technique in Mexico may have been Blanca Cazares, the alleged queen of money-laundering for the multibillion-dollar Sinaloa cartel. Los Angeles County prosecutors indicted her in 2008 on charges of heading a vast operation dedicated to "processing illicit proceeds" for the cartel; a onetime resident of Bell, she remains at large, presumably in Mexico.

Several years ago, U.S. federal investigators allege, Cazares started using the import of silk from Asia to hide and launder drug dollars and turn them into pesos. She'd import bolts and bolts of Asian fabric to the Los Angeles area, investigators say, then export it to Mexico.

Back in Mexico, Cazares would sell the cloth at high prices in pesos in her chain of Chika's boutiques in the drug heartland state of Sinaloa and seven other states, investigators say.

The U.S. government placed her (along with her husband and three adult children) on its "designated kingpin" list, meaning U.S. firms and individuals are barred from doing business with her and her companies.

Although Mexican cartels are only now beginning to regularly employ trade-based laundering, Colombian traffickers perfected the scheme long ago, authorities say.

"The Mexicans are progressing rapidly. They have a fairly robust interaction with the Colombians, so they learn from the Colombians," said a senior U.S. law enforcement official based in Mexico City. "You're going to see them [Mexican cartels] going more and more toward the product [trade-based laundering]. They have to."

Not only is the tactic effective, but it is also difficult to prosecute.

Last year, U.S. federal officials indicted Los Angeles-based Angel Toy Corp., a firm better known for churning out plush teddy bears and Easter bunnies, on money-laundering charges. The company's three top executives were arrested.

According to the indictment and ICE investigators who worked the case, men arrived over the years at the company's downtown workshop toting duffel bags full of cash — wads of $5, $10 and $20 bills that investigators said was money from cocaine sales.

The men would refer to the money as "papers" or "candy" or "tires," with no mention of toys, court documents say.

In the workshops, employees divided the cash into stacks of just under $10,000, the amount at which banks must report the deposit, according to the indictment. Some of the money was sent to Asia to purchase toys, and the toys were shipped to Bogota, Colombia, where they were sold for pesos, court documents say. The pesos in turn were handed over to a broker and eventually delivered to Colombian drug bosses, prosecutors and investigators alleged.

After a long surveillance operation involving undercover informants and bank security tapes, federal agents raided Angel Toy in 2009. Last year, the three company executives and a Colombian toy salesman were indicted in U.S. federal court on charges of "structuring," the practice of dividing and depositing money in sums less than $10,000. Money was deposited in Angel Toy accounts, sometimes several times a day, and clients also made direct deposits into the accounts, but always at less than $10,000 a pop, court documents say.

"The investigation tracked, during a four-year period, over $8 million in cash deposits — not a single one of which was over $10,000," prosecutors said in sentencing papers filed this month. "This egregious pattern of structuring is a hallmark of money-laundering."

Still, prosecutors have agreed to drop the money-laundering charge against Angel Toy as part of a plea bargain in which the four defendants pleaded guilty to structuring and agreed to pay $3 million in fines and forfeitures. Their attorneys say the government never established that the defendants were knowingly processing money for drug cartels.

In trade-based money-laundering operations, often a third country is added (Taiwan, allegedly, in the case of Angel Toy, and China for Cazares) to further obscure the source of the illicit cash.

The Mexico-based U.S. law enforcement official said investigators are seeing the traffickers and their launderers employ increasingly sophisticated tricks, such as overvaluing and undervaluing invoices and customs declarations.

In a recent operation, money launderers were exporting from the U.S. to Mexico polypropylene pellets that are used to make plastic, the official said. But the inflated value declared on the high-volume shipments eventually attracted suspicion of U.S. bank investigators, who shut down the export operation by discontinuing letters of credit that the suspected launderers were using. Bank investigators estimate that the operation was hiding $1 million every three weeks, according to the official.

"You generate all this paperwork on both sides of the border showing that the product you're importing has this much value on it, when in reality you paid less for it," the official said.

"Now you've got paper earnings of a million dollars," the official said. "You didn't really earn that, but it gives you a piece of paper to take to [Mexican financial authorities] to say: 'This million dollars in my bank account — it's legitimate. It came from this here, see?'"

Trade-based laundering takes advantages of blind spots in international commerce. And the huge, and growing, volume of legitimate trade between Mexico and the U.S. — now nearly $400 billion a year — makes it extraordinarily hard to detect.

"You're trying to catch tens or hundreds of millions of dollars within that," said Shannon O'Neil, an expert on Mexico at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations. "It's quite difficult to sort out the good trade from this bad trade."

Mexican authorities have been slow to act on trade-based money-laundering schemes in part because of their novelty and their opacity. An inspector also needs access to customs paperwork at both ends of the transaction. The United States has a customs-data-sharing agreement with seven countries, including Mexico, and U.S. agents have begun training Mexican inspectors.

As a result, a new interdepartmental team of Mexican investigators is focusing on four trade-based money-laundering cases as part of a confidential pilot program, involved officials told The Times.

The growing shift of Mexican traffickers to trade-based laundering illustrates the fact that cartel bosses, among the world's most expert transnational entrepreneurs, are ever at work developing new systems that will maximize their profits while thwarting the legion of federal agents deployed against them on both sides of the border.

"Can you imagine all the [money-laundering] avenues they're going to have with trade?" said Villanueva, the ICE officer. "They have an industry there that gives the ability to conceal that money and separate it from the illegal activity.... Millions and millions and millions of dollars, and containers, that move around the world on a daily basis."

wilkinson@latimes.com

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

Wilkinson reported from Mexico and Washington. Times staff writer Paloma Esquivel in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

 

[ion]

us.gov+cartels+mexican't gov+$$untracable cabbage$$= BUSINESS AS USUAL

lotta people here spouting stuff they've read from yahoo news, there aint no mexican govt other than the cartels because the cartels is the gov...

i think the relationship between us.gov and the cartels will come to light sooner rather later.....and i bet it will be a lot more interesting then than what it is now....


just sayin, ya know.....

 

[ion]

great vid link LiLWaynE

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

... Still, prosecutors have agreed to drop the money-laundering charge against Angel Toy as part of a plea bargain in which the four defendants pleaded guilty to structuring and agreed to pay $3 million in fines and forfeitures. Their attorneys say the government never established that the defendants were knowingly processing money for drug cartels.

Getting all sophisticated ain't shit when they forget the basics.