U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announces the indictment of alleged Mexican drug dealers during a news conference at the Justice Department. Among those charged were reputed leaders of the Sinaloa drug cartel and the rival Juarez cartel from northern Mexico. (Shawn Thew / EPA / August 20)

Top Mexican drug dealers among dozens indicted in U.S., officials say
Federal agencies file charges against 43 suspects accused of bringing many tons of narcotics into the U.S.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
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http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
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"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major studio movie music score and spectacular cinematography..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drug-cartels21-2009aug21,0,7531041,print.story


latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drug-cartels21-2009aug21,0,3757559.story
latimes.com
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Top Mexican drug dealers among dozens indicted in U.S., officials say
Federal agencies file charges against 43 suspects accused of bringing many tons of narcotics into the U.S.
By Kristina Sherry
August 21, 2009
Reporting from Washington

Federal authorities announced Thursday a dozen indictments against some of Mexico's most powerful organized crime groups for allegedly exporting tons of narcotics into the United States and distributing them to cities across the country.

Among those charged in the indictments were three reputed leaders of the Sinaloa drug cartel and the alleged head of the rival Juarez cartel from northern Mexico.

The cases, handled by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, involved long-running investigations that spanned several countries. One probe started with a street-level heroin bust in Chicago and led to the highest reaches of the Sinaloa cartel; another followed the drug supply chain from a Colombian paramilitary group to the streets of New York City, according to DEA spokesman Mike Sanders.

The charges were filed against 43 individuals in 12 separate indictments in U.S. federal court in Brooklyn and Chicago.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. praised the "bilateral cooperation" between Mexico and the United States throughout the investigations.

Some of the suspects, including the reputed head of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, have been indicted previously and remain at large. Holder said the new indictments were not a futile exercise and declared his intention to bring the defendants to justice in the United States.

"These are not symbolic acts that we are taking today," Holder said at the Justice Department, appearing with two U.S. attorneys and ICE and DEA officials.

Holder also acknowledged that criminal conduct had not taken place solely in Mexico, noting the indictment of individuals who had received shipments in Chicago.

"The audacity of these cartels' operations is met only by their sophistication and their reach," Holder said.

Three of the most powerful suspected leaders were charged in both Brooklyn and Chicago: Guzmán, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García and Arturo Beltran Leyva, who allegedly have ties to the Sinaloa cartel. Once allied in a partnership that federal officials dub "The Federation," Beltran Leyva and Guzmán have been embroiled in a violent feud over trafficking routes since 2008.

Together, the four Brooklyn and eight Chicago indictments, which were unsealed Wednesday and Thursday, charge that the three men were responsible for importing and distributing heroin and more than 200 metric tons of cocaine between 1990 and 2008. More than 32,500 kilograms of cocaine have been seized, including about 3,000 kilograms seized during the Chicago investigation and about 7,500 kilograms from the New York investigation.

The DEA estimates that about 90% of the cocaine that enters the United States comes from Mexico.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois, said the indictments were "among the most significant drug conspiracy charges ever returned in Chicago."

Fitzgerald noted that the defendants allegedly used "practically every means of transportation imaginable to move these large amounts of drugs and to funnel massive amounts of money back to Mexico."

The drugs were allegedly moved by car, truck, boat, ship, submarine and plane, including Boeing 747 cargo aircraft.

As part of their operation, the three alleged Sinaloa leaders are believed to have smuggled more than $5.8 billion in cash proceeds from the United States and Canada back to Mexico. The indictments seek forfeiture of these proceeds.

"We've learned we must not only go after the leaders, but their money," Holder said. "If we suffocate their funding sources, we can cripple their operations."

Authorities also indicted Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the reputed head of the Juarez cartel, who allegedly received multi-ton shipments of cocaine from Colombia's Norte Valle cartel and the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia paramilitary group. Carrillo Fuentes, who has also been previously indicted, remains a fugitive.

The indictments increase pressure on the accused traffickers at a time when they are locked in battle with Mexican security forces across that country, and as the Mexican government increases extradition of suspects to the United States. But most of the alleged kingpins named in the indictments have eluded capture for years and are already figures on Mexico's "most wanted" list, with authorities offering rewards of up to $2 million for their capture.

The indictments also add to the growing list of drug traffickers apprehended or wanted by the U.S. government.

Earlier this year, federal authorities arrested more than 750 people in the United States and Mexico who they suspected were affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel.

And 15 defendants were charged in previous indictments -- 10 in Chicago and five in New York -- including alleged customers, carriers and distributors for the cartels.

In all, 58 individuals have been charged in the investigations coordinated between the U.S. attorneys' offices in Brooklyn and Chicago. All but one of the defendants face life sentences if convicted.

ksherry@tribune.com

Times staff writers Richard Marosi in San Diego and Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

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Mexico traffickers bribed former anti-drug chief, officials say
Noe Ramirez Mandujano, a prosecutor who resigned as head of the SIEDO organized crime unit in July, is arrested on suspicion of passing intelligence to Sinaloa drug gangsters.

Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ...."
http://www.warriorthemovie.com
http://www.warriorthemovie.blogspot.com
http://imdb.com/title/tt0320751

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-208917617001990565&q=warrior+mexican+OR+drug+OR+cartels+duration%3Ashort+genre%3AMOVIE_TRAILER

"the action adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" ... about the son of a divine force ... is a story of a young man's quest to find his true identity set against the twin backdrops of Native American folklore and the treacherous Mexican drug trade and a portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil" ... filmed in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul in the State of Nayarit and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico .. with action, adventure, romance, comedy, a multi-ethnic cast, a major movie studio music score and spectacular cinematography ..."


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bribe22-2008nov22,0,3179183.story
From the Los Angeles Times

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Mexico traffickers bribed former anti-drug chief, officials say
Noe Ramirez Mandujano, a prosecutor who resigned as head of the SIEDO organized crime unit in July, is arrested on suspicion of passing intelligence to Sinaloa drug gangsters.

By Ken Ellingwood

November 22, 2008

Reporting from Mexico City — In a spiraling probe of corruption at the top levels of Mexican law enforcement, authorities said Friday that the nation's former anti-drug chief had accepted $450,000 to tip off traffickers.

Noe Ramirez Mandujano, a veteran federal prosecutor who headed an elite organized crime unit known by its initials in Spanish, SIEDO, was arrested on suspicion of passing intelligence to drug gangsters based in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, Mexican Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora said.

Ramirez, 47, who served for 20 months before quitting in July, is the highest-ranking official arrested as part of the government's investigation of drug traffickers' infiltration of police agencies.

The charges against him are the most serious against a Mexican anti-narcotics official since the country's former drug czar was arrested in 1997 on charges of helping a Ciudad Juarez-based cartel.

Six other officials and agents from SIEDO, a division of the attorney general's office that investigates drug smuggling, arms trafficking and other criminal activities, already face charges of leaking intelligence to the Sinaloa group.

Medina Mora said a protected informant told authorities he had paid Ramirez a total of $450,000 as part of a monthly payoff scheme, "in exchange for providing information about investigations and ongoing actions" against the Sinaloa-based smugglers.

The attorney general said that Ramirez voluntarily appeared before prosecutors to answer the accusations and that there was sufficient cause to detain him.

Medina Mora did not specify what information Ramirez is suspected of passing to the gang. He said information was given to two Sinaloa factions: the Beltran Leyva brothers and Zambada brothers.

The charges, if true, represent a major setback for President Felipe Calderon's war on Mexican drug cartels, which has been a centerpiece of his 2-year-old administration. Mexico is awash in drug violence, with more than 4,000 dead this year, according to unofficial counts by the nation's news media.

The allegations put a new dent in the reputation of SIEDO, which U.S. officials had considered trustworthy.

Further evidence of high-level cartel infiltration could leave U.S. agents more wary about sharing information with the agency.

Ramirez's arrest, coming as part of a probe called Operation Cleanup, also will probably further undermine public confidence. Mexicans are increasingly weary of the killing and long ago became accustomed to corruption charges against top police officials.

The offensive, which has sent 45,000 federal troops and 5,000 federal police officers into the streets, has yielded arrests of several high-profile trafficking figures and big seizures of drugs, cash and weapons. But the offensive has yet to crush any of the major drug groups.

Moreover, Calderon administration officials in recent months have confronted an embarrassing string of arrests of ranking police officers and prosecutors assigned to the drug fight.

This week, authorities announced they had detained Mexico's liaison to Interpol as part of the inquiry on leaks to cartels. He was the third top-level federal police commander ordered held in recent weeks.

Calderon, who was traveling Friday in Chile, said he was determined to clean up his administration.

"The government of Mexico has a firm and determined commitment to fight against organized crime, and not only organized crime, but against the corruption that organized crime generates," he said.

The first SIEDO arrests came in early August, just after Ramirez left the agency's top post in a shake-up over unsatisfactory results against kidnapping and drug trafficking. Officials said at the time that his resignation was not tied to the emerging investigation inside the organized crime unit.

Ramirez was then assigned as Mexico's representative to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, based in Vienna.

Last month, Medina Mora announced that as part of the infiltration probe, 35 officials and agents assigned to SIEDO had been arrested or fired. Among those arrested were a senior intelligence officer and the agency's general technical coordinator.

Ellingwood is a Times staff writer.

ken.ellingwood@latimes.com

LATIMES.COM /SIEGE

Previous coverage of Mexico's drug war is available online.

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