For the next several hours we discussed price structures, quality of product, and international distribution routes while the Atlantic Ocean sparkled in the distance. I chose to remain in the background, listening but not saying a word, motioning to Patricio when I needed him to clarify a point. It was my way of mind-fucking Gutierrez by letting him know that I was too important to crawl into the weeds with him on a first meet. El Viejo has cojones. Tell that to fucking Chapo. He didn’t even bother to get dressed.
Almost four hours later, we had worked out the basic framework for a Mexican-European drug deal. As I usually did after an intense undercover meeting where every gesture, word, and facial expression was being noticed and measured by the bad guys, I stretched out on the floor and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
The chess match had begun in earnest. In reality, the rhythm of the case was more like a roller coaster with dramatic ups and downs. Now we waited weeks while Gutierrez-Guzman returned to the mountains of Sinaloa and reported to his leader. That report appeared to have been received favorably, because Gus Vargas received word in April that El Chapo wanted to meet him in person. We in Boston and DC breathed a collective sigh of relief.
On April 20, 2010, Gus Vargas flew with Rivera-Pedrego and Gutierrez-Guzman to a private airstrip in the mountains near Culiacán, Mexico. Tucked between the Pacific Ocean and the Sierra Madre mountains, Mexico’s tomato-growing capital was also home to its most infamous narcotrafficker. The drug business was so ingrained in the soul of the region that local souvenir shops sold marijuana leaf belts, and machine gun buckles. Local musicians sang tributes to drug dealers known as narcocorridos.
One of the most popular ones, penned by Los Reyes de Sinaloa after Chapo’s escape from prison went:
He’s already gone to the sierra
He’s going to visit his people to tie one on.
He got tired of being locked up
And so he went back to his homeland.
In the prison of Altiplano there is mourning
In Culiacán, it’s a fiesta!
The patron saint of the area, worshipped by many drug traffickers, was known as Jesús Malverde—a local man who lived from 1870 to 1909 and was known as a bandit who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Similarly, El Chapo won the loyalty of many poor people and farmers in the region by employing them, buying their products, and building schools and hospitals.
Vargas had some cojones, too. And, after the plane landed in Culiacán, Rivera-Pedrego, Guiterrez-Guzman, and Vargas were escorted by armed guards through military checkpoints to a heavily guarded compound high up in the mountains. El Chapo welcomed them in something Vargas described as a hut. No, he wasn’t wearing a purple bathrobe, but was casually dressed.
Vargas reported that the drug kingpin took an active role in the discussions that followed and expressed a keen interest in working with the Italians. Despite his reputation for flooding the world with illegal drugs and ordering hundreds of murders, part of him remained a humble, rural farm boy. But he wasn’t shy about bragging to Vargas at one point: I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana than anyone in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks, and boats.
El Chapo proposed that his cartel ship an initial load of a thousand kilograms of cocaine to Europe. His group and ours would participate as fifty-fifty partners splitting all profits and expenses. The cartel would be responsible for expenses and security prior to the shipment arriving in Europe, and we would handle all costs and security once it landed. Should this initial exchange work out, he expressed interest in flying twenty tons of coke from Bolivia to Europe. Incredibly, the world’s biggest dope dealer was negotiating directly with the FBI.
On June 10, 2010, Gutierrez-Guzman called Vargas in Boston to arrange another meeting between the cartel and Italians in the Virgin Islands. At one point during the phone conversation Gutierrez-Guzman said, “I’m going to give you to my cousin.”
Vargas recognized El Chapo’s voice on the other end of the line. Chapo said, “Say hello to your boss over there. Say hello to El Viejo.”
A frantic week of preparation later, ten of us on the UC team traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Since we had to look the part of a successful Italian crime syndicate, we rented a multimillion-dollar mansion on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It felt like we were preparing for our equivalent of the Super Bowl and World Series wrapped into one.
Manuel Gutierrez-Guzman arrived accompanied by a younger man named Rodolfo Alarcon Mendoza, who claimed to be El Chapo’s personal representative—which we interpreted as another positive sign.
Over the next two days, June 18 and 19, we discussed amounts of cocaine to be exported, the intricacies of international transportation routes and methods, port locations, and emergency contingencies. As members of the Italian organization we agreed to a price of $2,800 per kilogram of cocaine—unheard of in the United States, where prices ranged from $20,000 to $25,000 a kilogram, but not unusual when buying in bulk from a Mexican cartel.
During the meetings, Mendoza was constantly on his BlackBerry, texting back to Mexico. At one point, his phone rang, and El Chapo was on the other end asking to speak with someone from our organization.
Both Antonio and Patricio took turns speaking to him. El Chapo assured them that the relationship between his organization and ours would be long and productive. He also said, “Make sure El Viejo is satisfied with our arrangement.” He didn’t need to worry.
Toward the close of the second day of meetings, I stood drinking from a bottle of water as I conversed with Gutierrez-Guzman and Mendoza, my old friend Mike Sullivan stood silently as one of my bodyguards. When I finished the bottle, I tossed it on the floor near Sullivan’s feet. He stiffened for a microsecond. Had I dropped the bottle at his feet in our real-life roles back at the office, he would have thrown it back at my face. As El Viejo’s bodyguard, he stooped to retrieve it.
This was Mendoza’s first meeting with us, and he appeared extremely nervous, especially in my presence. Sitting in a warm room with members of what he thought was a major European crime syndicate, he started sweating through his shirt. Whenever I made eye contact with him, the young man would immediately look down at his smartphone and pretend to be tapping out a message, while beads of sweat flew off him and splattered onto the floor and table.
Gonzo glanced at me looking at Mendoza at one point and began mimicking his frantic finger tapping his phone. Seeing the grin on Gonzo’s face, I almost burst out laughing.
A little humor always helped us relax. It also could cause us to lose focus. This was a complex international case with lots of moving parts. One minor slipup and we could all end up with bullets in our heads.
Two months later, in August 2010, we were introduced to two more members of the Sinaloa Cartel, Rafael Celaya Valenzuela and Sergio Lopez Alarcon, when we met them at the oceanfront Florida condo. Good, we thought, the more top cartel guys we smoke out the better.
Celaya represented himself as an attorney and financial planner, and Alarcon as an accountant. They arrived with Manuel Gutierrez-Guzman and Rodolfo Alarcon Mendoza to discuss the financial details of the drug deal. All of them were bright, educated, polite, and well dressed. It was like dealing with the executive board of a major corporation.
On our side, we brought in several more UCAs who were expert in the fiscal aspects of drug trafficking and money laundering. The Mexicans were so impressed with our financial expertise and internal discipline that at one point Celaya pulled Patricio and me aside and asked if we would consider laundering some of the cartel’s money.
“How much are you thinking about?” Patricio asked, with the video and audio recorders running.
“A little bit to start,” he answered.
“How much is a little?” I asked.
“Five hundred million dollars.”
Seriously? The amount was staggering and underlined the difficulty the cartel had in transforming their enormous drug p
rofits into legitimate assets. After careful consideration, the FBI decided not to pursue the money-laundering opportunities for a number of reasons, including the legal and logistical difficulties we would run into.
I told the cartel’s lawyer we would consider helping them clean their money later, but our first priority was establishing the Mexican-European cocaine link.
Celaya was correct about one thing—our discipline. Every member of the team had been coached to keep up their specific cover and assignment and “stay in their lane.” We structured meetings in a way that the cartel could clearly see the chain of command of our fictitious organization. At one point, Gutierrez-Guzman admitted that our organization was even more disciplined than Chapo’s. Quite a compliment, coming from El Chapo’s cousin and right-hand man.
As El Viejo, my job was to project power, so I left the day-to-day negotiating to the other three UCAs, who with their exceptional undercover skills set the table for El Viejo’s carefully timed meetings with cartel representatives at key times.
Aside from the arduous preparation and staging we had to complete for the various meetings, and the stress of the meetings themselves, there was also a ton of FBI reports and paperwork that had to be filed. By the end of 2010 all the hard work everyone on the excellent Dark Waters team put in seemed to be paying off. We were in the process of setting up a major international drug deal with the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel. All we needed now were patience and good luck.
17
THE SINALOA CARTEL—PART TWO
In early 2011, two years into Operation Dark Water, we started to work with the Spanish National Police (SNP) to set up the European side of deal. The SNP controlled an airstrip outside of Madrid. In March, our team traveled to Madrid and I took Manuel Gutierrez-Guzman out to inspect the strip. On a cold, gusty morning, the two of us were greeted by SNP officials in dress uniforms standing at attention. I’d never seen so many shiny brass buttons and fancy police hats in my life. The scene created the impression that the SNP was in El Viejo’s pocket.
I, as El Viejo, told Gutierrez-Guzman that if El Chapo ever got to a point where he had to flee Mexico, he could land at the private airstrip in Spain and my Sicilian organization would protect him. We called this “the Escape Hatch plan,” and later learned that it was something El Chapo seriously considered.
The visit to the airport with Gutierrez-Guzman was a perfect prelude to subsequent meetings in Spain with more representatives from the Sinaloa Cartel. The previous five cartel associates were now joined by Jose Benjamin Locheo del Rio and Samuel Zazueta Valenzuela. Locheo del Rio identified himself as the cartel official responsible for daily operational decisions and the initial shipment of a thousand kilograms of cocaine from South America to Europe. Zazueta Valenzuela was in Spain to set up a front company for the cartel.
Like in almost all previous drug cases I had worked, we weren’t going to be provided with millions of U.S. tax-payer dollars to buy drugs. So we got the Sinaloa Cartel to agree that we would handle the sale and distribution of the drugs once it arrived in Europe. In return, we would receive 20 percent of the load. Negotiations dragged on longer than usual because Gutierrez-Guzman was having trouble making telephone contact with El Chapo in Mexico.
As the meetings wrapped up a week later, I handed Gutierrez-Guzman a 100-euro bill with a personal greeting on it from me to Chapo. I explained that this was part of an old Italian crime tradition. Upon receiving it, El Chapo was supposed to tear the bill in half, retain the half with my note and send back the other half with a personal message from him to me. My message said:
Señor, we finally meet this way. Sorry the call did not happen … no problem … Manuel will serve as the telephone between us. I look forward to a long and prosperous business relationship. You are welcome to be my guest in Europe if ever needed.
A month later, April 21, 2011, during a follow-up session in New Hampshire, Gutierrez-Guzman returned half of the 100-euro note with Chapo’s handwritten message on it. It read:
My friend, thank you for the support you are offering me, to receive me, and I am not discounting the invitation. Through my cousin I send you a message. So when he makes a decision, he will go with you. My friend, a big embrace.
* * *
As I read it, Gutierrez-Guzman stood and wrapped me in a bear hug. The gesture was captured on videotape and confirmed the partnership between us two heavyweight drug honchos.
Gutierrez-Guzman then informed us that the cartel intended to ship a thousand kilograms of coke in a container from Ecuador to Spain as an initial load. After that, we would start receiving a thousand kilograms of dope a month. As members of the FBI, we only needed one major drug seizure to complete our large-scale UCO.
We patiently waited throughout the summer of 2011 for the first shipment to arrive. The unexpected delay had to do with large seizures of Chapo’s drugs that took place in South America. Although the cartel never suspected that we were involved, they went dark.
Finally, in early August 2011, Gutierrez-Guzman and Celaya Valenzuela arrived in Boston to tell us that a ship with a container holding a thousand kilograms of cocaine had departed from Ecuador on August 1 and was scheduled to arrive in Spain on or around August 19. Our collective mood went from bummed to ecstatic. A day later, after a flurry of phone calls back and forth to Mexico, the two cartel members said the container didn’t contain cocaine, but was designed as a test load to determine if it would arrive safely through Spanish Customs without being interdicted. Though disappointed, I recognized that they were being cautious, professional drug traffickers, and we needed to be patient so as not to tip our hand.
Two more test loads followed. One contained plantains and another held pineapples. The logistics involved in having our Agents track them from South America to Spain was a nightmare. All of us were frustrated. We had collected enough evidence to charge five cartel members (including Chapo) with conspiracy, but without having seized actual illegal drugs it would be known in legal terms as a dry conspiracy. And we didn’t want to go up in court against an organization as powerful as the Sinaloa Cartel without real drugs.
At the close of 2011, the FBI had invested an enormous amount of time and money in Dark Water, and FBIHQ was growing increasingly impatient. While our ASAC Frank Johnson in Boston remained confident we would succeed and continued running interference with the pencil pushers in DC, I knew the clock was ticking not only in DC, but with our cartel partners in Mexico.
So in the early days 2012, after long and careful consideration, I called Case Agent Tanner into my office and told him gently that we had to inform Chapo’s people that the Italians were walking away.
“What?” he asked in shock.
“El Viejo and his boys are moving off in another direction due to the delays and test loads,” I said.
He looked so upset, I thought he was about to pass out. “Why?” he asked.
“I’ve been doing UCOs my whole career,” I explained. “After awhile you start to think like the bad guys. I can tell you bad guys like the Italians would never tolerate delays and false promises like this. The only people who would hang around waiting for something to happen are cops.”
Tanner was devastated. He’d worked his butt off for three years, and now I was telling him we had to walk away without ever getting any dope. I explained to him that this was a move we had to make, and to my mind, a calculated gamble that had an 80 percent chance of succeeding.
“That high?” he asked.
“I think so. We have to let ’em know that we’re not screwing around.”
Sometime in late April 2012, our informant Gus Vargas conveyed the message to Gutierrez-Guzman: The Italians are looking for other sources of supply, and they’re pissed off that they’ve expended more than $70,000 paying off corrupt Customs officials and law enforcement personnel in Spain for letting the test loads in, and never receiving dope or any kind of compensation from the cartel.
After that we (the Italians) cut
off communications. Vargas remained the only bridge between the two sides. Some members of our team feared we’d never hear from Sinaloa again. I disagreed, and hoped to hell I was right.
A long month later, Gutierrez-Guzman called Vargas to request a meeting with us in Phoenix, Arizona. Gus Vargas and another UCA went, but we decided that El Viejo and the other Italians should decline the offer. Vargas extended my (El Viejo’s) good wishes to the Mexicans in their future endeavors, and told Gutierrez-Guzman that I had moved on.
Tanner remained upset. I told him to sit back and wait like a good fisherman to see if the bait worked. He looked at me like I had lost my mind.
Less than a month later, Gutierrez-Guzman informed us that if we could travel to Detroit in twenty-four hours, a cartel associate would front us some heroin and methamphetamine to cover some of the expenses we had incurred in Spain. It appeared as though our gamble had worked. No one was more relieved than me.
As El Viejo was believed to be in Europe, two new UCAs from New York answered the call. At my request, they dropped what they were doing and grabbed flights to Detroit. Boston team members Mike Sullivan, Stork, Tanner, and I joined them in Detroit after taking an overnight flight.
On June 7, sleep deprived but charged with adrenaline, the two NY UCAs drove to a ramshackle restaurant in southwest Detroit that looked like it had been plucked out of the dusty Mexican countryside. As they entered, all eyes in the joint shifted to them. They were both big, heavily muscled, and had “don’t fuck with me” written all over them. A short Hispanic man, half their size, bounded out of the kitchen, walked up to within inches of them, and snapped their picture with his cell phone.
Then without saying a word he motioned them to the rear of the restaurant. The two burly New York UCAs followed the little man through the kitchen and out the back. Parked in an alley behind the restaurant was an old red Honda. The Mexican simply pointed through the open passenger window to something on the floorboard.
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