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Sunday, March 13, 2011

PATH OF DESTRUCTION | RISE OF THE ZETAS

dallasnews.com

The Dallas Morning News

Court documents expose Dallas ties

Continued from Page 19A

ing up ransom kidnappings for cash and stealing more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexican pipelines, authorities say. While the group is highly organized, Stamm cautions against thinking of the organization as a traditional business with a set payroll and logistics costs. A drug trafficking organization can promise payment to a transporter and just not pay. And if he complains, they kill him, he said. Slaughtering rivals or outof-line employees and their relatives is the norm. A former assassin told the Brownsville Herald last month that he killed 32 people for the Zetas. To fortify himself before a hit which often ended with cutting up the body and scattering its pieces he and his cohorts would drink whiskey or snort cocaine.

Southward expansion
As the Zetas have battled the Gulf cartel for dominance of the region bordering South Texas, they have expanded their reach into Central and South America. The U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, an arm of the State Department, concluded in a March 2010 report that entire regions of Guatemala are now essentially under the control of drug-trafficking organizations, the most visible of which is the Mexican group known as the Zetas. In Colombia, where the U.S.-backed government has succeeded in smashing that countrys most notorious cartels, the Zetas have stepped in to deal directly with coca growers, U.S. and Colombian offi-

cials say. The Mexican group also uses Venezuela as a springboard to move the product northward, using fast boats to Panama and small planes to Honduras and Guatemala, the officials say. It is difficult to know the extent of the Zetas presence in North Texas, but there are signs that it is substantial. The organizations reputed No. 2 leader, Miguel Trevio Morales, grew up in the area and was arrested in Dallas when he was a teenager before he began his cartel career. He still has family here, authorities say. He is under federal indictment in the Eastern District of New York and Washington, D.C. The State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. In 2009, the U.S. Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control named Morales a Specially Designated Narcotics Trafficker through the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, making him one of the worlds most wanted narcotraffickers. The designation freezes any assets he has in this country and imposes more than a $1 million fine on anyone doing business with him. He was the chief target in a massive law enforcement sweep in North Texas and throughout the U.S. and Latin America late last month following the death of ICE agent Zapata. Another man alleged to be a member of the Zetas actually attended Dallas-area public schools, law enforcement officials say. The man, Sigifredo Njera Talamantes, was arrested in 2009 in northern Mexico and accused of a 2008 gun and gre-

Texas game warden Jake Mort, armed with an M-16, rides aboard a Texas Parks and Wildlife boat as a U.S. Coast Guard boat passes on Falcn Lake, which straddles the Mexican border in Zapata, Texas.

File 2010/The Associated Press

nade attack against the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, two hours south of Laredo.

You cant get out

Clues about the groups local activities come from federal criminal cases involving Zetas cell leaders as well as lower-level drug and gun smugglers. In 2009, for example, the FBI and other law enforcement agents busted a cocaine ring in a case that was linked to the Zetas, who kidnapped a Farmers Branch man with a trucking firm who had worked with them, according to court records. Gabriel Mendoza Sr., 60, the owner of Gabriels Trucking, pleaded guilty in February 2010 to conspiracy to distribute drugs and to commit money laundering. His son, Gabriel Mendoza Jr., 40, admitted he conspired to distribute cocaine from Mexico. According to the court record, Mendoza Sr. was kidnapped in early 2009 in a Mexican border town by the Zetas, described as a paramilitary organization that enforces the

drug taxes. Mendoza agreed to do further work for the Zetas, moving money south. The court record describes how drugs were smuggled north from Mexico and how hundreds of thousands of dollars were moved south in a truck registered to the senior Mendoza. A transcript of a deposition also said the company recruited truck drivers to transport cocaine and methamphetamine. attorney Prosecuting Heather Rattan said Mendoza testified that when you start working for them, you cant get out because basically they own you. In February, a Fort Worth gun dealer called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to report that suspicious men had paid cash for 27 military-style rifles. Agents arrested two of the men, Jayson Beltram and Eliseo Valverde Jr. According to court documents, they told agents that they got $20,000 from a Zetas contact in Grand Prairie to buy the weapons to be smuggled to Mexico. No trial date has been set for either man.

Money laundering
In interviews with two reporters, a person with knowledge of the Zetas described in general terms the groups North Texas operations, including money laundering in businesses such as restaurants, car lots and meat markets. The source also said there were warehouses from which loads of drugs were trucked to places including Kansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Atlanta and Chicago. The source said scores of Texans were employed to high-powered transport weapons and bags of cash back into Mexico in hidden compartments of their vehicles. Another person with knowledge of the Zetas recounted a case in which so many bundles of cash were stuffed into the gas tank of a vehicle that the driver had to stop every 50 miles to refuel. That source, interviewed in Ciudad Alemn, Mexico, said the vehicle was driven by an American retiree eager to earn extra cash on his monthly trek to a Mexican pharma-

cy to buy his blood-thinning prescription and to visit a dentist. The source said dozens of people traveled the same route weekly. While fear of spillover violence is usually focused on border cities, El Paso, Laredo, McAllen, Tucson and San Diego actually rank among the safest cities in the U.S. Federal authorities are more concerned about violence in key distribution points such as Dallas, Houston and Atlanta. Bruce Bagley, a political science professor at the University of Miami, estimates that dozens of recent killings in cities around the U.S. are tied to cartels. White powder, dope, heroin doesnt just magically appear in the streets of Dallas, New York or Miami, he said. You need a network, and there are consequences, like people killing each other on both sides of the border.
acorchado@dallasnews.com; jtrahan@dallasnews.com; dsolis@dallasnews.com

A20 M 03-13-2011 Set: 21:57:18 Sent by: alozoya@dallasnews.com News

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