Bad Luck Killed ‘El Z40’: An Unfortunate Turn and a Checkpoint Without a Bribe

Since 2013, Treviño Morales, former leader of Los Zetas, requested his extradition to the United States, a destination most drug lords avoid. Why did he do it?

The most feared man in Mexico is angry. It is 11:45 p.m. and he receives unwanted visitors: two agents from the public prosecutor’s office in Coahuila knock on the door and he reluctantly lets them in. He has no choice. If they were in Tamaulipas, he would run them off with gunfire for bothering him so close to midnight, but Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, better known as El Z40, is in Mexico City, where his power diminishes with each passing hour.

“Who are you?” the leader of Los Zetas, the ringleader between 2007 and 2013 of the group that militarized organized crime, asks annoyed. Agents Angel and Juan take a seat in an office on the second floor of Building 73 on Paseo de la Reforma, the headquarters of the Deputy Attorney General’s Office for Specialized Investigations in Organized Crime. It is July 17, 2013 and Treviño Morales has been in custody for just 48 hours. His bad temper has been transforming into a gloomy mood.

Two days earlier, on Monday morning, the 15th, he made a seemingly trivial decision, but one that changed his life forever: facing a fork in a dirt road in the city of Nuevo Laredo, El Z40 chose the left path. If he had taken the opposite route, he and his bodyguards would still be free, but he decided to save five minutes on his way to his destination. The journey took him directly to a military checkpoint, where there were no soldiers on the Los Zetas payroll. He was detained.

The Mexican government presumed his arrest was the result of an operation designed based on information gathered with cutting-edge technology and criminal intelligence. But El Z40 simply called it bad luck. An unfortunate swerve.

“The reason for our presence is to take a statement from you regarding the disappearances in northern Coahuila,” said one of the agents, according to preliminary investigation 045/2012 of the then Attorney General’s Office. This agent is carrying a magazine, the cover of which reads “Allende Massacre” with a photograph of a devastated town.

The visitors want to talk about one of the most terrible massacres in Coahuila during the so-called “war on drugs.”

Z40 chooses the path all drug lords want to avoid.

In the spring of 2011, El Z40 and his brother Omar, El Z42, received information from high-ranking Mexican government officials about three DEA infiltrators in their criminal organization—founded as an armed wing of the Gulf Cartel that eventually emancipated itself. The traitors were Mario Alfonso Cuéllar, Héctor Moreno, and Luis La Güiche Garza, who lived in Allende, 40 minutes from the Texas border.

To punish them, El Z40 and El Z42 ordered their hitmen to occupy the town on March 18 and kill anyone they encountered, especially if they had the surname Garza—a common occurrence in Allende. For two days, Los Zetas raped, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and disappeared dozens of people, without the country even knowing that a town had become an extermination camp. The death toll remains uncertain, although it is commonly reported that 300 people died.

The mention of the massacre unsettles Z40, who is handcuffed and cuffed in that building in the Guerrero neighborhood, in downtown Mexico City. The criminal grunts and turns to his lawyer, Antonio Aguilar Domínguez, who tries to calm his growing fury with a calm tone of voice.

“You know what you have to say,” the lawyer advises, shaking his head. Then, Z40 repeats by heart a mantra he was taught just a few hours ago: “It is not my wish to testify, and I invoke Article 20 of the Constitution.”

The interview, it seems, is about to end before it even begins. Z40 mustn’t talk. He’s not in the mood for visitors either. And if the prosecutors insist on questioning him, the Los Zetas leader’s legal defense can argue that Treviño Morales was unduly pressured, after confirming that he won’t incriminate himself.

A resourceful lawyer can even transform that insistence into an accusation of psychological torture. So the agents prepare to leave the office, defeated… until Morales Treviño unexpectedly begins to speak, ignoring his lawyer’s advice. He’s not used to taking orders.

“You’re not just any idiots. You’re the only ones in the entire country who have come to talk to me. Only the marines have interrogated me, and you,” he says, and utters a phrase not often heard among Mexican criminals: “I can help you: I’m going to request my extradition to the United States.” The second floor of the Specialized Organized Crime Investigation Sub-Prosecutor’s Office falls silent. Z40 faces another fork in the road: stay in Mexico or go to the United States. Morales Treviño chooses the path all drug lords avoid. Why?

Choosing between death or a prison cell in the United States.

Fifteen years ago, journalist Julio Scherer interviewed Ismael El Mayo Zambada and the conversation exposed the greatest fear that feared criminals like him have: it is not to die, but to be imprisoned. A fear that has been expressed by other capos like Joaquin Guzman Loera, El Chapo, or Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, El Jefe de Jefes.

“I don’t know if I’d have the guts to kill myself. I’d like to think so, that I would,” Zambada said in 2010, when asked what would happen if he were arrested, not imagining that at 76 he would be imprisoned in New York, where he awaits trial on 17 charges, including money laundering, drug trafficking, and organized crime.

But it’s not the confinement that terrifies a drug trafficker, but the location of the cell, as the late Medellin Cartel leader Pablo Escobar said: “I prefer a tomb in Colombia to a dungeon in the United States”.

Because it’s not just about captivity on foreign soil. For a criminal leader, being transferred to the United States means being cut off from communication, because most don’t speak English; isolated by the lack of visits, because most loved ones have their visas revoked or denied; or living in anguish, because the family is unprotected from enemies and the Mexican government itself. Even worse: the power that took so long to amass is lost every day without freedom. An extradited drug lord is like a Barrett .50 rifle that quickly runs out of ammunition.

In Mexico there are no fees for these procedures, so lawyers apply the ‘legal principle’ that says ‘as is the toad, so is the stone’. These procedures are already charged in dollars. An amparo against extradition can start at 100 thousand dollars [about 2 million pesos] and from there it can go up to whatever the client wants and can afford.”

“And there are additional charges if successive injunctions are needed, proof of innocence must be provided, or even if the matter is taken to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation. Prices are adjusted there, but yes… we’re talking about millions,” says Gabriel Regino, one of Mexico’s most influential criminal lawyers and former Undersecretary of Public Security for the then Federal District.

Some squander a fortune in an instant, like Ovidio Guzmán, a member of Los Chapitos, whose hundreds of thousands of dollars barely “bought” him nine months in the maximum-security Altiplano prison in the State of Mexico, before he was unexpectedly extradited to Chicago, Illinois. Others manage their fortune over time and “acquire” up to 12 years outside a US prison, as happened with Adán Salazar. Zamorano, Don Adán, founder of Los Salazar, who was taken to Texas in 2023 after losing all his protections

From 2006 to date, more than 1,500 Mexican criminals have squandered their ill-gotten wealth only by delaying the inevitable: joining the extradited club.

“If what that person wants is to be in Mexico as long as possible, he can also pay a monthly ‘fee’ for promoting his resources. It will depend on the lawyer and the legal firm, but that payment every 30 days can easily start at 200,000 pesos,” says Regino.

An expense that seems worth it, except for one capo: El Z40, who on July 17, 2013 surprised Mexican authorities by admitting that he wants to be extradited to the United States as soon as possible.

Z40’s’ racehorses competed in prestigious events

“All of that is a myth,” says El Z40, pointing to the magazine. The clock is already passing midnight. “It’s not true that 50 families or 200 to 300 people have disappeared. Nor that 80 houses have been destroyed. In Allende, only three houses were destroyed. One more in Nava, Coahuila. The press made a big fuss, and that [the armed incursion into the town] was a huge scolding some bastards had grabbed from me.”

Treviño Morales raises his voice. In just a few minutes, he has gone, once again, from annoyed to enraged. Faced with his fury, the officers don’t even attempt to tell him about reports like “In Desolation,” published by El Colegio de México, which portrays a devastated town, or the report by Pro Publica journalist Ginger Thompson, which confirms that the victims number in the “hundreds, men, women, and children.”

“What I know is from the media itself, and if you’re going to be that way, we’d better leave it there. I no longer have anything to talk to you and your damn government, which has beaten me up and hasn’t let me get going, all because you’re looking for me,” he continues, furious, because no one believes his story.

Officers Ángel and Juan are, once again, very close to that point of no return: the silence of Z40. One poorly chosen word or a slightly raised tone of voice, and this 43-year-old half-man, half-beast will fall silent forever. If he doesn’t speak again, these public prosecutors won’t be the only ones left without answers: hundreds of families of missing persons will also have lost a great opportunity to have information that could lead them to finding their sons and daughters.

With a desperate move, they change the subject. “How’s it going with your horses?” Juan asks, knowing that Z40 loves horse racing as much as drug trafficking and killing people. Maybe he does want to talk about that, and the interview has a chance after all. Surprisingly, the distraction works. The leader of Los Zetas changes his tone of voice, and his stern expression relaxes.

“My best horses… Mr. Piloto won the All American Futurity, Tempting Dash won the Texas Classic Futurity, and Coronita Cartel is one of the best horses. I’ve produced some very good offspring from him and they’ve made me a lot of money… But that’s another beef I have with other bastards, because they’ve accused me of being dirty with the gringos.”

The anger returns. It seems impossible to interview him without falling into the pit of rage or revenge. The agents know this and decide not to broach the subject. “What do you know, Mr. Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, about Mario Alfonso Cuéllar, Héctor Moreno, and Luis La Güiche Garza?” they ask, astonished by the detainee’s violence.

“They are the real criminals, investigate them. I have them under control from Monclova to the north. There are no more kidnappings in those regions of the state, because I don’t allow them, even though there’s a lot of money in Monclova from the companies based there.”

“I don’t abduct, I don’t kidnap, I don’t kill, I don’t cook, and I don’t disappear people,” says the man accused of the exact opposite: kidnapping, murdering, and ordering the disappearance and dissolution of hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, during six years of a criminal leadership characterized by extermination.

The clock is ticking toward dawn. Fatigue rages in that office, but Z40 is ready for one last surprise. A final demonstration of power: to tell his plans to show that, even by revealing his remaining cards, he can win the game against the Mexican government. “I’m going to ask to be extradited to the United States, where I’m going to get a maximum of 20 years in prison and the years I’m going to be in jail I’m going to take as a rest. I’m already very tired of running away, after all I have nothing to worry about for my family. I have enough money to support them for at least three generations.”

“Yes, I’m going to ask for extradition to become a protected witness and that will help me.” End of conversation.

For 12 years they prevented ‘El Z40’ from spending more than two years in the same prison.

Time showed that Z40 lost the game. Contrary to what he said in Mexico City in 2013, Miguel Angel Treviño Morales followed the path of the other capos and opened his wallet to pay influential lawyers to prevent his extradition to the United States. For 12 years he delayed the unpostponable from seven federal prisons.

Due to his bloodthirsty personality, Z40 was rotated through the Federal Penitentiary Centers of Sonora, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Michoacan, Chiapas, State of Mexico and Nayarit. Preventing him from spending more than two years in the same prison was crucial to reduce his power and operational capacity inside and outside the cells.

In the early morning of February 27, 2025, while he was sleeping in the maximum security area of the federal prison in Tepic, the capital of Nayarit, he was awakened by the guards with a transfer order. Z40 probably thought he was going to his eighth stop in his journey through the Mexican prison system, but the drug lord received unexpected news: despite the appeals filed by another of his lawyers, Juan Manuel Delgado – also a defender of El Mayo – a plane was waiting to take him to Washington D.C.

The Mexican government, technically, wasn’t extraditing him, but rather “transferring” him to the White House city, arguing national security reasons along with 28 organized crime leaders, including his brother, El Z42. Not even a legal appeal filed before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, still pending resolution, prevented him from arriving that same afternoon in the U.S. capital where he will be tried for drug trafficking, money laundering and homicide.

His strategy of becoming a protected witness now seems unlikely. So do those 20 years in prison. Now that he is considered a terrorist, Z40 is facing a possible lethal injection to end his life far from his native Matamoros, as U.S. prosecutors have contemplated his execution as punishment for his life of crime.

The plans he devised for himself on July 17, 2013, still at the height of criminal power, are now far from reality. A double punishment looms: dying in a jail cell in the U.S.

Source: Milenio