DEA Dismantles Plan to Assassinate Ivan Archivaldo Guzman: Weapons and Betrayal

The day the DEA foiled an assassination attempt on Ivan Archivaldo Guzman

A Sinaloan has gotten a reckless idea into his head: to kill Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, El Chapito Mayor, the powerful son of Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán. The reason is as absurd as it is suicidal: a $600,000 debt, an amount that in the world of organized crime is the crumbs that fall off the table.

So the mastermind of this plan begins to make the necessary arrangements to carry it out: how to ambush his target, how to surprise the bodyguards, how to enter Culiacan silently, how to encourage the assassins to walk into a high-risk mission. The success of all variants depends on the same thing: that the weaponry is state-of-the-art, infallible and sufficient for what could be a long battle in the capital of Sinaloa.

It is the spring of 2020 and that man, Jorge Valenzuela Valenzuela, a member of the prominent criminal clan known as Los Valenzuela, knows that to carry out such a task he needs an arsenal the size of a small army, as Ivan Archivaldo has elevated his protection following the first Culiacanazo in October 2019, when his brother Ovidio, El Raton, was detained by the Armed Forces and then released on presidential orders thanks to the threat of fire and fury from the Guzman family.

Ivan Archivaldo, now 41, is no longer the same naive young man who at 33 traveled with little security to Puerto Vallarta and came close to death after being easily kidnapped by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Now he knows his weight on the criminal map of Mexico and the world as heir to the criminal empire left by his extradited father. He has as many as five armed wings guarding him, among them La Chapiza, Los Ninis and Los Deltas de Culiacan, plus all the gunmen working for his godfather Ismael El Mayo Zambada, who in 2020 is still a free man and lends them help without knowing that four years later he will be betrayed by his godchildren. Ivan El Terrible is as hard to kill as a president.

Jorge Valenzuela knows this and sends messages from Mexico to his best contact in the United States, Mr. Arms Dealer – as he affectionately calls him, although the man who answers him on the other side of the border prefers the alias of El Taliban, which gives him the air of a high-powered criminal – and through encrypted messaging they agree on a huge order: weapons, ammunition, armor, tactical vests. Everything for the war.

Neither of them knows it, but in a few months, one of those phones will fall into the hands of the DEA and the plan will collapse, dragging them into the pit of the US prison system.

El Chapito’ kept $600,000 from the Valenzuela family

This is one of those criminal organizations about which little is known until the authorities strike a blow and then allege they are dangerous. According to the US government, during the 1990s and early 2000s, the brothers Gabriel, Juan Francisco, Wuendi, Sergio and Jorge used their facade as transporters and restaurateurs to move tons of cocaine and heroin overland to the United States and return to Mexico with their truckloads of weapons to supply the Sinaloa Cartel.

The Valenzuela brothers especially worked for El Mayo Zambada, whom they revered as a legendary capo. They trafficked any product to California and laundered the proceeds to deliver untraceable money to him, in exchange for a percentage that translated into millions of pesos. The clan felt untouchable under that shelter until they suffered a first hard blow that would deform them into hardened criminals.

In early 2020, the eldest brother and leader of the group, Gabriel, moved around the country under the false identity of Julian Grimaldi after escaping from the Aguaruto prison in Culiacan, until he was shot dead in Tlajomulco, Jalisco. Mexican authorities claim that the murder was ordered by a faction of the cartel that was concerned about how the Valenzuela Valenzuelas were gaining power as part of a plan by El Mayo to displace all the leaders and completely dominate Sinaloa.

The vacuum left by Gabriel was quickly taken over by Jorge, who, now installed in his position as boss, heard a rumor that Ivan Archivaldo had asked his late brother for two million dollars. With that money, he would allegedly bribe high-ranking police officials at the federal level and in Mexico City to speed up the arrest of accomplices of Dámaso López, El Licenciado, arrested in 2017, whose allies were gradually becoming dangerous competitors within the cartel.

“It could never be verified if the story is true. That is only known to Gabriel, who is dead, and Iván. But Jorge took for granted the information that El Chapito kept $600,000. Those are pennies for these people, but it wasn’t about money, it was about honor: you don’t steal from the dead,” says a source who, by walking them, knows well the corridors of organized crime in Sinaloa.

Furious, Gabriel begins to plan his revenge. He sets his sights on the son of his former boss, unaware that other eyes are on him.

Narco Polo operation that went after the Valenzuela brothers

 DEA goes all out against Mexican cartels.

In 2008, U.S. and California federal authorities began a secret and ongoing operation to investigate Mexican drug trafficking networks operating in the so-called Golden State. This fixed plan is known as Operation Narco Polo.

Among the many targets that pass through the offices of those who have headed this investigative unit are the Valenzuelas, who are unaware that their movements have been under the scrutiny of the DEA, the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Department of Justice since 2011, when local authorities discovered a small drug trafficking cell in Chula Vista, California, which turned out to be connected to the Sinaloa Cartel.

Jorge Valenzuela, the newly anointed leader of his group, learns of this in late October 2020, when he is detained by anti-drug agents at the airport in Boston, Massachusetts, after traveling from San Diego. Unexpectedly, the U.S. saves Los Chapitos’ eldest from a potentially deadly attack.

Days earlier, on the 15th of that month, he and his associates were spied by federal investigators boarding a private jet in Long Beach with eight suspicious suitcases, according to California prosecutors. After questioning the pilot, authorities learned that the luggage concealed bricks of cocaine wrapped in newspaper and duct tape. That testimony proved as solid as an ankle shackle.

Perhaps infected by the legend of his boss, El Mayo, who said he would never be arrested, Jorge Valenzuela was arrogant and carried 15 cell phones in his suitcases at the time of his arrest. The cell phones contain the evidence to link his sister Wuendi, owner of a seafood restaurant in Chula Vista, to the cartel’s financial activities. On November 2, she is arrested while packing with her husband to flee to Mexico.

From then on, the Valenzuelas fall steadily. On November 20, federal agents get a warrant signed by a judge to search a truck yard in the California community of Otay Mesa, right on the border with Tijuana. The trucks that serve as a front for the brothers to pass themselves off as truckers and restaurateurs are parked there.

The discovery is described by the Southern California District Attorney’s Office as the largest in the region’s history: 3.5 million dollars in cash, 685 kilos of cocaine and 24 kilos of fentanyl. In addition, part of the arsenal ordered to kill Ivan Archivaldo is hidden there: 20,000 50-caliber rounds capable of perforating even the most advanced armor, 100 magazines for other high-powered rifles and 427 tactical plate carriers. 

But the most valuable part of the operation is not in the illicit part, but in the legal part: another 24 cell phones loaded with incriminating information, such as videos, photographs, contacts and encrypted messages from the clan’s suppliers. As the days go by, more and more members are arrested thanks to these phones. Thus, the Office of Homeland Security Investigations began to track the other side of the criminal chain: Mr. Arms Dealer, whose weapons were close to starting a war in Mexico, like the one that is being fought today in Sinaloa after the betrayal of Mayo Zambada, arrested in the United States.

An Osama Bin Laden but of Mexican descent, ‘El Taliban’ of California

The hunt unleashed against El Taliban is total, as if it were a real jihadist with imminent terrorist plans against Uncle Sam. Fortunately for the U.S. agents, the 39 seized cell phones are abundant in information: houses, warehouses, favorite places to eat, stores in Oregon where he bought the weapons that would go to Mexico. Everything is in the hands of US authorities.

In addition, the arms dealer himself facilitates the work of his pursuers: he never cuts that long beard that gave him his nickname. His very particular appearance – an Osama Bin Laden, but Mexican – helps his arrest sometime between 2021 and 2022, which the authorities have kept secret. His identity transcends until 2023 when, cornered by the evidence against him, he pleads guilty to four criminal charges, including money laundering and arms trafficking. Then, his real name hits the court records: Keith Octavio Rodriguez Padilla, 39, a Mexican national living in San Bernardino County, California.

His lawyer Megan Foster tries to qualify his criminal role by assuring Judge Andrew Schopler that, although the Valenzuela Valenzuela brothers are responsible for atrocious acts on both sides of the border, her client did not know it and his only fault had been to supply weapons to a contact he considered his friend.

“Little did he know that said contact held an extremely high rank in a criminal organization that was being investigated by federal law enforcement officials,” Foster pleads. But prosecutor Matthew Sutton quickly disarms the argument by listing the type of guns the defendant was selling. Those favored by organized crime.

“These guns and ammunition empower drug cartels to intimidate local communities, challenge state authority, and expand their lethal drug trade back into the United States. Tragically, some of these weapons have been used against Mexican security forces,” the lawyer counters.

Rodriguez Padilla’s hope for clemency ran out a few days ago. On January 13, the judge sentenced him to 19 years and six months in prison. If he serves the full term, he will be free again when he is close to 60 years old. He will then be deported to Mexico, where more charges may await him for his role as a gunsmith for the Sinaloa Cartel.

His punishment would be less than that of the last of the Valenzuela Valenzuelas still at large: Sergio, El Gigio, considered the King of Fentanyl, will likely receive a life sentence if someone turns him in to the US government and collects the $15 million reward hanging over his head.

El Gigio and his new armed wing Los Siete Demonios are members of La Mayiza, still loyal to Mayo Zambada. Their firepower is crucial to the mission entrusted to them by heir Ismael Zambada Sicarios, El Mayito Flaco: to exterminate La Chapiza, one by one, until they reach the heads and eliminate them as well.

The original objective to kill Ivan Archivaldo failed, but that doesn’t mean it has been completely cancelled. The last Valenzuela Valenzuela can still finish what his brother left pending five years ago. The plan isn’t over yet.

Source: Milenio