Deceived by the FBI and the Fake ‘Italian Mafia’: How El Chapo’s Cousin was Arrested in Spain

With the promise of bringing the Sinaloa Cartel’s business to Europe, FBI agents led a secret undercover mission in which they deceived and arrested Jesús Guzmán Gutiérrez, El Chapo’s cousin.

The agents posed as Italian mobsters. They promised $2,800 per kilo of cocaine and assured that the Sinaloa Cartel’s business would reach Japan. This is how Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán, cousin of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, was arrested after the FBI’s Operation Dark Waters.

This entire deception occurred in 2009, when ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán was trying to expand the Sinaloa Cartel’s business to Europe, after “dominating” the US market. During the search for partners, a supposed representative of a criminal organization in Italy appeared, who called himself Alejandro and presented himself as a criminal with a solid background, although in reality he was an FBI informant.

Alejandro contacted the upper echelons of the Sinaloa Cartel thanks to Álvaro Rivera Pedrego, an operator for ‘El Chapo’ who in 2014 pleaded guilty to cocaine trafficking and was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

Rivera Pedrego tried to arrange a meeting between ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán and Alejandro for three months; however, due to the absence of the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and father of Los Chapitos, the operation was left in the hands of his cousin, Jesús Gutiérrez.

With Jesús Gutiérrez as ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s representative, the Sinaloa Cartel offered shipments of up to 20 tons of cocaine, although the deal with the supposed Italian criminals would begin with 1,500 kilos.

Thus, through Alejandro, the FBI obtained direct contact with the Sinaloa Cartel and managed not only to arrest ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s cousin, but also to understand how the criminal organization operated to expand its business.

This is how the FBI deceived ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán’s cousin.

The first meeting between Alejandro, Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán, and Álvaro Rivera Pedrego took place in the mountainous region of Culiacán, Sinaloa, part of the “golden triangle.” The negotiation covered topics such as product quality, export, prices, and routes. This conversation was recorded. Although they had never met before, Alejandro earned the trust of Gutiérrez Guzmán, who took him around Sinaloa and instructed his people to welcome him whenever he arrived in Mexico.

The next step was to connect the Sinaloa Cartel with the Italian mafia. A meeting was arranged in Miami, Florida, where they agreed on the distribution of financial risks in the drug trafficking operation: the shipping costs would be covered by the Mexican cartel, and the unloading would be the responsibility of the Italians.

That’s when ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán appeared, who was more cautious than his cousin and kept his distance from the alleged mobsters. Days after that meeting in Miami, Gutiérrez Guzmán called the Italian contact, and they organized a second meeting to finalize the price of the cocaine.

FBI agents managed to involve more people in the meetings, including one in Florida that included Sergio López Alarcón, ‘El Chapo’s’ accountant and financial advisor, and the cartel’s lawyer, Rafael Humberto González Valenzuela.

The business was formalized to such an extent that the Sinaloa Cartel opened a shell company in Spain. Gutiérrez Guzmán would be in charge of the business with the Italians and would be the public face of the operation.

‘El Chapo’ Guzmán constantly changed the rules of the game to test the reliability of his new partners. He changed the origin of the drugs, the departure point of the shipment, and the percentages in the negotiations, and the Italians, who were working for the FBI, complied.

In 2012, they made three test shipments, using pineapples and bananas, which were unloaded without incident in Spain, so that the route could finally be established and the cocaine shipment could be sent.

The drugs were shipped from Brazil and arrived at the port of Algeciras on July 27, 2012, with 346 kilograms of cocaine hidden inside pineapples, valued at $480 million.

The FBI seized the shipment, and 11 days later, on August 7, they arrested Gutiérrez Guzmán outside the Palace Hotel in Madrid, along with three other operatives, before extraditing him to the United States. What happened to Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán and what was his role in ‘El Chapo’s’ organization?

Born in Sinaloa, Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán dedicated his life to the business of ‘El Chapo’s’ family.

Although he’s not linked to other criminal activities of the Sinaloa Cartel, he was identified as the family’s representative in their attempt to expand into Europe.  Following his arrest, he pleaded guilty and reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in October 2014.

Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2015.

Source: El Financiero