Inside ‘El Chino Antrax’s’ U.S. Prison Life: A Weapons Trafficker’s Account

Ruben, also known as “El R10”, who was over a year ago on Youtube vlogger Gusgri’s podcast, recalls that after his arrest in 2015, he was coincidentally put into the same prison as a former hitman of client Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Rodrigo Aréchiga Gamboa, “El Chino Antrax.”

In his message, the former US arms smuggler to Mexico assured that he started working at 17 years old when they would begin to assign him pistols he could bring from the neighboring country, being a resident of the border city of Mexicali.

Jose Rodrigo was held in the Metropolitan Correctional Center of San Diego from 2014 to 2020 until he was sentenced to home imprisonment as he was a cooperating witness who was at risk in the facility.

“I started very young selling weapons; that was my job. I started at 17 years old buying weapons. I would sometimes buy that a friend told me about a small gun, but I don’t have money anymore. I remember it cost 200 dollars,” the interviewee said to Gusgri.

The guest of Gusgri assured that Jose Rodrigo was locked up in the punishment area, not due to bad behavior, but as a kind of protection because they could kill him when they found out he was informing on the Sinaloa Cartel.

“They would take ‘Chino’ out and isolate him. They would not let him interact with people much; he had the company when they took him to the doctor when they were in the hole, those who were living there with him, as I tell you, I lived with him through the duct and neither he nor I knew who I was. Neither he nor I noticed when a magazine I passed to him was very well cured,” said ‘El R10’.

Despite not knowing who he was at the beginning, it was thanks to receiving an entertainment magazine that he was able to realize that he was the founder of Los Ántrax, who always supported him by gifting him coffee and some other products that he had no access to due to being punished.

With a thread of teeth, because there they sell you thread to clean your teeth, with one of those threads he tied the magazine, you make a hole in the magazine, and the door has that much below, and then he was already shouting because there inside they don’t tell names, you shout paisa, ‘paisa,’ ‘what happened old man?’, ‘here goes the line,’ well then the dude gave me coffee because he was in the hole so he could buy the whole grocery store as if he was already up there and they didn’t give me groceries while I was in punishment. Ruben argued.

Aréchiga Gamboa could only interact with others by leaving his cell to go to the doctor or for an audience.

He wasn’t in punishment, and he was there for protection… You can’t look, but you can hear, down below, he was screaming, ‘Paisa, I am to the left, I’m in such a cell, I’m in the so and so cell,’ ‘ok,’ then you need to memorize where you are, that’s how he interacted with ‘The Chinese.’