The $50 Million Osiel Cárdenas Paid to Return to Mexico

In the legal proceedings against El Chapo Guzmán and El Mayo Zambada, federal judge Brian Cogan in New York imposed hefty fines. In addition to life imprisonment, he ordered El Chapo to pay $12.6 billion; while El Mayo received a fine of $15 billion. To put this amount into perspective, it would be equivalent to almost 280 billion pesos, a figure comparable to the annual budget of Mexico City.

These astronomical figures do not mean that such sums of cash were in the hands of the Mexican drug lords. These are judicial estimates based on the illicit income their organizations generated over decades, calculated from the volume of drugs trafficked and money laundered. This is a symbolic sanction from the Donald Trump administration, but also a legal mechanism that allows for the seizure of any asset or property identified in the name of drug lords or their cartels.

To this day, the only known Mexican drug lord who handed over part of his fortune to US authorities for a reduced sentence is Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the former leader of the Gulf Cartel, who left the country eight years before completing his sentence.

He achieved this thanks to a secret agreement that included handing over $50 million to the US Department of Justice. We know this from declassified documents published by the Dallas Morning News.

Osiel had been sentenced by a federal court in the District of Texas for drug trafficking and money laundering, among other offenses, to 25 years in prison. His early release cost him $6.25 million per year. Furthermore, the drug baron behaved very decently in the Terre Haute prison in Indiana.

Today, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén isn’t a free man; he was sent back to his country in December 2024, where he was arrested and imprisoned in the Altiplano maximum-security prison, where he faces the possibility of returning to his “bad old ways.”

The official documents containing the agreement he made with the US justice system were obtained and published in April 2016 in a report by colleagues Alfredo Corchado and Kevin Krause. The $50 million he handed over was collected—illegally—by his lawyer, Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa, who was responsible for selling properties, land, two helicopters, and even sending one of the kingpin’s planes to the United States.

Among the cash he collected was $10 million handed over by Los Zetas, the organization that emerged as an armed wing of the Gulf Cartel. The lawyer made several trips to the border with the money hidden in his trunk to deliver it to the DEA in Reynosa, Tamaulipas.

The reign that Osiel Cárdenas built from Almoloya

That story really begins with Osiel Cárdenas Guillén in prison, after Mexican Army special forces captured him in 2003. He was held in Almoloya de Juárez, from where he continued to control his followers through his lawyer until he was finally extradited to the United States in 2007.

During his time in Almoloya, Osiel continued to give orders to the three men who had replaced him as leader of the Gulf Cartel: Jorge Costilla Sánchez, known as El Coss, who had been Osiel’s main lieutenant; his brother Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén; Tony Tormenta; and Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, known as El Z-14, a number he chose because he liked it more than his actual name: El Z-3.

He ordered Los Zetas to continue conquering territories, which were seized from their rivals in Michoacán, Chihuahua, Tabasco, and Nuevo León, among other states. In each city Los Zetas took, a plaza boss was appointed. Osiel’s reign ended when he was handed over to US justice.

Without the top leader, the cartel began to collapse due to divisions and internal struggles that persist to this day. Only in Matamoros did the Cárdenas family—which includes brothers, sons, nephews, and even those with other surnames—continue to control the criminal organization founded by Juan Nepomuceno Guerra in the 1930s.

Once in the United States, Osiel began negotiations to reduce his sentence. In July 2009, he “agreed in federal court to plead guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering, and attempted murder of US federal agents. Under the agreement, which was sealed at the time, Cárdenas Guillén promised to hand over $50 million,” reports the Dallas Morning News.

Thanks to this, in early 2010, he was given a relatively reduced sentence of 25 years in prison. “The $50 million confiscated consisted not only of cash, but also of ranches and aircraft. Much of the money was extracted from bunkers in Mexico and transported across the border in the trunk of a car in 2008 and 2009,” Corchado and Krause write.

Attorney Guerrero Chapa, Osiel’s longtime confidant, oversaw the collection and collected the cash. He also provided information about Mexican drug trafficking networks to the United States government—doing so “on behalf of Cárdenas Guillén.” The lawyer was one of the cartel’s most important individuals, with high-level contacts, according to a confidential 2001 federal report.

Corchado and Krause write that after Cárdenas Guillén negotiated his sentence, Guerrero Chapa received his biggest assignment: prosecutors sent him to collect dollars from the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel between 2008 and 2009.

Federal files show that the lawyer visited high-ranking cartel bosses several times to obtain contributions toward reducing his sentence. Part of the money came from Osiel’s fortune, hidden in at least nine bunkers in residences and ranches in Tamaulipas and Nuevo León. Guerrero Chapa raised the money and coordinated the delivery of three Bell helicopters and a Cessna airplane. The aircraft were transported to Canada and stored in a hangar north of Vancouver.

“The deliveries took place near the international bridge that connects Reynosa with McAllen. Guerrero Chapa traveled to the Mexican border city in his vehicle packed with suitcases full of cash. Agents took the money, sometimes barely checking it, and quickly returned it to the United States,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

However, Heriberto Lazcano Z-14 had a contact within the DEA who informed him that Cárdenas was negotiating, providing information about him to the US government in order to capture him. The Zetas leader warned Guerrero Chapa that if he betrayed him, “an internal war would begin between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel,” according to a DEA report.

After a failed military attempt to capture him, the Zetas agreed to break away from the Gulf Cartel in late February 2010, and a bloody “narco-war” began between the two sides, resulting in more than 15,000 deaths and disappearances in Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Coahuila in less than three years.

Guerrero Chapa was killed by the Beltrán Leyva leader.

In May 2013, after his work for the DEA, Juan Jesús Guerrero Chapa fell victim to a revenge killing in a luxurious Dallas suburb, where he was gunned down on the orders of José Rodolfo Villarreal Hernández, alias El Gato. A former police officer and Beltrán Leyva cartel boss in San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León.

He murdered him, blaming him for his father’s death. To locate the lawyer in Dallas, Villarreal used the notorious Grupo Rudo (Rude Group), formed by the mayor of San Pedro Garza García, Mauricio Fernández Garza, to combat the cartels in his municipality—the richest in Mexico—home to the main shareholders of Nuevo León’s largest industries and companies: Alfa, Femsa, Vitro, Banorte, Gruma, Cemex, and others.

The details of this crime became known at the trial held in April 2016 in Dallas against Jesús Ledezma Cepeda, 59, for the murder of the lawyer. Ledezma was arrested in McAllen along with his son, Jesús Ledezma Campano, and his cousin, José Luis Cepeda Cortez.

Ledezma was a member of the Grupo Rudo, which was actually made up of “corrupt police officers from San Pedro and members of drug cartels in Nuevo León, Mexico. Although not a member of the cartel, Ledezma was friends with several members of the Beltrán-Leyva organization, a drug cartel led by Héctor Beltrán-Leyva,” according to the document from the Federal District Court of Texas, case 16-11731 against Ledezma Cepeda.

“Ledezma also had a day job as a private investigator, focusing primarily on tracking unfaithful spouses and suspected robbers. […] Beltrán-Leyva cartel leader José Rodolfo Villareal-Hernández [El Gato] asked Ledezma to locate Guerrero-Chapa, whom El Gato believed was responsible for his father’s death,” the document adds.

The search led Ledezma to the United States, where he recruited his cousin José Luis to help him. The two eventually traveled to Florida, where, along with several others, they followed Guerrero-Chapa’s brother, Armando. “The team monitored their vehicles with GPS trackers and conducted in-person surveillance for several months.” Members of Grupo Rudo placed a tracker on the lawyer’s SUV, which they purchased with his credit card at a security store in McAllen, and the FBI arrested them.

At trial, Gerardo Ledezma Campero, 32, testified against his father as part of an agreement with prosecutors to obtain a reduced sentence and also to protect his wife and children. He mentioned that his father was a friend of the two brothers who ran the Beltrán Leyva cartel, Arturo and Héctor. “My father was also a friend of the Beltrán Leyva regional leader, Alberto Mendoza, alias Chico Malo,” he told the jury at the trial held in April 2016.

At that trial, the prosecution also testified on behalf of Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, but his statements were not transcribed in the final trial documents kept in the Electronic Court Archives, an unusual practice used only in cases seeking to protect witnesses.

The Fall of Osiel Cárdenas Guillén’s Armies

After Osiel’s capture, the Cárdenas family continued to preside over the Gulf Cartel’s “council.” Command was assumed by the triumvirate consisting of El Coss, Tony Tormenta, and Z-14, at the time the leader of Los Zetas. El Coss was an ambitious and paranoid former police officer who believed Tony Tormenta could exile him, so he began leaking his safe houses to the Navy.

The first operation to attempt to capture him occurred on March 31, 2010, when Mexican soldiers clashed with Tony’s bodyguards in the Tres Culturas neighborhood. On April 7, there was another shootout in the city between marines and members of the Gulf Cartel at one of his homes. His gunmen protected him, and he managed to escape in an armored vehicle. Two soldiers died in the operation.

El Coss leaked the logistics of his inner circle to the Navy. On November 1, 2010, Mexican authorities learned once again that Tony Tormenta was spending the night in a safe house in Matamoros. But before authorities arrived, the kingpin escaped. Four days later, on November 5, 2010, Antonio Cárdenas Guillén was killed in an intense confrontation that lasted about eight hours between his bodyguards and Navy personnel.

His brother, Mario Cárdenas Guillén, alias El Gordo, joined the leadership of the Gulf Cartel. El Coss didn’t see any qualities in him that could take his leadership, but instead considered that one of his nephews, Rafael Cárdenas Vela, known as El Junior, could replace him. Cárdenas Vela was a rising drug lord. He began by opening and consolidating the San Fernando, Tamaulipas, plaza; then he commanded the Rio Grande, where the cartel trafficked cocaine and migrants, before finally taking over the main plaza: Matamoros.

In response to his rapid rise, El Coss began leaking information about his whereabouts. After several failed attempts to capture him, Rafael Cárdenas Vela moved to Brownsville, Texas, where he was finally arrested by US authorities on October 20, 2011, for a traffic ticket while traveling on a highway leading to Padre Island.

His uncle, Mario Cárdenas Guillén, was arrested in Altamira, Tamaulipas, on September 3, 2012. A few days later, El Coss finally fell, captured in Tampico on September 12. The United States was offering a 30 million peso bounty for the Gulf Cartel leader.

By that time, Los Zetas had already broken away from the cartel and were engaged in a bloody war to seize its most important strongholds. They managed to conquer San Fernando, Mante, and Nuevo Laredo, among other cities in Tamaulipas, all the strongholds in Coahuila, and the important metropolitan area of ​​Monterrey.

The return of the organized crime baron?

Osiel Cárdenas Guillén returns to Mexico.

Thus, the Gulf Cartel plunged into a division and disputes that persist to this day. For several years, it has no longer operated as a centralized organization, but rather as a “federation” of gangs led by plaza bosses.

Only Matamoros remains under the control of the Cárdenas family. The family’s last boss in that city was José Alfredo Cárdenas Martínez, alias El Contador, Osiel’s nephew. In February 2022, police arrested him while driving near the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City.

Incidentally, El Contador recently left the Eastern Prison after the supervisory judge in Almoloya de Juárez ordered a modification of the preventive detention measure imposed on him.

Federal judge Gregorio Salazar Hernández determined during a hearing that there were no charges against him, and therefore ordered his release.

A judge ordered the release of the Gulf Cartel leader, “El Contador.” Nephew Osiel Cárdenas

Apparently, the Gulf Cartel in Matamoros has become leaderless. Osiel was released from US prison at 57, and his return to Mexican jails makes it easier for him to reintegrate into the world of crime, running things from his cell, as he did previously, thanks to the widespread corruption that prevails in these facilities.

It helps that his family remains an important part of the Gulf Cartel, and thanks to this, the kingpin could regain leadership. Few regional cartel bosses would object. His return as a kingpin of organized crime would be possible because the US justice system pardons criminals if they provide information, serve as protected witnesses, or hand over part of their fortune.

Source: Milenio