The Green Lamborghini That Put a Stop to ‘Limones’ Criminal Career

Among the impoverished towns on the border dividing Coahuila and Durango, an unusual sight could sometimes be seen: a cloud of dust kicked up by the speeding tires of a luxurious Lamborghini, whizzing past half-built houses, abandoned businesses, and ranches with skinny cattle.

And it wasn’t just any “Lambo,” but the Urus model in a garish green color. Specifically, a lime green.

The body had been repainted so that the luxury vehicle would be easily distinguishable from the impoverished hills of La Laguna and to match the owner’s nickname: El Limones (The Lemons), Édgar Rodríguez Ortiz, who was arrested this Wednesday in an operation led by Secretary Omar García Harfuch for extorting merchants and ranchers, money laundering, and fraud, a criminal spree that was an open secret in the region.

MILENIO had access to two photographs of the alleged financial operator of the Cabrera Sarabia clan, close associate to El Mayo Zambada, inside a garage showing off this exclusive car worth approximately seven million pesos: a super-luxury SUV that accelerates from 0 to 100 kilometers in four seconds and whose top speed is approximately 305 kilometers per hour.

In one image, El Limones poses next to the car wearing a shirt that identifies him as a high-ranking member in the La Laguna Region of the Autonomous Confederation of Workers and Employees of Mexico (CATEM), a labor union founded and headed by Morena federal deputy Pedro Haces.

In the second photograph, he is dressed casually in jeans and a green sweatshirt—his favorite color—between his lime green “Lambo” and a red Ferrari Portofino, worth around six million pesos.

Those who saw the Ferrari up close say that it had a sticker on the trunk that made it even more unmistakable: a lemon cut in half with a knife or scalpel, a veiled threat from the owner and his capacity to inflict harm. “He had a green Lamborghini and a Ferrari with decals purely out of vanity: so that people would know it was him from afar. He even ordered that no one could paint their car, even if it was an old one, the same color, or he would have them killed,” says the source who shared the image with this journalist.

“He liked people to see a lime green color and feel terror.”

Drag Races and Illegal Street Racing in Gómez Palacio

The unusual vehicle was one of the clues used by the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, the Attorney General’s Office, the National Intelligence Center, and the Armed Forces to locate the whereabouts of the man believed to be the number two in the criminal organization entrenched in CATEM (Confederation of Workers and Peasants of Mexico).

The top leader is allegedly Nassael Armando Cobián Duarte, “El Muñeco” (The Doll), who presents himself to his victims as the state general secretary of the union and is the next target of the federal government.

According to the source, the extravagant vehicle helped federal agents track Limones: the lime-green “Lambo” was spotted at a sports complex called “El Barrio de la Boca,” located in Gómez Palacio, Durango, which is supposedly one of Limones’ many money laundering centers, along with breweries, seafood restaurants, party halls, and bars that operate as front businesses for the Cabrera Sarabia family.

Every time the car was parked outside a business, it provided new information for the investigation.

“Limones always felt protected in Gómez Palacio. It is known that he has the protection of local authorities and corrupt businessmen, and that many people fear him.

“So he would race through the streets of the La Laguna region, doing drag races and illegal street racing, driving at top speed with the music blasting. Nobody stopped him. The ‘Lambo’ became a symbol of fear and power in my town,” the source says.

The luxury vehicle even had its own soundtrack: an altered corrido, “De Apodo Limones,” which Édgar Rodríguez Ortiz himself commissioned from influencer Carlos Charly Guajardo and performed by the musical group MásD1.

The Fact

What does the corrido say?

After work / we celebrate there in Gómez Palacio / you’ll see me relaxed. I like exclusive cars / I like to hit the road to Durango and Cosalá.

Thanks to the green Lamborghini’s movements, federal authorities also located the address from which El Limones was taken, and he surrendered without resistance, even though he was found with an arsenal of long guns, military-style camouflage tactical vests, and ammunition of a caliber exclusive to the Mexican Army.

The luxury vehicle also provided Secretary Harfuch with crucial information for the investigations that will continue in the coming months: El Limones was not the only one in his criminal organization with a fondness for flashy Ferraris bought with illicit money.

El Limones fell because of vanity

El Limones fell, first, because of vanity. Then, because of overconfidence, they say in La Laguna. And because of these same deadly sins, others close to him will soon fall, as the federal government identifies them as other members of a criminal club of “Lambo” and Ferrari enthusiasts who allegedly bought them with money from extortion and kidnapping.

For example, an operator of Édgar Rodríguez Ortiz, identified as El Chícharo, owns a red Ferrari; another, identified by the authorities as El Comandante Ybarra, drives a black Ferrari; and yet another, identified only as the Financial Operator, uses a yellow Ferrari.

They all follow their boss’s order: no one can use green, “the color of money,” except El Limones.

The collection includes more luxury cars: collectible Mercedes-Benzes, vintage versions of Mini Coopers, and modified sports Porsches. The cars in which Limones and his accomplices carried out their crimes, from extortion to murders and disappearances, and whose unusual nature is described by anonymous witnesses in several investigation files at the local and federal prosecutor’s offices, now headed by Ernestina Godoy.

“The green ‘Lambo,’ excuse me, is in bad taste. And that’s Limones: he comes from a poor family in the Trincheras neighborhood, a working-class area in Gómez Palacio. He started from the bottom: stealing car parts, selling crystal meth, cloning credit cards.

“Like any small-time gangster. But he started to grow and grow, and when he had money, he behaved like a nouveau riche. That was his main mistake: who drives around in the rural areas in a Lamborghini?” the source consulted says ironically.

He even claims there are stories that might be half true and half false, but which are told as part of the local folklore: that several times, the luxury cars of Limones’ circle got stuck on the dirt roads and were overtaken by children on bicycles or farmers on horseback.

When the clues provided by the green “Lambo” and the Ferraris were sufficient, agents from the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection and the National Guard quietly arrived in La Laguna to speak with business owners who had reported Limones’ extortions, his extreme violence, and his excesses.

The interviews ultimately shaped the operation against the man who swore his bosses would never abandon him.

Those superiors are the Cabrera Sarabia brothers, Alejandro and Luis, known as El 02 and El 03, respectively. El 01, Felipe, alias El Ingeniero, is imprisoned in the United States and is expected to be released in July 2029 on charges related to his most famous nickname: The Heroin King.

For years, the three brothers have been one of the main pillars of Ismael Zambada García’s faction.  So much so that while El Mayo was on the run, the house where he hid for years in the town of Santiago Papasquiaro belonged to the Cabrera Sarabia brothers, who provided their associate with everything from cooks to hitmen armed with weapons capable of shooting down an aircraft of the Armed Forces.

The Cabrera Sarabia brothers remain loyal to the septuagenarian capo and founder of the Sinaloa Cartel: they financially support La Mayiza in its battle against Los Chapitos and clear their properties in case Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo need to use them as hideouts.

What they will no longer be able to do is rely on the financial operations of El Limón, whose love of speed ended abruptly this Wednesday with his arrest. A capo who went from the fast pace of clandestine airstrips in the mountains to being confined to a maximum-security cell.

Source: Milenio