For decades, the notorious Colombian drug cartels worked to establish markets in the United States. In many cases, they hired Mexican nationals to haul large quantities of cocaine and other drugs across the border.
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But in the early 1990s, some of those high-risk Mexican “mules” struck a deal with their Colombian employers, investigators now say.
Instead of getting paid cash–and sometimes having to wait more than a month for payment while the smuggled drugs were being marketed–the Mexican carriers arranged to be paid in uncut cocaine they could sell themselves at a much greater profit.
They received a kilogram of cocaine for every kilogram they smuggled in for the Colombians, and the new operations they set up marked a fundamental change in the way drugs make it into the U.S.
Using the knowledge they had accumulated working for the Colombians, the Mexicans employed fleets of drug-filled cars to converge on and confuse border agents. They set up operations in the unlikeliest of suburban locations and became worthy competitors for those who once hired them.
It was, in a way, a perverted version of the American dream, in which employees go into business for themselves.
But Thursday, the enterprise came crashing down with a series of raids and arrests, announced simultaneously in Chicago and Washington, D.C., with words of praise from President Clinton and Atty. Gen. Janet Reno as embellishment.
“This is the first time we have found in Chicago a network for cocaine distribution that is being run by Mexicans from inside Mexico,” said U.S. Atty. Jim Burns, describing more than two dozen arrests in a series of dawn raids Thursday in the Chicago area, Texas, California and Arizona.
The Mexican Connection–which included a cocaine storehouse in south suburban Country Club Hills and marijuana distribution in the Aurora area–apparently had been operating with impunity in the Midwest until October. Demolition of the drug ring began then with an intercepted cellular telephone call in Los Angeles and culminated with Thursday’s roundup of suspects.
The arrests opened a window into the evolving methods of drug dealers and the flow of drugs from south of the border to the streets of Chicago and its suburbs.
In effect, both Burns and Reno said Thursday, the Mexican smugglers had become friendly competitors of the Colombians, who paid them with readily available stocks of cocaine. That arrangement, they said, gave rise to the all-Mexican wholesale business–the type of business that came under a massive attack Thursday.
According to officials, the Mexicans, who had previously brought in large loads of cocaine for their Colombian bosses on produce trucks, found a better way to smuggle.
One popular method was to transport “shotgun loads,” using from 15 to 20 old cars carrying smaller loads of cocaine and descending on border checkpoints on one day, taking the chance that most of the loads would get through. “If two or three were intercepted, well, that was the price of doing business,” said one investigator.
Once across the border, the Mexican smugglers could deliver their loads for their Colombian employers and keep the other half for themselves.
In the Chicago area alone, Burns said, the Mexican drug ring distributed 1,000 kilograms–more than a ton–of cocaine in the last three months of 1995. Wholesale prices brought in an estimated $22.5 million, and after the drug had been cut and distributed in smaller portions on the streets, it reportedly sold for about $300 million.
The Mexican smugglers also were aware that such a lucrative stash of drugs would be a fetching target for rival drug merchants, so they decided to set up one operation discreetly in a nondescript house in Country Club Hills.
“The cocaine smugglers wanted a location for their stash house in a neighborhood where they would not attract attention or get ripped off,” one investigator said. “The last place they wanted to be was the inner city.”
But the highly organized system hit a high-tech snag in October when Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Los Angeles intercepted and referred to Chicago DEA agents the contents of a 30-second cellular telephone call from a Colombian national named Rafael Alapizco. Alapizco had been targeted for electronic surveillance on the West Coast because he was suspected of being a liaison for Colombian cocaine barons and their Mexican smugglers.
In that call, the Chicago speaker reportedly bragged to Alapizco: “Chicago cops don’t even know we are there. It’s like the Wild West for business.”
Armed with that information, Chicago DEA agents received a court order allowing them to monitor the cellular phone in Chicago that had received the call from the West Coast suspect. Investigators said it was the first time a telephone, rather than an individual, was targeted in a criminal investigation.
The Midwest connection was quickly identified as Tomas Gonzales, 35, a Chicago lawyer who allegedly was in charge of the Chicago distribution network. Gonzales allegedly reported to the man investigators call the ringleader: Jorge Valazquez, 31, a wealthy Mexican rancher and physician from the Sinaloa region of Mexico. Both Gonzales and Valazquez were indicted on drug charges Thursday.
The phone monitor was lucrative, investigators said. In just one two-day period, more than 500 calls were logged on the line.
While continuing their investigation, agents became aware of the planned transport of a shipment of more than 400 pounds of cocaine from the Country Club Hills stash house to Chicago. Reluctant to allow the drugs to get into the city’s bloodstream, but equally unwilling to unveil their continuing investigation, DEA agents found willing partners in the Chicago Police Department.
So, on the morning of Dec. 21, Chicago police, tipped to all of the relevant information by federal agents, pulled over a van in the northbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway at 43rd Street, ostensibly because the van was guilty of improper lane changing. When they peered inside the van, the officers feigned surprise to find 418 pounds of cocaine. The two van occupants were arrested, the drugs were seized and the federal agents managed to stay in hiding to continue their probe.
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Thursday, the hiding stopped. In all, it was announced, officials used more than 90 wiretaps, and the investigation included more than 40 state and local law enforcement agencies, in addition to the DEA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Among those charged in the wave of indictments and arrests were a New York City police officer and an Army National Guard sergeant.
Although the thrust of the sweep was cocaine trafficking, agents swooped down on 13 locations in Aurora and nearby Montgomery in a crackdown of a large marijuana distribution ring. About 70 officers from the DEA, FBI, Illinois State Police, Kane County sheriff’s office and the Aurora police arrested eight alleged drug dealers and seized more than 20 pounds of marijuana, 15 weapons and more than $20,000 in cash.
In announcing the sweep, Reno said the attack was significant because it was aimed at two fronts in the drug war. “It simultaneously dismantled the organization that owned the cocaine and a second organization that ran the transportation system,” she said.
President Clinton also praised the operation, which should help his image as a crime fighter but may hurt his attempts to downplay Mexican involvement in the drug trade.
However, at the combat level itself, many police officials believe that even a huge drug bust can have, at best, only a temporary effect. Because of the amounts of money involved in drug trafficking, they say, the risks still are worth it to many.
For instance, they noted, the two occupants of the drug-gorged van on the Dan Ryan may have been surprised when the Chicago police pulled them over in December. But they were bonded out of jail quickly when their Chicago lawyer posted their bail with a cashier’s check for $250,000. It was drawn on a Nevada holding company being investigated for possible drug money laundering.