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Saturday, January 25, 2020

Feds: U.S. Marine veteran built cocaine pipeline as Mexican drug kingpin

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat  La Opinion and San Diego Tribune

Ángel Domínguez Ramírez Jr., "El Zeta 39", conducted  "business" with the Jalisco Nueva Generación, Sinaloa, del Golfo, Los Zetas and Los Beltrán Leyva cartels. He founded “El Seguimiento 39”The US Attorney's Office accused Ángel Domínguez Ramírez Jr. of using his military training as an ex-marine to work as a member of the Los Zetas paramilitary cartel …
Mexican Navy officers stand guard next to a helicopter loaded with seized bags of cocaine in this 2018 file photo. A Marine Corps veteran with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Mexico has been accused of running a massive cocaine smuggling operation
The following is from an article posted 11 months ago, which gives the backstory of Dominguez, the Zeta and founder of “El Seguimiento 39” related to my  previous post.

A U.S. Marine veteran who rose to power as a reputed Mexican drug kingpin has been named in a massive cocaine trafficking indictment in San Diego.

The investigation into Angel Dominguez Ramirez Jr.’s organization revealed “an unprecedented level of corruption within the Mexican government, local police departments, federal police agencies and military,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a recent court filing.

More than 41 people have been charged in the case, which has yielded 5,000 kilograms of seized cocaine and more than $9 million in drug proceeds.

Dominguez’s organization sourced cocaine from Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, up through Central America and into Chiapas, Mexico, according to prosecutors. Transportation cells would move the cocaine into Mexico using boats, aircraft and commercial vehicles, then through the California and Texas borders for distribution into the United States, according to the court filing.

The organization also used a reverse pipeline moving drug proceeds from the U.S. back south, according to the indictment that was partially unsealed this week.

Dominguez was arrested in Mexico in 2016.

He is a dual U.S. citizen who served as a Marine, prosecutors said. According to his U.S. passport application, he walks with a limp due to a combat-related injury.

He is accused of using his military training as an original member of the Los Zetas paramilitary cartel, which was first formed as an enforcement wing for the Cartel del Golfo. He was known as “Zeta 39,” prosecutors said, no doubt informing the name of his current organization, “El Seguimiento 39.”

Prosecutors say he built his organization through cooperative alliances with the Beltran Leyva Organization, the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Cartel del Golfo and the Los Zetas.

He also called upon corrupt government officials, authorities said.

Those corrupt relationships were on full display in 2017, when Ivan Reyes Arzate was taken down in Chicago.

Reyes was a top federal police commander and the highest-ranking member of Mexico’s Sensitive Investigation Unit. He served as a liaison with U.S. law enforcement officials, privy to sensitive information about some of the most important U.S. investigations into drug cartels.

Turns out, Reyes was leaking the information to the cartels.

The first hint came when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Chicago asked Reyes’ unit to conduct surveillance of a meeting of traffickers in Cancun. Wiretapped communications then revealed that someone named “Ayala” — later determined to be Reyes — warned one of the traffickers about the investigation and suggested he lay low.

“You were the target,” Reyes warned.

Scrutiny turned to Reyes as the mole when U.S. agents intercepted a call between Dominguez and another trafficker.

“Who is Ivan?” Dominguez asked, according to prosecutors.

“The boss,” the other trafficker said.

Dominguez began to rely heavily on Reyes for information about the overlapping San Diego-Chicago DEA investigation.

At one point, Reyes admitted to meeting with Dominguez in Mexico City. Dominguez had proposed a plan: that he supply the federal police with incriminating information against the current plaza bosses in the Gulf state of Tamaulipas, Mexico. Once they were arrested, Dominguez could replace them with less violent bosses.

Reyes’ leak in the investigation prompted one confidential DEA informant — who had been paid more than $1 million for cooperating — to be evacuated from Mexico for safety.

Years earlier, when Reyes had worked for the Beltran Leyva cartel, he revealed another cooperator’s identity, resulting in the cooperator’s torture and death at the hands of cartel assassins, authorities said.

Dominguez and another unnamed co-conspirator knew of Reyes’ prior relationship with the Beltran Leyva group and threatened to use it as leverage against the official if they needed to, according to intercepted communications.

Reyes turned himself in to authorities in Chicago in February 2017 and in November was sentenced to 40 months in prison.

As for the Dominguez prosecution, several co-defendants have been already been arrested — beginning in July 2017 — and many have pleaded guilty.

The complaint against Reyes in Chicago had acknowledged that an indictment had been filed against Dominguez in San Diego, but noted it was sealed. On Monday, his name was finally unsealed along with the names of eight others. The names of more than 25 people charged in the case remain sealed.

 Indictments 2019 




    

31 comments:

  1. So where is the information revealing “an unprecedented level of corruption within the Mexican government, local police departments, federal police agencies and military"???

    Will this information be made public or hidden behind a plea deal???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 6:50 that is "classified for reasons of US National Security"
      Even the criminals in power these days can't declassify any of it because they don't want their own crappy dirty linen out there hanging in the sun for all to see, nothing gets declassified before 50 years or so...

      Delete
    2. "Reyes was a top federal police commander and the highest-ranking member of Mexico’s Sensitive Investigation Unit. He served as a liaison with U.S. law enforcement officials, privy to sensitive information about some of the most important U.S. investigations into drug cartels.

      Turns out, Reyes was leaking the information to the cartels."

      Delete
  2. Interesting Dominguez wanted to replace less violent Gulf cartel bosses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's backwards, he wanted to replace the violent hotheads with more business oriented ones

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    2. @7:23 To draw less attention to border towns

      Delete
  3. A similar story about a very low-key Chinese trafficking/money laundering cell based in Guatemala.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/feds-say-chinese-drug-barons-laundered-us-coke-cash-in-guatemalan-casinos

    ReplyDelete
  4. You do the crime youll do the time

    ReplyDelete
  5. U.S. taxpayers paid $1,000,000 for information from an informant? Then put him in witness protection?

    While the middle class has been destroyed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The informant safety was at risk because the corrupt individual in charge of the mexican federal police was leaking information to the cartels.

      Delete
    2. @8:50 The war on drugs is very lucrative for a select few

      Delete
  6. Damn I thought the Mexicans don’t like running the Mexican drug game? Paisas hated la Barbie and the aztecas hate u.s born aztecas from running the gang

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Z 40 didnt seem to be disliked for being a us citizen for other reasons yea

      Delete
    2. 3:58 z40 aka zeta chorrienta and Judas is no US Citizen, he was an illegal alien landscap4er and brick layer with a local passport for his brothers for a while, also speaks some barrio english, but that is it.
      Mexican high level polesias are highly corrupt, since the mexican t3vokution got stolen by US ambassador henry Lane Wilson in cahoots with Madero secretary of defense and murderer "giniral" Victoriano Huerta...the highest level mexican polesias turned mass murdering torturer kidnappers and drug traffickers and the Mexican ginirals graduated from the School of the Americas (assassins) to qualify for their Diploma de Estado Mayor are all a creation of the US...sorry 'bout the bad news...

      Delete
  7. He's in custody in San Diego, currently going through the process, with two retained lawyers. There are at least 2 superseding indictments, the latest filed in 2018, I believe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. the one above is 2019

      hey thank you chivis for always looking beyond the news for us. This was an interesting read.

      Delete
  8. La Rana was the first Zeta 39

    ReplyDelete
  9. & to think that the good USA shares borders with that narco corrupted state. Organized crime is every where down there even in their federal government offices, agencies.

    All those criminal organizations from mexico need to be stopped before they destroy America with the poison they sell & the corruption they create.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The so called “Los Zetas paramilitary cartel” got smashed by the original Familia Michoacána who were the only ones to date to have taken care of these parasites. Today they’re nothing more than an unstructured gang of young bums.

    ReplyDelete
  11. How does Mexico stand a chance when the assholes that have access to the most highly classified info turn it over to the killers?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Interesting how dude was able to work with all these cartels without anyone getting pissed and whacking him- what does he need them for if hes already got his whole operation running.? Not like they were supplying him coke etc- this is an interesting 1

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are many independent drug trafficking orgs like this in Mexico. Most you will never hear about and they work with other cartels to use their smuggling routes in exchange for payment, they with buy in bulk with cartels or get product from them, share money launderers etc etc at the end of the day business is business

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    2. 9:38 being a mexican operations coordinator working for the americans and their mexican cartels is nothing new, ending as the fall guy is not very new either, even Barry Seal could not escape on his airplanes.

      Delete
    3. Even within cartels, families will work with independents for many reasons, to uses trafficking routes, use ports, protection, you don’t need to have a huge cartel to move dope and make bank

      Delete
  13. Cant compete with the CIA here in America, drugs for weapons has kept the CIA flush with cash and no one is the wiser!
    Imagine a military transport plane with tons of cocaine flying right into the country on a daily basis.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Much rather have the CIA supplying the cocaine to the whole USA. Than those deadly narco terrorist from mexico. Whom kidnapp, torture, butcher people up everywhere they go, everyday in that hell hole called mexico.

      Delete
    2. 10:29CIA does technically do everything you described they just don't go around filming it and posting it on the internet.

      Delete
  14. zeta?
    is he from Texas
    where did he grow up?
    any link to edgar la barbie valdez?
    is he a true zeta from tamps?

    ReplyDelete

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