El Chapo Trial:coked out captain hallucinates ghosts and Coast Guard, sinks ship with 20 Tons of Cocaine

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat

Chupeta, leader Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel, was back on the stand today in the federal trial of El Chapo in New York City.

Chupeta recounts a story about a 20 Ton load of cocaine that seemed to have a curse on it.  

In the early 90s Chupeta testified that he would send cocaine laden fishing boats from the Colombian waters to a couple hundred miles off the coast of Mexico where they would be unloaded.  One specific load was a whopping 20 tons and  was to be received by Amado Carillo Fuentes aka "El Señor de Los Cielos" [Juárez Cartel]. 

To the point of reaching Mexico, everything went as expected...then it didn’t.  The captain of vessel began using the product, a lot of it, enough to begin hallucinating. He began seeing U.S. coast guard vessels….then ghosts.  Chupeta says it was then he sunk the boat “with 20k kilos of my cocaine". 

Estimated value: 400 million dollars of cocaine sank to the abyss with the boat.

Chupeta immediately caught a plane to Mexico to figure out what happened.  He traveled narco style, by using fake documents.  In Mexico the Federal Police, who were in the back pocket of the Sinaloa Cartel, greeted Chupeta at the airport.

Chupeta along with Amado traveled to Acapulco, close to where the cocaine went down with the boat.  [Still today Acapulco is used as a transport point for drugs off shore]

They decided to use a helicopter to search for the missing boat.  He has they found “nothing, nothing other than the sea.”

Chupeta describes this moment as “sad”, very sad”.  He says he became depressed knowing it was gone forever.  “I said I knew they were never going to find it.”

He also related a story about him falling asleep on the return trip back to Aca.  He fell asleep with his mouth open and Amado took a photograph of him, and later teased him about it.

Astonishing part of the story…For a year Amado was on the search of  the boat.  And amazingly, they located it!  He sent divers in to recover the drugs.

Only part of the cocaine was damaged by sea water.  Chupeta says “The Carrillo Fuentes asked me to send a chemist because some of the cocaine was damaged when getting wet.”

Chupeta says it was the last time he sent a Mexican captain on his shipments, from then on he only used Colombian captains.

Describing another shipping disaster at sea, he said a boat carrying a 15 ton load, headed to Chapo, was lost during a hurricane. 

The Hurricane: “The boat disappeared, the crew disappeared, everything disappeared."

Chupeta spoke to Chapo about the lost drugs due to the hurricane.  The drugs were on Chapo’s boat. The boat disappeared, and Chapo communicated with Chupeta’s lieutenants in Mexico so they could speak to Chupeta by phone to Colombia about this situation.

He said that Chapo told him there was a hurricane in the Pacific. “ The boat disappeared, the crew disappeared, everything disappeared." Chapo said, I am going to send one of your lieutenants with my people by plane and we are going to go out to search for it.  Nothing but pieces of wood was found.

Chupeta says he spoke to Chapo about how to resolve the situation of the 14 tons of lost cocaine.

He says Chapo said it was out of his control, it was a hurricane, but let’s agree on a price, “you should give it to me at cost.”  Cost being the price in Colombia plus delivery price to Mexico.

“I said yes, that the cost per kilo of cocaine was approximately $2,000, plus a thousand dollars for transportation by ship, so the cost per kilo of cocaine would be $3,000.”  $42 million.

Chapo agreed to the price but said since it has been an accident [natural disaster] he should be able to pay in installments. 

But Chapo didn’t pay him, it was in 1993 the witness said, and Chapo was arrested in Guatemala. 

He spoke to Arturo Guzman and Arturo Beltran Leyva about the debt. "They told me we are going to take over the debt, Arturo said, you know, my brother's debt, and we need you to send cocaine from Colombia so that we can pay you back in installments, everything continues the same way."

Arturo Guzman said; we need to work hard [meaning sell cocaine] because my brother is now in prison, and we are working to see how we can get him out of there. 

Chupeta says he was paid and that it took more than a year.

An interesting story of negotiation that averted a conflict, when Amado accepted a boat drug shipment.  Amado said he would “settle up with Chapo later.”

Arturo Guzman

Gordo, a Chapo lieutenant was furious that Chupeta had delivered a shipment  to Amado.  Apparently there had been no one to pick up the shipment.  Amado offered to unload it and “settle with Chapo later.”  Chupeta  said he didn’t anticipate a problem.

And Amado’s boat did go out to accept and unload the shipment, and later it was transported to Los Angeles  successfully by Carrillo Fuentes.   He said he paid Amado for the transport and paid Chapo nothing.

Next, all hell broke loose.  And Chapo’s lieutenant Gordo, who Chupeta said was a coke addict, became furious, gave the two Chupeta guys an assignment.  He then met them there and abducted them, taking them to a safe house.

Chupeta says he was in Juarez with Amado when the kidnapping occurred and was told about by Amado.

Chupeta was asked what he did after being informed.  He said “I told Amado Carrillo to please talk to Mr. Guzmán Loera to resolve the situation, since he [Amado] had told me that when he received the boat from me that he would speak to him and there was going to be no problem.

Chupeta says his men were released and when he spoke to the two men… “Well, they were angry at me because they hadn't wanted to go to that meeting with El Gordo, and they said Gordo was furious because I delivered my boat with the cocaine to Carrillo-Fuentes, and then Gordo was pointing a gun at their head and saying “I'm going to kill you”.

He later spoke to Chapo about the situation, he says Chapo told him that “ It had been a problem with El Gordo, that we should leave that behind, that not to lose faith, and that and keep going forward.

He said he never had a problem with Gordo again.

He spoke about Gordo’s addiction. "Well, he generally had a little container, a vial that was gold-plated, with diamonds, with a little spoon which was gold-plated, also with diamonds.  And many times, when I was speaking to him, he would take his little vial out and use cocaine.    He would constantly do this."

Chupeta said at times Sinaloa cartel would have to get the blessing from El Azul for certain things.  Asked why, Chupeta says “Because he was the Godfather” the godfather of drug traffickers.  The upmost respected, revered, person.  Asked where they would meet with El Azul, he answered “in prison”.  He was shown a photo and asked if he knew who it was.  He said “Azul”  [Juan José Esparragoza Moreno]

BLO

Chupeta says on a trip to Mexico to meet Chapo, that Chapo introduced him to the Beltran Levya Brothers. Chapo said they were his “primos” and “his people”.  He said he understood that to mean they were people who belonged to the Sinaloa Cartel.

He was asked if Chapo say what he wanted Chupeta to do with the BLO brothers.

He answered “to send them airplanes with cocaine, to help the out.” He met with Hector, Arturo and Alfredo Beltran Leyva.

He next said Chapo arranged a meeting between him, El Mayo Zambada in  a Mexico City hotel.  He said he already knew Mayo.  Mayo tells Chupeta “Well, I already separated from the Arrellano-Felix and now I'm with my compadre, Mr. Guzmán Loera. We have problems with the Arrellano-Felixes and we wanted to let you know that.”

Chupeta said at the same meeting Mayo said “you're sending airplanes to Guero Palma. He said, You can continue doing that, that's my people. And he was saying all these nice things about Guero Palma, saying that he was a very courageous man and that he was at the war with the Arrellano-Felix.  He took that to mean that Guero Palma belonged to The Sinaloa Cartel, that they worked together.

He was asked what he thought all this meant.  He said nothing really, it wasn’t like they were saying not to work with AFO Mayo just wanted Chupeta to know what is going on.

But his intuition was that there was going to be issues affecting his business so he decided to stop doing business with AFO.

Chupeta's Drug Business

In the afternoon Chupeta’s testimony was a looooong drawn out and apparently boring explanation of his evolving business of the late 90’s and into 2000s.  This line of testimony took over 2 ½ hours.  Explaining his ditching U.S. retail sales and solely sold wholesale to Mexicans. Some jurors appeared to be sleeping.

Which is a problem I had anticipated.  Whereas someone like me would be fascinated.  But most Americans would be confused, bored and tune it out,  too much info, endless testimony, and too many witnesses. Even with Chupeta,  fascinating for many reasons.  If they are nodding off with him….and he is only the third CW to testify, it's going to get worse. . [2006 chart click image to enlarge]

He spoke of the ledgers next. And although he kept accounting himself for all transactions, when he fled Colombia, it was done by others.  He said his lieutenants.  I assert it was his parents who took over the duty.  They were the money people.

Cross begins tomorrow.

Below is Agreement by Chupeta to forfeit 10B

   Colombia drug trafficker  Chupeta Agrees to Forfeit 10B to the U.S. by Chivis Martinez on Scribd