Crystal Meth: From Sinaloa Cartel Labs to the Middle East

Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: Zeta

     Methamphetamine trafficking: From the laboratories of the Sinaloa Cartel to the Middle East

An investigation of US authorities carried out for more than a year, reveals how a group from Sinaloa managed to distribute methamphetamines from California to the United Arab Emirates through fraudulent parcel and postal service accounts.

It is common for drug traffickers to use the mail service to send packages with narcotics, but the mechanism designed by an organization of the Sinaloa Cartel in San Diego, California, to infiltrate the shipping systems of prestigious companies such as Ralph Lauren and reach destinations like United Arab Emirates, it was what caught the attention of a group of American detectives and prosecutors.

For more than a year, elements of more than 25 agencies monitored 43 members of this sophisticated network, bought drugs in a covert manner, while they recorded six months of communications through telephone calls, emails and messages encrypted systems of messaging such as WhatsApp and Signal.

The result was the accusation that the District Attorney's Office of the Southern District of California presented on Tuesday, May 21, after an operation that managed to capture 33 of these criminals, confiscate four firearms and around $100,000 dollars.

Matthew J. Sutton, prosecutor in charge of the case, stressed that the difference between this organization and others in the area lies in the level of sophistication with which it operated.

"These people created legitimate and illegitimate accounts of the FedEx parcel company or the United States postal service, but they also hung out of accounts that belonged to large established companies that send hundreds of thousands of packages a day and did not realize that these shipments, were invoiced in their name and used their reference numbers ", he detailed for ZETA .

In the words of the special agent of the Drug Control Administration (DEA), Karen Flowers, who led the investigation,  these were " white-collar criminals " for their schemes not only of drug trafficking, but also of money laundering.

According to information from the DEA, the methamphetamine that distributed this network to the United States and the Middle East was manufactured in the laboratories run by the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.

The Most Pure and Cheapest Crystal Meth:

During the investigation that began in April 2018, according to Flowers, authorities confiscated about 37 kilograms of methamphetamines through covert operatives and joint operatives.

These seizures helped the detectives learn how the network operated, not only in San Diego, but in other states and internationally, said the prosecutor in charge of the case.

According to Michael Barnett of the San Diego Sheriff's Department, a kilogram of this drug reaches a price of $ 2,000 in this city.

Compared to the prices recorded by local authorities between the late 1980s and early 1990s, the value of the drug is five times lower and its purity much higher. The reason that the price is much lower is that the drug traffic has increased across the border.

This has resulted in an epidemic that in 2017 left 10,000 people dead as a result of overdose and other complications caused by this drug.

Sutton explained that in San Diego alone, more than 50% of detainees prosecuted for property crime as theft, confessed that the motive for the crimes was to get money to buy crystal meth.

For her part, Karen Flowers highlighted that the drug trafficked by this organization reached levels of purity of up to 90%, one of the highest in the region.

The Success of the Organization:

Early on May 21, 2019, Ramón Anthony Hernández, 30, was caught in his apartment in downtown San Diego by federal, state and local agents who conducted a raid.

In the residence of the defendant they found a kilogram of meth, a kilogram of cocaine and about $100,000  dollars in bills of 20 and 100 that were exhibited at a press conference.

Although the Justice Department declared that no leaders of the organization have been identified, Hernández was one of the key objectives of the operation.

Along with 32 other defendants, he was presented before Federal Judge Linda Lopez in Federal Court on the morning of May 22, to hear charges related to drug trafficking and money laundering against him. The authorities continue to search for ten other defendants, who are at large.

In addition to the distribution of methamphetamines to twelve states of the American Union and the Middle East, this network he also trafficked, in smaller volume, liquid ecstasy.

According to the accusation made by the Prosecutor's Office, the drugs were sent from warehouses in San Diego to mini distribution centers in states such as Arizona, Texas, New York, Florida and Virginia.

The method was to use accounts on the Internet from the FedEx company and the United States Postal Service to make the shipments. In some cases, the managers created their own accounts, but the success of not being tracked was to use accounts of established companies.

Sutton added that due to the large volumes of packages handled daily, the companies did not detect that some of their accounts were used to make clandestine shipments.

Sinaloa Cartel Crystal Meth Coming to an Airbnb near you:

Each week, the organization sent several kilograms of drugs to hotels, homes and also rented residences through the Airbnb hosting application . His accomplices collected the packages in these directions and took them to distribution centers to continue with the process.

The scheme to return the money to the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel to Mexico was very similar. In some cases, the cash was sent by parcel service, but structured deposits were also made to bank accounts-below $ 10,000 to avoid filing reports with the Treasury-and made use of technology through electronic transfers and through the digital platforms PayPal, Zelle, Venmo and Cash App .

"One of the unique characteristics of this organization is that they were able to hide the drug packages as if they were legal shipments," said the prosecutor.