The Sinaloa Cartel is Prohibiting Local Car Thefts

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

At first glance, the truck looks like a normal vehicle: a late-model white Chevrolet Sierra. It has plates on the front and back, and the documentation seems to be in order, with the only difference being that the VIN numbers and the numbering on the engine do not match the data on the registration card: this is a “bent” car.

“They left it for 40 thousand pesos, but it is doubled; I can still sell it to an acquaintance, but I do have to tell him that the truck is bent,” confessed the owner of the truck, who for obvious reasons requested that his identity not be revealed.

According to authorities, a "dubbed" or "cloned" car, as it is known in other states, is when a corrupt state government highway employee takes a vehicle's registration numbers, including the VIN number and license plate number to transfer it to another unit of the same make, model, and color, in such a way that two cars end up with the same VIN and the same registration, but with the difference that one of them is legal and the other is "doubled".

An operator of the Sinaloa Cartel, to whom Ríodoce had access, said that "doubled" cars are the most common in Sinaloa, and that they have been going on for years, and the process is done thanks to corrupt employees from the state government who gets the numbers and makes copies of all the documentation so that whoever buys the vehicle “ doubled”, walks “straight”.

The number of doubled cars is unknown, and according to sources from the Tax Administration Service of the State of Sinaloa (SATES), it was a problem that had been occurring since previous administrations and that they are now trying to control.

Based on a request made to SATES about an approximate number of bent cars, they only needed to have identified five bent cars in Sinaloa, according to their database, and that two would have been used for criminal acts, one car with a report of motor vehicle theft, and two more cars that had overlapping VINs.

“There is a gang that operates in Culiacán, and that is stealing high-end trucks such as Cheyennes, Ford Lobo 4-door, 4 × 4, and we are trying to hunt down its members, because they are people who rob violently, and they are trucks. that are out there, although some of those units have been recovered, although many other units are dismantled and sold in parts”.

The Specialized Unit for Vehicle Theft is not the only one that would be hunting car thieves, since people who belong to cells linked to the different factions of the Sinaloa Cartel have indicated that they have strictly prohibited vehicle theft in the city.

“When we catch them doing their tailings, we hit them and tell them that, if they continue, they are going to die; and if he steals cars he doesn't pay attention, well, we already shot him and dumped the body in the desert, and sometimes we leave them a toy car (the so-called hot-wheels), so that the people in the gang know why they killed him,” said a hitman.

There are many legends about the reasons why the drug traffickers themselves want to put an end to the carjackers. One of them says that on one occasion they tried to take down Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada himself when he was driving to Culiacán, while others say that it was one of the boss' women who was taken down; Another theory among the members of the Sinaloa Cartel is that on one occasion they stole a van full of drugs and the order was to kill them all.

"There are people from the cartel who suddenly get the better of greed and there they go to steal cars, because they sell them and they win a fair, and well, they also fuck those because the bosses don't want the plaza to heat up," said the same gunman interviewed for this report.

The reality, according to the consensus, is that neither the faction of Mayo Zambada nor the people of Los Chapitos forgive a carjacker, and go after them, even - according to what they say - they use the help of the state police themselves to find who brings a stolen or cloned car.

Sergio Castro, a bodybuilder who has his workshop in the south of the city, would have to experience that reality, after, when leaving his house, he was intercepted by an armed group that beat him down and took him to a safe house, little more than two months.

"I thought they were going to kill me, but before killing me they wanted to know where the rest of the gang was, and they tortured me with blows, with boards, and with whatever they could", recalls the bodybuilder. His sin was buying a wrecked car from an insurance company, a vehicle that had everything in order and he spent weeks with it, until the drug traffickers detained him, to take him to a safe house near Tierra Blanca, where they asked him who he worked for and where was the rest of the gang.

“The compas were gunmen, they had horns (AK-47), and they even had photos of me, as if they had been following me for a long time because a bastard from the highway put his finger on me; These compas thought that I was stealing cars, but I told them where I got it from.” Castro explained.

Many times they do it with the consent of the state and municipal police, but not with the federal police, who, according to another member of the cartel, must be arranged at the time and given an amount as a bribe, which sometimes reaches the 100 thousand pesos.

Source Riodoce