El Lic and El Mini Lic Roll on Ratón

“Mica” for BorderlandBeat.com

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Dámaso López Núñez, El Licenciado, and his son Dámaso López Serrano, El Mini Lic, testified in the United States, regarding the operations of the Sinaloa Cartel and the involvement of Ovidio Guzmán López, El Raton in kidnappings, torture, and drug trafficking.

Dámaso López Núñez, El Licenciado

At the hearing on March 7, in which El Raton was notified about the extradition request made by the Department of Justice of the United States Government, the Attorney General's Office (FGR) announced that the Damasos revealed information about the alleged leader of the Minors, according to Reforma.

Dámaso López Serrano, El Mini Lic

Guzmán López is required by U.S. justice to be tried in the Federal Courts of the Northern Illinois and Southern Districts of New York, for 11 drug trafficking and money laundering charges, including the crime of criminal association to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana.

The Licenciado revealed to the US Department of Justice on January 30, that before the Chapo was extradited, all the money from the profits was distributed to Ovidio and Joaquín Guzmán López, as well as with Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, sons of the Sinaloa drug lord.

In his testimony, he recalled that after the extradition of Guzmán Archivaldo to the United States, on January 19, 2017, the Chapitos declared war on the Dámasos, despite the fact that Ismael Zambada García, El Mayo, called a meeting to avoid the internal rupture of the Sinaloa Cartel.

López Núñez also told the US authorities that Guzmán Loera ordered in 2009, to establish a drug and money trafficking route in Central America, so vehicles were hired from a "communications company."

In addition, he said that his comrade asked him to negotiate an illegal traffic route in Central America, after the Polar I ship was secured, with 6 tons of cocaine, off the coast of Chiapas, in February 2009.

"We hired [vehicles] in a communications company, they passed at least 3,000 kilos [of cocaine] and after they were received the money was sent to Panama," López Núñez said, adding that this route operated for several years and that later Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar assumed control of it.

Although he did not mention the name of the communications company in his testimony, a group of 18 Mexicans was arrested on August 20, 2012, when they were trying to enter Nicaragua, in a caravan of vans with fake logos of the Mexican television company Televisa, which transported 9.2 million dollars in cash that, according to the authorities of the Central American country, would be used in Costa Rica

For its part, the Minilic narrated that at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, Mayo organized a meeting between the sons of El Chapo and the Damasos to avoid an internal war in the Sinaloa Cartel, but its purpose failed.

Everyone left Sinaloa and traveled to a ranch owned by Mayo, located in "Mexico," where Guzmán Loera's children arrived armed.

"Conflicts arose between my family and El Chapo's family; we attended the meeting to resolve the conflicts," the Minilic said.

López Serrano recalled that this meeting ended with a request from the Guzmáns: "Either you work for El Chapo, or they work for you."

Israel Rincón Martínez

El Guacho

He also said that in October 2010, members of the Sinaloa Cartel kidnapped the hit man Israel Rincón Martínez, alias El Guacho, and took him to a security house, where he was tortured by El Ratón and his half-brothers Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar.

The Dámasos referred to it in their testimonies. They assured that it was El Chapo who ordered the murder of Rincón Martínez, apparently in retaliation for having killed a son of Manuel Fernández Valencia, alias La Puerca, an operator of the Sinaloa Cartel.

"In 2010, El Chapo ordered the death of Guacho, and I got a safe place to interrogate him. Iván and another shot at the Guacho, López Ñúñez said. "They took him to a house where I saw that Ovido and others who deprived him of his freedom, I saw when Ovido hit him with a baseball bat telling him that 'why was he waging war on El Chapo,'" the Minilic said.

As father and son told the US authorities, the torture session was recorded, and the video was one of the evidence in the trial against El Chapo in the Federal Court of the Eastern District of New York. The body of the Guacho was found in Navolato, Sinaloa, on October 10, 2010. The hitman had moved to the organization of the Beltrán Leyva, enemies of Guzmán Loera since 2008.

On the other hand, the Licenciado declared that "the Sinaloa Cartel is a global business" since he imported ephedrine from Argentina and fentanyl from China through Central America and built his largest synthetic drug laboratory in Huatabampo, Sonora.

According to López Núñez's testimony before the United States authorities, during "the first decade of this century, Edgar Guzmán López, Ovidio's brother, was responsible for introducing the raw material of methamphetamines into the country."

"Édgar imported ephedrine juice from Argentina, in buckets of 25 kilos, between 300 and 400 thousand dollars, and Ovidio and Joaquín Guzmán López supplied the juices. The laboratories around Culiacán produced methamphetamine with the ephedrine it brought from Argentina," said the Ministry.

"From April 2008 to 2017, the production of methamphetamine was operated in Huatabampo, Sonora; they produced methamphetamine. El Chapo told me that this would be the largest methamphetamine laboratory in Mexico," López Serrano added.

"I spoke with El Chapo to talk about the price of fentanyl, and they sent people to China, in 2013 and 2014, to bring fentanyl and put it in Central America," López Núñez said in his testimony before agents of the United States Department of Justice.

The name of the Sinaloa drug lord Dámaso López Núñez could no longer be found in the prison search engine of the Federal Penitentiary Bureau (BOP) of the United States, which at the end of February 2021 assigned him the registration number 92429-083.

In addition, US authorities indicated that the former compare of Chapo, was imprisoned in the USP Canaan Penitentiary, a minimum security detention camp located in Wayne County, northeast of Pennsylvania.

For its part, the Minilic was released on Friday, September 16, 2022, according to the official registration number 63436-298 of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). However, on September 17 of that same year, at the request of the Attorney General's Office (FGR), the United States Department of Justice reported that López Serrano was being prosecuted for several crimes in the United States.

Faced with this, the Mexican law enforcement institution said it would insist on the extradition of the Licenciado's son to Mexico for being singled out as the alleged mastermind of the murder of journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas, co-founder of the weekly Ríodoce and correspondent of the newspaper La Jornada, murdered on May 15, 2017, in Culiacán, Sinaloa.

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