Los Chapitos Sought to Expand Fentanyl Trafficking into Israel, the Middle-East and New Zealand

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

From a Milenio Article

“Start looking into the possibility of opening up markets in countries like Jordan, Israel, and New Zealand,” one of the leaders of a Sinaloa Cartel cell told another member of the organization during a call intercepted by Mexico's Attorney General’s Office (FGR) in October 2023. 

The person on the other end identified in the case file as the operative responsible for smuggling drugs across the Mexicali-Calexico border and distributing them in the United States, took weeks to revisit the topic. However, when he did according to the report by investigators who analyzed the audio, he confirmed that the plan would indeed go ahead: they would open markets in those three countries, starting with Israel, and divide up the territories as opportunities arose.

"El Mero Mero" Hernán Domingo Ojeda López, the godfather and uncle of Ovidio Guzmán Lopez, was arrested in December 2024. According to FGR records, his organization had been discussing the possibility of diversifying its market beyond the United States for months until the end of 2023. 

The three countries mentioned appear at least twice in the intercepted communications, suggesting that the idea was not brought up in passing, but rather revisited and discussed at various times over several weeks. 

Countries like Jordan, Israel, and New Zealand, in fact, were geographically closer to the Chinese supply route than the United States, the cartel's traditional market.

A report from the Federal Center for Criminal Intelligence, dated December 2023, located the destination of the supplies: “The trafficking of precursors for fentanyl originates in China, entering through seaports such as Mazatlán and Topolobampo.”

The words they used to refer to the drug were simply “blue,” “purple,” “white,” or “green,” never fentanyl. In another audio recording cited in the FGR file that forms part of the injunction, one of the Sinaloa Cartel operatives even compared it to a formal business: “We are like a company, a company with business operations; in recent days, it wasn't profitable because prices are falling and we weren't making much profit, it wasn't profitable.”

When the organization referred to “Los Angeles,” “The Towers,” or “Disney” in code, it wasn’t just talking about tourist destinations. According to the indictment, these nicknames disguised or concealed real U.S. cities where the network distributed fentanyl produced in Sinaloa: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Jacksonville, Bakersfield, Arizona, and Ohio, among others.

The group produced fentanyl in clandestine laboratories n the municipalities of Pericos and Culiacán, Sinaloa. From there, it was packaged and transported to Mexicali, Baja California, where the person in charge of “providing the logistics for the drug crossing into the United States” coordinated its departure across the border at Calexico. 

The fentanyl packages were then hidden among drums of caustic soda and in metallized bags, to cross the Mexicali-Calexico border into the United States.

According to the file, the supplies for producing fentanyl, caustic soda, benzene, methylene, were purchased in China. One of the cartel's operatives explained this to the other in another intercepted call:
“The product he buys in China costs him $2,500, and bringing it here costs $5,000 [...] from one kilo, he gets another kilo.”

Source Milenio

Categories: australia, CDS, europe, fentanyl, sinaloa cartel