Mexico: FAIL thread

[East Coast Hustle]

MS-13 isn't gonna like that much. In fact, I'm guessing the Zetas will get a nasty surprise if they seriously try to establish control of the drug trade in any major American city, whether it's MS-13, the Angels, the Yaks, or any of the black gangs.

They should stick to being wholesalers.

Also, I'm curious by what you mean by their old masters going after them now. Are you talking about the Gulf Cartel? I hadn't heard about the split. Are they independent now, then? Or are they going to swing to the Sinaloa Cartel?

[Jenne]

Well, since those American "tourists" (yeah, uh huh) were gunned down, the local colleges decided to send "Don't Spend Spring Break in Mexico" messages to all their students.  Fuck that...Baja's fine.  Maybe I'm drinking some horchata here, but I am thinking we'll be in Rosarito Beach come June.

[Cain]

Yeah, I've heard about the Zetas/Gulf split as well.  

What is really interesting is that Beltrán-Leyva took Los Zetas side in the split as well.  Beltrán-Leyva split from Sinaloa, the Gulf Cartel's biggest enemies, a year or so ago.  More importantly, Beltrán-Leyva brought with them Los Negros, the Sinaloan paramilitary unit set up in response to Los Zetas.

Now, I've found nothing to say which way Los Negros have gone in this falling out.  However, Los Negros have very good contacts with MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia, often farming out more low level work to them.  If they did follow Beltrán-Leyva, like they did before, then all three could become very serious players in the lower US and northern Mexico, assuming their alliance holds.  Los Zetas also have contacts within MS-13, but everything I've heard suggests these are not as good as Los Negros, possibly due to the membership of the former.

Edit: I gotta say, you have to admire the Beltrán-Leyva brothers, even if you admit they are complete bastards.  Their defection likely crippled Sinaloa in the short term, given how long they'd been in the business, and how tight they were with Guzman.  They also headed up the more violent end of the operation, and having your best troops walk out on you during what is basically a war is not exactly helpful.  Then, they not only walk out on the Gulf Cartel, but take their best soldiers with them.  Also, with many of the arrests of top Gulf Cartel men, the Zetas were increasingly controlling the enterprise before their defection.

So two of the biggest cartels are now significantly wounded, and the most capable from both of them are now operating in a new enterprise, one which is also allied with the rival Juarez and Tijuana cartels.  Assuming they can hold that together, that gives them most of the western half of the border as somewhere they can traffic drugs through.  All they'd need to do is take down Sinaloa to ensure a monopoly on drugs into the western United States.  Meanwhile, they can easily drop intel on their former employers to the Mexican feds and weaken them even more.

Like I said, bastards, but smart ones.

[Jenne]

I thought most of this was directed BY the Federalis?  That they issued an ultimatum that the Mexican Mafia had to oust the outsiders or be wiped off and outed?  My info is old and not recent at all, but everything I read on this pointed it to a government coverup disguised as a takeover.

[Cain]

It's hard to say.  There is local, regional and national corruption, and figuring out who pulls what strings is something of a guessing game.

For instance, the Mexican Feds probably did issue a warning...but on who's say so?  Was someone paid off, were guns put at the heads of family members?  Or was the pressure political?  Or did corrupt cops who were profiting from another group's largesse take the initative to try and force them out?  Ultimately, it seems the strings reside with the Cartel leaders, and the massive amounts of money they make has corrupted the political and legal system, making it impossible for them to respond as they should in theory.  They lead, and the rest follow.

[Jenne]

From what I heard on NPR as well as the local papers (our local NPR station tends to dish out a few "Mexico, Like WHOAH!" exposes every 6 mos or so), as well as what my husband has from his patients (I'd say about 75-80% of them cross the border daily, or near that statistic), it's a combination of all of the above, Cain.  The government issued warnings to preserve ties with local and state US officials, and also to keep its money from going further North into AZ, NM, etc.  So what looked like a crackdown was actually more of a corralling of all points south of the border and their various "agents."

This caused a lateral push so that there were not just local police being offed while the cartels jockeyed for key insider positions but also MAJOR drug family pointmen.  That is when you saw all hell breaking loose about 2-3 weeks into this thing, and I remember going down the 1N highway being stopped by blackhooded Mexican Federalis in fatigues with machine guns as we were on our way to the beach.  That was I think when they were "on the lookout" but really just making a weak stance to look powerful.  Cartel guys don't need to use the paid highways in Mexico for chrissakes, they could probably use a fucking goat track through the mountains if they wanted.

Anyway, it seemed that almost every level cracked down on every other level, to the point of boiling over, and you had the press even being targeted in TJ for covering the blood running down the streets.

Of course, there are so many repercussions and manifestations of the various actions taken by the Mexican Feds as well as the cartels, both outsider and insider, that it's almost like an Afghan war at this point.  Knowing who's on what team and why and where they got this and where they're going to, etc. is really heresay and innuendo until it's already over with.

[Cain]

http://www.krgv.com/news/local/story/Mexican-Cartels-Using-IEDs/OEcUIcNtJk6ixXN_T7PaKg.cspx

AUSTIN - The Mexican military seized improvised explosive devices just miles from the Valley.  The IEDs (or roadside bombs) are the same weapons terrorists use in the Middle East.

The homemade explosives can be sophisticated or crude.  They're often deadly.  They've killed troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

CHANNEL 5 NEWS learned the weapons are also in the hands of the drug cartels in Mexico.

On March 30, more than 50 cartel members attacked the Mexican military in Matamoros and Reynosa.  Eighteen people died.

Soldiers seized 50 rifles, 60 hand grenades, and eight IEDs.

"The seizure of the IEDs is definitely worrisome," says a Latin American tactical analyst for STRATFOR, a private intelligence agency.

CHANNEL 5 NEWS traveled to Austin to meet with the analyst.  We concealed his identity for security reasons.

"The construction of the devices that we've seen are similar to crude devices that are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq," he tells us.

He says the IEDs used in Matamoros and Reynosa were mining grade explosives.

"As you're experimenting with the craft of bomb making, there's going to be a learning curve to it," explains the analyst.

That means cartel bomb makers are getting more advanced.

The STRATFOR analyst says, "We've never seen them actually construct a device up until recently."

The Mexican military disabled an IED in Oaxaca, Mexico in February.  Another IED blew up in Nuevo Leon last month.

"The blast is going to have a much larger effect than a single rifle round," the analyst tells us.

We're told the danger is real.

"Once again, the risk of collateral damage - being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time," explains the STRATFOR analyst.

STRATFOR says the cartels are making more IEDs everyday. Right now, experts don't think they'll try to use them here in the U.S.  But they're not ruling anything out.

People who have live and work in Mexico say the IEDs are just one more thing to worry about.  They tell us it already feels like they're living in a war zone.

They say they never know if they'll encounter a shootout or even a roadside bomb.

The people we spoke to add they're worried about the future and what will be left behind for their children, after the cartel war.

I read elsewhere they were mining grade explosives, which actually makes them more advanced than Afghan IEDs

[Jenne]

The only good thing about cartels, is that they are usually focused on profits.

If they had a terrorist agenda it would really fuck things up.

They might just be pushed far enough to do that, if you want to know the truth.  I think, luckily, enough Mexicans give a shit not to let that happen (on each level of this shitty fucking mess).  But it's terribly, horribly sad what everyone's putting up with, and continues to put up with, because they feel they have to.

Mexicans have too much lose, apparently, to want to make it much different at this point.

[The Johnny]

Predator B aerial drones, which have proved successful fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, were deployed this week along the border between Texas and Mexico.

http://nwotruth.com/predator-b-drones-deployed-on-texas-mexico-border/

I apologize for the shitty news source, i couldnt find a better one.

Anyways, isnt it nice? 

[Cain]

If by successful, they mean "it got a fail-Jihadi to try and blow up Times Square in revenge, and kills 2 civilians for every suspected terrorist", then I dread to understand what they mean by unsuccessful.

Also, some more legit links http://www.texastribune.org/texas-mexico-border-news/texas-mexico-border/faa-approved-a-second-drone-to-patrol-over-texas/

This is also a part of a more general creep in use of military surveillance/weapons platforms being used in the USA in general http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/14/faa-drone-ruling-sought-h_n_611386.html

The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.

On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.

The obvious risks have not deterred the civilian demand for pilotless planes. Tornado researchers want to send them into storms to gather data. Energy companies want to use them to monitor pipelines. State police hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars' license plates. Local police envision using them to track fleeing suspects.

Of course, the use for which drones are most widely known for is entirely absent from the reasons why state officials in America would want to deploy them, right?

[The Johnny]

The National Transportation Safety Board held a forum in 2008 on safety concerns associated with pilotless aircraft after a Predator crashed in Arizona. The board concluded the ground operator remotely controlling the plane had inadvertently cut off the plane's fuel.

High tech + monkeys = LULZ

Also:

Some concerns will be alleviated when the FAA moves from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on GPS technology.

[Jenne]

The National Transportation Safety Board held a forum in 2008 on safety concerns associated with pilotless aircraft after a Predator crashed in Arizona. The board concluded the ground operator remotely controlling the plane had inadvertently cut off the plane's fuel.

High tech + monkeys = LULZ

Also:

Some concerns will be alleviated when the FAA moves from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on GPS technology.

Ugh.

[Cain]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

They found 128 black suitcases, packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100 million. The stash was supposed to have been delivered from Caracas to drug traffickers in Toluca, near Mexico City, Mexican prosecutors later found. Law enforcement officials also discovered something else.

The smugglers had bought the DC-9 with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.: Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America Corp., Bloomberg Markets reports in its August 2010 issue.

This was no isolated incident. Wachovia, it turns out, had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers. Wells Fargo & Co., which bought Wachovia in 2008, has admitted in court that its unit failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.

The admission came in an agreement that Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia struck with federal prosecutors in March, and it sheds light on the largely undocumented role of U.S. banks in contributing to the violent drug trade that has convulsed Mexico for the past four years.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.

Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June. Six Juarez police officers were slaughtered by automatic weapons fire in a midday ambush in April.

Rondolfo Torre, the leading candidate for governor in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down yesterday, less than a week before elections in which violence related to drug trafficking was a central issue.

"It's the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy," says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia's branch network.

"If you don't see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point," Woods says.

Cleansing Dirty Cash

Wachovia is just one of the U.S. and European banks that have been used for drug money laundering. For the past two decades, Latin American drug traffickers have gone to U.S. banks to cleanse their dirty cash, says Paul Campo, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's financial crimes unit.

Miami-based American Express Bank International paid fines in both 1994 and 2007 after admitting it had failed to spot and report drug dealers laundering money through its accounts. Drug traffickers used accounts at Bank of America in Oklahoma City to buy three planes that carried 10 tons of cocaine, according to Mexican court filings.

Federal agents caught people who work for Mexican cartels depositing illicit funds in Bank of America accounts in Atlanta, Chicago and Brownsville, Texas, from 2002 to 2009. Mexican drug dealers used shell companies to open accounts at London-based HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank by assets, an investigation by the Mexican Finance Ministry found.

The bank didn't react quickly enough to the prosecutors' requests and failed to hire enough investigators, the U.S. Treasury Department said in March. After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.

Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia's new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.

If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge, the U.S. government will, according to the agreement, drop all charges against the bank in March 2011.

Wells Fargo regrets that some of Wachovia's former anti- money-laundering efforts fell short, spokeswoman Mary Eshet says. Wells Fargo has invested $42 million in the past three years to improve its anti-money-laundering program and has been working with regulators, she says.

"I am sure Wachovia knew what was going on," says Marmolejo, who oversaw the criminal investigation into Wachovia's customers. "It went on too long and they made too much money not to have known."

At Wachovia's anti-money-laundering unit in London, Woods and his colleague Jim DeFazio, in Charlotte, say they suspected that drug dealers were using the bank to move funds.

Woods, a former Scotland Yard investigator, spotted illegible signatures and other suspicious markings on traveler's checks from Mexican exchange companies, he said in a September 2008 letter to the U.K. Financial Services Authority. He sent copies of the letter to the DEA and Treasury Department in the U.S.

Woods, 45, says his bosses instructed him to keep quiet and tried to have him fired, according to his letter to the FSA. In one meeting, a bank official insisted Woods shouldn't have filed suspicious activity reports to the government, as both U.S. and U.K. laws require.

[The Johnny]

Thanks for that; i did know about the candidate being killed and the aproximate death toll, but i had no idea about Fargo/Weico, and it sheds a whole new light on the situation - US government demanding Mexican authorities to "stop their mud people from bringing drugs to our babies" while they do jack-shit.

Yeah, and all the n00bz bawwwing about Irak and Afghanistan and waiting for 2012 while keeping a blind eye to their backyard full scale conflict.

[Cain]

Well you're all violent and angry brown people, so you might as well all be the same.  The only difference is Mexico is much closer, but the newscasters know how to pronounce the names of various cities in Iraq now.