368 Arrested, 131 Rescued In California Sex Trafficking Operation

368 Arrested, 131 Rescued In California Sex Trafficking Operation Authored by Jack Bradley via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Authorities arrested 368 people and rescued 131 victims involved in human trafficking in a weeklong statewide multi-agency task force, announced Feb. 1. A massage parlor in Los Angeles County on Aug. 4, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) “We know that the sex trade is a prolific one that exists throughout this state and throughout our nation,” said Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Michel Moore . “It’s an ugly scar against this great country that exists too oftentimes in plain sight.” Operation Reclaim and Rebuild was conducted between Jan. 22 and Jan. 28 in nine counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino, Moore said at a news conference at the department’s Elysian Park Academy. Numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies were involved in the effort, including the LAPD, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. The victims’ ages ranged from 13 to 52, including six children, and the average age was the mid-20s, Moore said. Investigators worked with victim advocacy groups in providing services and resources “to help [victims] escape from this life-threatening environment,” he said. Investigators responded to various advertisements offering sexual services and went to massage parlors suspected of being involved in trafficking. Among the arrestees were pimps and panderers, along with customers of such services, Moore said. The victims are being exploited by “threat of death” or coercion, or threats against their family, while some are kidnapped and isolated from their former support to become dependent on the trafficker, according to Moore. Moore noted that “in the old days,” the victims of human traffickers were often regarded by law enforcement as criminals, but a more modern attitude is to regard them as having been exploited by criminals—many of them having been kidnapped and held against their will. Authorities stressed that the seven-day task force is only a part of law enforcement agencies’ everyday effort to combat sex trafficking. Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore speaks during a vigil with members of professional associations and the interfaith community at Los Angeles Police Department headquarters in Los Angeles, on June 5, 2020. (Mark J. Terrill/File/AP Photo) Victims are sometimes brought in from other states or countries, said David Cox, COO for ZOE International, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps victims recover once rescued locally and internationally. Cox said his organization, partnering with a similar Los Angeles-based nonprofit Saving Innocents, has cared for 489 youth victims of sex trafficking this past year, with some as young as 11. “In our city, kids are being raped 20 to 30 times a day,” he said. Journey Out, another LA-based nonproft combating human trafficking, cared for 256 adult victims last year, Cox said. He said sex trade is a violent industry, as some of these victims have been pistol-whipped, jumped out of moving vehicles to escape, chased down and beaten, gone missing, or lost their lives. “Traffickers are master predators. They’re on the hunt for vulnerable kids and adults,” he said. City News Service contributed to this report. Tyler Durden Fri, 02/03/2023 - 20:20.....»»

In the early morning hours of December 20, 1989, Delta Force operators descended on a Panamanian prison holding CIA operative Kurt Muse. Panamanian Defense Forces Headquarters in Panama City after its destruction during the US invasion on December 27, 1989.AP Photo/Matias Recart Early on December 20, 1989, Delta Force operators descended on a Panamanian prison holding a CIA operative. The operation, conducted at the start of the US invasion of Panama, brought Muse home safely. It was the first successful hostage rescue for the US Army's elite special missions unit. This story was first published in December 2020.On the night of December 20, 1989, the US invaded Panama to overthrow dictator Manuel Noriega.This small-scale conflict was full of special operations — some of them successful, others not — involving Rangers, Navy SEALs, and Green Berets.But it was also the first time that Delta Force successfully completed a large-scale hostage rescue.Old partner, new enemyGen. Manuel Noriega with supporters in Panama City's Chorrilo neighborhood on May 2, 1989.John Hopper (Associated Press)Historically, the US had a turbulent and colorful relationship with Noriega. He had been a longtime CIA associate but was also known for drug trafficking. After the Iran-Contra operation was exposed, Noriega's utility to the US diminished.As relations between the two countries deteriorated, Noriega went on the offensive, arresting Kurt Muse — a CIA operative who owned a publishing company in Panama — on espionage charges and threatening to execute him.Noriega kept Muse in the squalid and overcrowded Modelo Prison. The prison was in downtown Panama City, close to the Comandancia, which was Panama's Pentagon, and within sight of US Southern Command headquarters.To make matters worse, Noriega told Muse that he would be killed on the spot if there was a rescue attempt. To back up his threat, the Panamanian strongman ordered a guard be outside Muse's cell at all times, tasked with killing the American in the event of a rescue operation.On December 16, Panamanian troops attacked a civilian vehicle carrying four American officers going out for dinner, killing one and wounding another. Operation Acid Gambit was a go.A bold planDelta operators from 2 Troop, A Squadron in Latin America weeks before the operation.Courtesy photoThe intelligence for the operation wasn't the best, and the Delta planners had to rely on the reports of an American doctor who had been tending to Muse. From him, they learned where Muse was located and the general layout of the building.The final plan was to land on the roof, breach the rooftop door, and descend two floors to reach Muse's cell. The assault force would then fly away on the Little Birds with their precious cargo.Delta Force's 2 Troop, A Squadron, was given the task of rescuing Muse. Four MH-6 Little Bird helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as "the Night Stalkers," would land 23 Delta operators on the prison's roof.Lt. Col. Eldon Bargewell, a legendary commando and A Squadron's commanding officer, was the operation's overall commander.In the months prior to the mission, the Delta operators practiced the mission multiple times. The assault force pre-staged at Howard Air Force base in Panama, which was only a short flight from the prison.The operation would kick off 15 minutes prior to the main invasion to ensure surprise.6 minutes to freedomA Delta operator known as "Falcon" getting ready in the hangar before the operation.Courtesy photoMinutes before 1 a.m. on December 20, the assault force launched.As the assault force approached Modelo Prison, two AC-130 Spectre gunships and several AH-6 Little Birds, which were the attack version of the MH-6, began pounding the Comandancia to draw attention away from the inbound rescuers.The four MH-6 Little Birds put the assault force on top of the prison, but almost immediately Panamanians came streaming out of adjacent buildings and began shooting at them.The Delta Force rescue element headed to the rooftop door while the security element provided cover fire, with snipers taking out guards on the nearby towers and assaulters with machine guns laying waste in the courtyard.The breachers had prepared a powerful charge for the rooftop door, expecting it to be heavily fortified. But it proved to be an ordinary door, and the blast from the charge shook the whole building.As the rescue team entered the prison, they encountered some resistance, killing two guards and cuffing another who was unarmed and offered no resistance, displaying the target discretion that Delta is known for even in the most chaotic situations.At the cell, "the guys had to blow Kurt's door with another charge," a Delta veteran told Insider. "They told him to hide in his little bathroom area so he wouldn't be blown to pieces by the flying door."Meanwhile, an operator who had roped down from the roof was hanging outside Muse's cell window to ensure that the guard who was supposed to kill Muse was neutralized, but that precaution ended up not being necessary.Once inside the cell, the Delta operators gave Muse a helmet, body armor, and goggles for protection before heading back to the MH-6s.Only six minutes had passed between when the Delta operators landed on the roof and the moment they called in the orbiting helicopters for extract — "six minutes that lasted an eternity," wrote Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time.It ain't over till it's overThe downed MH-6 Little Bird that carried Muse.American Helicopter MuseumAn MH-6 Little Bird took off with Muse from the roof but immediately dropped straight to the ground because of the weight. The Night Stalker pilots managed to level the bird and "drive" down a street before landing in a graveyard.As the battered MH-6 tried to take off again, it came under withering enemy fire. One operator was hit in the chest and fell out of the chopper 20 feet to the ground, as did another one who tried to grab him.The Little Bird crashed-landed, wounding the other two operators. One of them, Sgt. 1st Class James Sudderth, lost several toes when the chopper's skids trapped his foot, but Sudderth was able to lift the machine enough so he could escape.The Night Stalker pilots and Muse, however, were unharmed.The wounded operators set up a hasty defensive position in a nearby building and used an infrared strobe light to signal their location to aircraft overhead. A few minutes later, armored personnel carriers, carrying Delta operators and medics from the main invasion force, rescued them.The AH-6 Little Bird that was shot down near the Comandacia in Panama City.Courtesy photoAll the operators managed to recover from the crash and deploy again."Despite his wounds, 'Conan' continued to serve in the Unit, even graduating from the Combat Diver school, hands down one of toughest special operations courses in the Army," a Delta operator who served with Sudderth told Insider, using Sudderth's nickname.Nearby, one AH-6 was shot down around the Comandancia, but the Night Stalker pilots flying it managed to escape to safety.Delta had participated in the failed rescue of Americans held hostage in Iran in 1980, which led to changes to the special-operations command structure and the creation of the Night Stalkers.With Muse's successful rescue almost 10 years later, the ghosts of Desert One were laid to rest.Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. He is working toward a master's degree in strategy and cybersecurity at the Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

JPMorgan Sued By Virgin Islands Over Jeffrey Epstein's Alleged Sex-Trafficking Operation The US Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan Chase for allegedly reaping financial benefits from Jeffrey Epstein's pedo sex-trafficking operation and failing to report suspicious banking activity. "Over more than a decade, JPMorgan clearly knew it was not complying with federal regulations in regard to Epstein-related accounts as evidenced by its too-little too-late efforts after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and shortly after his death, when JPMorgan belatedly complied with federal law," said US Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George in a Thursday complaint reported by CNN. The new lawsuit comes less than a month after Epstein's estate settled with George for over $105 million dollars, along with an agreement that the estate will liquidate Epstein's islands and cease business operations in the region. "Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan," reads the filing. The lawsuit claims that JPMorgan Chase failed to make proper regulatory filings that could have tipped off the government to Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring of underage girls through private islands he owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In particular, the government argues that JPMorgan Chase should have given Epstein closer scrutiny as a client after he entered a guilty plea to soliciting prostitution with a minor in Florida in 2008. -CNN The bank had no comment as of Wednesday evening. The lawsuit comes after two anonymous Epstein victims slapped JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank with civil lawsuits which claim that the banks enabled and benefited financially from Epstein's sex trafficking operation. According to the civil suit, JPMorgan is accused of having "provided special treatment to the sex-trafficking venture, thereby ensuring its continued operation and sexual abuse and sex-trafficking of young women and girls." "Without the financial institution’s participation, Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme could not have existed," the filing continues. Epstein was awaiting trial in 2019 on federal charges accusing him of operating a sex trafficking ring between 2002 - 2005 across several properties, when he was found dead in his prison cell. Tyler Durden Thu, 12/29/2022 - 15:00.....»»

Aussies Bust Men Smuggling 65 Lbs Of Meth Inside 3D Printers Two men accused of being senior members of an international crime syndicate have been charged in Taiwan over a plot to smuggle 30g (66 lbs) of methamphetamine into Western Australia inside of 3D printers. On Saturday, authorities announced that two men, aged 33 and 36, were arrested in July and October of this year after the Australian federal police identified them as part of Operation Ironside - a sting between the AFP and US FBI in which they intercepted every single message posted via the AnOm encrypted communications platform for three years beginning in 2018, The Guardian reports. AFP assistant commissioner Pryce Scanlan said one of the men came to the AFP’s attention after communications intercepted on An0m allegedly indicated he had coordinated more than 30 methamphetamine importations into Australia in 2020. "Intelligence indicates he and his syndicate were attempting to import quantities of up to 100kg at a time," said Scanlan. "We suspect they were operating long before we started monitoring them and were involved in multiple other drug trafficking plots targeting Australia." The plot was discovered by the AFP in partnership with the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), who discovered the 3D printer plot. It is alleged the 3D printer was to be used to import the methamphetamines into WA. Photograph: Australian federal police The drugs were intercepted in the US before the reached Australia, while the Taiwan Criminal Investigation Bureau was able to arrest the 33-year-old suspect in late July in New Taipei City. The 36-year-old, alleged to be the right-hand man of the first arrestee, was found in Taoyuan City, Taiwan and arrested in early October, according to the AFP. They have both been charged with illegal transportation of a category 2 narcotic and face life in prison if convicted in Taiwan. "This organised crime group has caused significant harm to the Australian community for a number of years, as well as causing harm offshore," said Scanlan, who added that the AFP is still investigating potential links to the crime syndicate over foiled imports into Western Australia. "We allege this operation has taken out two senior members of a TSOC [transnational serious and organised crime] syndicate and disrupted their gateway to import illicit commodities into Australia, which is a significant win for the community." According to the AFP, the street value of the seized drugs was around $45 million. Tyler Durden Sun, 12/18/2022 - 23:10.....»»

Disney Employee, School Teacher Among 160 Arrested In Florida Human Trafficking Sting A Disney employee, a corrections officer, and several school teachers were among 160 people arrested in a seven-day long undercover human trafficking sting in Polk County, Florida. According to WAFB9, the operation - "Fall Haul 2" - resulted in 52 felonies and 216 misdemeanor charges. One of the more notable arrests was that of 41-year-old computer technician for Oak Ridge High School, Cameron Burke, who was out on bond for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student that began in 2020. Other notables include a deputy Georgia police chief, a high school math teacher, a bellhop employed by Disney, and a freelance photographer often contacted by Disney. The bellhop, Guillermo Perez, 57, was arrested after trying to have sex with an undercover detective for $80, while the freelance photographer, 26-year-old Samy Claude, reportedly offered an undercover cop a bag of sour Skittles. The correctional officer, Keith Nieves, 24, was arrested on two counts of soliciting a prostitute. The Georgia Deputy Police Chief, Jason DiPrima, 49, allegedly gave an undercover detective $180 and a multi-pack of White Claws. "He is no longer a police officer in Cartersville, Georgia, and he needs to work on reconstructing his life with his family. He did a very mean, nasty thing to his family and he certainly embarrassed all the people of Cartersville," said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd during a press conference. "The Cartersville Police Department is a very professional police department in Georgia and they didn’t deserve what Jason (DiPrima) did." The oldest of the arrests is 64, while the youngest is 19 years old, according to officials. Out of the 160 arrests, 15 people were from states other than Florida, and one was from Puerto Rico. Of the people who were arrested, police say 26 of them said they were married. Detectives also said they seized cocaine, heroin, meth, MDMA and marijuana from those they arrested as well. -WAFB9 "Where would we be with an undercover operation and no Disney employees? Oh yes, we always have Disney employees," joked Judd. Tyler Durden Tue, 09/13/2022 - 18:30.....»»

Catalytic Kingpin: Cops Charge Portland Man With Trafficking 44,000 Stolen Converters Police in the Portland, Oregon suburb of Beaverton have arrested a man they say led a catalytic converter trafficking ring that moved more than 44,000 of the stolen devices since the beginning of 2021.   Police say that Brennan Patrick Doyle's operation trafficked stolen converters in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Texas and New York. Doyle is one of 14 people facing indictments so far in an operation that police had been monitoring since March. Doyle alone was hit with 72 charges that include money laundering, aggravated theft and racketeering.  The 44,000 converters had an estimated street value exceeding $22 million, according to the Associated Press: The crime ring shipped boxes of converters to the East Coast and internationally, [Beaverton Police spokesman Matt] Henderson said. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people may have been involved in the operation, he added, but declined to share more details because the investigation is ongoing.  When police searched Doyle's waterfront home on Lake Oswego and seven other properties, they found 3,000 catalytic converters, jewelry, a high-end car and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. “The defendants in this case were living a nice life,” said Henderson at a press conference.  Beaverton interim police chief Stacy Jepson in front of a heap of stolen catalytic converters (via The Oregonian/Oregon Live) Nationwide, converter theft insurance claims skyrocketed 1,215% between 2019 and 2021, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.  Catalytic converters reduce toxic vehicle emissions and have been mandatory equipment on U.S. cars since 1975. They're prized because they contain valuable metals such as palladium, rhodium and platinum, giving a typical converter a value of around $800 when the metals are extracted. Best of all from a thief's perspective, they're low-hanging fruit -- vulnerably located on the vehicle's underside between the engine and the muffler. “The people that are removing them from vehicles are so adept at doing so, that it’s almost like a pit crew at a NASCAR race,” Henderson told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “I mean, they can get these things off in seconds.” That's usually accomplished with a battery-powered reciprocating saw. Lacking vehicle identification numbers, the devices aren't traceable. Some people have taken to defending their catalytic converters by installing metal cages around them, which might cost $500 to $750. On the other hand, depending on the model and damage done to other parts, replacing a catalytic converter could cost upwards of $2,500 to $3,000.   According to Progressive Insurance, some thieves favor older catalytic converters because they contain more metal. However, other thieves prefer newer ones, which tend to have more pristine and thus more easily-salvaged metal. Since converters in hybrid vehicles tend to get less use, their metals are usually in the best shape.  That makes older hybrids attractive to catalytic converter thieves of all tastes. In 2021, the Highway Loss Data Institute found that Toyota Prius cars manufactured between 2004 and 2009 had a particularly high theft claim frequency.  Since they make for easier work, thieves really like high-clearance vehicles. Due to their high numbers and high clearance, Ford F-Series pickup trucks have been the top target of all.  Tyler Durden Fri, 08/12/2022 - 11:05.....»»

Holland Has Become "Narco State 2.0": Police Union Chief The President of the Dutch police union, Jan Struijs, says the Netherlands has become a 'narco-state,' in which drug dealing criminals are operating a parallel economy which has had deleterious effects - including higher housing prices, and legal businesses turning into fronts for money laundering. "I call the Netherlands a narcostate 2.0 because the drugs pump so much money into the legal economy that it takes over," Struijs told Swedish broadcaster SVT, adding "It undermines democracy but also the economy." What's more, criminals are threatening people to get their way - influencing everyone from local politicians, entrepreneurs, civil servants, journalists and lawyers, according to the report. SVT notes the case of veteran crime journalist Peter R. de Vries, who was shot last year in the streets of Amsterdam, dying several days later. The journalist had been advising a witness in the high-profile "Marengo" crime gang trial, for which the gang's leader, Ridouan Taghi, was extradited to the Netherlands in 2019. Also noted was the death of lawyer Derk Wiersum, who was shot dead in 2019 while representing the star witness in the trial. In total, 17 people from the Moroccan (or 'Morco') mafia were charged with six killings and several attempted murders. In 2021, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was placed under police protection in response to fears over an attack by the Morco Mafia - which France24 describes as a North African criminal organization tied to cocaine trafficking. The group operates out of the Netherlands and Belgium and controls a third of all cocaine traffic in Europe. One police union chief said in 2019 that the Netherlands was becoming a narco-state. The 2014 novel “Mocro Maffia”, co-authored by Marijn Schrijver and Wouter Laumans, coined the term and brought the criminal gang to the public’s attention, recounting how a group of Moroccan jewellery thieves in Amsterdam created one of Europe’s most powerful criminal organisations. After its success in the Netherlands, the book was made into a TV series.   "Is it worth dying for? Do I want my kids to grow up without a father? Do I want my children to grow up in a narco-state? These are the kinds of things I’m thinking about," journalist Jens Olde Kalter told SVT regarding the danger. In March, 2016, a gang left the severed head of a rival on an Amsterdam street, according to Breitbart, which has extensively covered Dutch crime. More on the Morco mafia, via France24: From cannabis to cocaine   Founded in the 1990s, the group is made up of dozens of different clans that traffic cocaine and synthetic drugs through Europe. Its name comes from the Dutch slur “Mocro”, used for people of Moroccan descent living in Belgium or the Netherlands. The organisation’s motto is, “Wie praat, die gaat” – “Whoever talks, dies”.  The organisation began by smuggling hashish from Morocco to Europe before growing into one of the most powerful cocaine trafficking cartels in the Netherlands and then in Belgium in the 2010s.   “They started in the ’90s selling cannabis resin. They know the people who sell it in the [Moroccan] Rif region and became skilled in contraband. Then some of them branched out into cocaine, which is a lot more lucrative. They were able to get direct contacts in areas where it is produced and then establish themselves as major players in the industry, which before was a monopoly controlled by Italian mafia organisations like the ’Ndrangheta,”  explained David Weinberger, an associate research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) and an expert in illicit drug trafficking.  By developing direct links with Colombian and Mexican cartels, the Mocro Mafia traffic cocaine through the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam. Police drug hauls at the ports have become increasingly common, and Europol now considers Belgium and the Netherlands to be the nerve centre of cocaine trafficking in Europe.   “There have recently been seizures of dozens of tonnes of cocaine, which is huge. To give you an idea, the annual consumption of cocaine on the French market in 2010 (the most recent available data) is estimated to be 15 tonnes,” said Weinberger.   The group’s terrifying kingpin   According to investigations by Dutch journalists, one man has been at the head of this gigantic operation between 2015 and 2017: Ridouan Taghi, the son of Moroccan immigrants, who has made a name for himself through his extremely violent methods.   Taghi was arrested in Dubai in 2019 and stands accused of having ordered the assassinations of nine people. His trial began in Amsterdam in March 2021. The 43-year-old is currently being held in a high-security prison in Vught in the Netherlands. Many of those who have testified at his trial have asked for anonymity, fearing reprisals from the Mocro Mafia.     Read more here... Tyler Durden Mon, 08/08/2022 - 02:45.....»»

In 1985, US agents had a chance to stop Mexico's top drug lord. Years later, evidence from that night proved valuable in a way no one could predict. Reuters; John Moore/Getty Images; Rachel Mendelson/InsiderOne night in 1985, US agents may have had a chance to stop the rise of Mexico's most powerful drug lord — a chance they quickly gave up without knowing it. But the evidence gathered that night would prove valuable in a way no one could predict. If he'd blinked he might have missed them.The pair of cars were parked window to window, just off the side of Highway 67, nine miles north of the tiny border town of Presidio, Texas. As David Ramirez cruised by in his dun-colored U.S. Border Patrol sedan, the night sky outside the range of headlights was so pitch-black that he could have been forgiven for not spotting the vehicles.    Ramirez guessed that something was up. Slowing the cruiser, he banged a quick U-turn and headed back. "They were on the side of the road, at that time of night, in that area, which was known for drug trafficking," Ramirez recalled. "And there wasn't any other traffic. We were out there in a patrol vehicle and we saw maybe two other vehicles in a three-hour time span."It was May 1985, and Ramirez had only been with the Border Patrol for two and a half years. But at a posting as remote as southwest Texas, where only a handful of agents were stationed at the time, that qualified him to train the new guy. So, in the passenger seat sat his partner for the evening, a trainee agent learning the ropes as they cruised along this ribbon of pebbles, dust, and potholes masquerading as a state highway.As Ramirez maneuvered his patrol car, two pairs of headlights came on, two engines rumbled to life, and two cars peeled out. A late-model pickup truck went first, and, following closely behind, a big-body, white Mercury Grand Marquis. They were headed south, toward Presidio, and toward Mexico.Ramirez spun the cruiser around once again and sped off in pursuit, flashing his red-and-blues to signal the drivers to stop. The two vehicles ignored him.The Mercury wasn't going that fast, 60, maybe 70 miles-per-hour, but it acted as a sort of rearguard, allowing the driver of the pickup truck to put more and more distance between himself and the Border Patrol agents giving chase. This went on for a while, five minutes maybe. Finally, with the pickup truck out of sight, the driver of the Mercury eased to the side of the road and crunched to a stop. Ramirez knew it was a feint designed to let the other driver — and whatever cargo he might be carrying — get away. But he also knew that at the end of that road, just before the international port of entry, was a Border Patrol station. He radioed ahead for agents to be on the lookout, and turned his focus to the Mercury.Carefully opening his door, Ramirez climbed out of the cruiser, unclasped the snap on his holster, and drew his .38-caliber service revolver, holding it at a downward angle. It had been dark for hours, but in these parts even after midnight  in late spring can be mind-bendingly hot. The thermostat hovered around 95 degrees and the night air hung heavy like a blanket. As Ramirez approached the Mercury from the driver-side door, his heart rate quickened. The ambient sounds of the desert night, the buzz of insects and snuffling of wild javelinas, receded into the background. His training — and his survival instinct — kicked in to guide him. The trainee, armed with a shotgun, mirrored the more experienced agent and sidled toward the car from the passenger side. Speaking in Spanish through the rolled down window, the driver had an easy-does-it, friendly manner. With the trainee standing back, Ramirez holstered his revolver and requested the suspect's documents. The driver obliged.One was a border-crossing card, issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, that allowed Mexicans living close to the border to cross back and forth for errands and jobs.The other document identified the driver as an agent of the Federal Security Directorate, or DFS, a powerful — and phantasmagorically corrupt — branch of Mexico's federal law enforcement. For Ramirez, this didn't prove the man was a cop. The DFS was notorious for its connections to drug traffickers, and its agents were known to hand out fake badges to the smugglers they worked with. But he couldn't be sure the man wasn't a cop.Ramirez asked the man if he had any weapons, and the driver said no, no guns. But peering into the Marquis, Ramirez could see a box of ammo sitting on the passenger seat, clear as day. He asked again. No weapons? You sure about that?David Ramirez (r); John Moore/Getty Images; Rachel Mendelson/InsiderThe driver made no attempt to keep the lie going and admitted that, sure, he had a small gun in the trunk. On Ramirez' orders, the driver opened the door and walked around to the rear to pop the trunk. The "small gun" turned out to be a loaded AR-15 assault rifle.Ramirez eyed the driver more closely now. He stood about six feet tall, trim and lanky, and dressed like a well-heeled cowboy, with nice boots and well-fitting clothes. Despite everything, he seemed relaxed. Ramirez gave the driver a careful patdown and, finding no other weapons on him, escorted him back to the Border Patrol cruiser and directed him into the back seat, locking him in there but deciding not to place him in handcuffs, given the DFS badge."In any law enforcement, I would say there's a certain courtesy you give to [other] law enforcement," Ramirez told me. "As a young agent, I didn't really know how to deal with it. I was naive."The trainee took the keys to the Mercury and started back to the station at the Presidio-Ojinaga border. Ramirez followed. In the backseat, the driver sat – quiet, calm, no fuss.The man's name, according to his INS card and DFS badge, was Amado Carrillo Fuentes.The Lord of the Skies Within a decade of that traffic stop, Amado would be the most significant drug trafficker in Mexico. His knack for using airplanes to smuggle huge quantities of drugs earned him the nickname "el señor de los cielos," the Lord of the Skies, and, to this day, he is easily the most prolific and most powerful drug lord the country has ever seen. His would be a household name in Mexico and a curse on the lips of U.S. federal agents tasked with fighting the narcotics trade. Another two decades after that, he would feature prominently as the absurdly white-washed protagonist of the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico. But on the night David Ramirez encountered him on that desolate stretch of Highway 67, Amado was just one trafficker among many. Not a nobody, certainly, but his photo wouldn't yet be on any police bulletin boards, nor his name in any newspapers.Amado was then 28 years old, and for years he had found a comfortable niche for himself in the growing drug empire run by his uncle — a fearsome brute named Ernesto "Don Neto" Fonseca — Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, and Rafael Caro Quintero. Like nearly all major drug traffickers of the era — including Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, who was born around the same time as Amado — they all hailed from the northwestern state of Sinaloa. But they ran their operation out of the city of Guadalajara, and became known as the Guadalajara cartel. As the demand for cocaine began to surge in the late 1970s and exploded in the early 1980s, most cocaine headed to the U.S. from Colombia, across the Caribbean, and into Florida. But as the DEA and the Coast Guard cracked down on that route, the Colombians needed a new way of getting drugs north The syndicate that Don Neto, Félix Gallardo, and Caro Quintero operated, which previously focused on heroin and marijuana and was well positioned to offer an alternative route to their new friends in Colombia, was busy forging contacts with Colombian cocaine suppliers. Within a few years, the Mexican traffickers had become an integral link in the chain that saw cocaine travel by air from its roots high in the Andes to labs in the jungles of Colombia to local smugglers in Mexico, and finally to an eager customer base in the United States. Using the staggering infusion of cash that came along with their new specialty in moving cocaine, the Guadalajara network was able to bring most of the major drug traffickers in Mexico under a unified protection racket negotiated by Félix Gallardo and overseen by the DFS and other federal police agencies.Amado, who was quickly gaining a reputation for being cool-headed and having a talent for forging political connections, played a key role in this transformation of the drug game, coordinating cargo planes, loaded down with hundreds — and later thousands — of kilos of coke, to clandestine air strips in northern Mexico.An act of supreme recklessnessEverything changed, however, just a few months before Amado was stopped in southwest Texas. In February 1985, a group of gunmen snatched a young DEA agent named Enrique "Kiki" Camarena off the streets of Guadalajara, tortured and murdered him along with a pilot who'd worked with the DEA, and dumped their bodies on a distant ranch. Amado Carrillo Fuentes (c). Henry Romero/Reuters; Rachel Mendelson/InsiderThe brutal kidnapping, torture, and murder of a U.S. federal agent was an act of supreme recklessness and the consequences were sweeping. By April, Don Neto and Caro Quintero were in prison, Félix Gallardo was in hiding, and the network they had carefully built and paid a fortune to protect was in disarray, cracking under the pressure of a vengeful United States, and the obligatory, if belated, efforts of Mexican cops. (Just this month, on July 15, Caro Quintero was arrested in Mexico in a joint U.S.-Mexican operation. In 2013, while serving a 40-year sentence for the murders, a Mexican court had ordered Caro Quintero released. U.S. officials immediately sought to re-arrest him, adding him to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, but Caro Quintero went into hiding. During the operation on July 15, 14 marines died when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed outside the city of Los Mochis. A few days after the re-capture of Caro Quintero, in a seemingly unrelated move, Félix Gallardo officially trademarked his own name, apparently for a fashion brand.)Mid-level traffickers who were lucky or savvy enough to escape the dragnet exploited a sudden power vacuum and set up territorial fiefdoms, negotiating new protection pacts with corrupt officials and continuing to traffic all the cocaine, heroin, and marijuana that North Americans could sniff, shoot up?, or smoke.Amado was one of those survivors, but he couldn't stay in Guadalajara. So he headed to Ojinaga, just across the border from Presidio, Texas, where he joined forces with a rough-and-tumble smuggler named Pablo Acosta. The Wild West At the northern extreme of the Chihuahuan Desert and the southwest extreme of Texas, Presidio sits just east of Ojinaga — rather than the proverbial "north of the border," as the Rio Grande runs south there. Located just to the south and east lies Big Bend National Park, and with its canyons, culverts, and deep ravines scored into the earth over millennia, the landscape is such a godsend to smugglers of all kinds that it could almost seem as if it was created for that express purpose.   For as long as the border has divided Presidio and Ojinaga, this remote land has been a causeway for smugglers looking to take advantage of prohibition in the U.S. — first of alcohol, later of marijuana and heroin, and finally cocaine — and of Mexico's booming black market for illegally imported commercial goods that resulted from the country's high tariffs.David Ramirez, a native of of El Paso, arrived in Presidio in 1982, shortly after joining the Border Patrol. He could almost count his fellow agents on two hands, and together they were tasked with patrolling not only the port of entry, with its wooden, two lane bridge crossing the river, but also the vast desert landscape stretching out on either side. (It was still many years before the Border Patrol would morph into the veritable army that polices the border today, with its drones, seismic motion sensors, and agents more numerous than the armies of more than a dozen small nations.) "We often had no radio comms, and all of Big Bend [National Park] to deal with," Ramirez recalled. "It was like the Wild West."Ramirez and his fellow agents may have had the might of the U.S. government at their backs, but down in Presidio, with the drug trade in overdrive, they were tilting at windmills.It wasn't like they could rely much on the Mexican authorities across the border either. The dirty and not so well-kept secret of the drug trade in Mexico is that it is inextricably tied to and controlled by extra-official protection rackets run by corrupt members of the country's business, political, and judicial elite. Just like every other lucrative smuggling corridor along the border, Ojinaga was controlled by a local boss. For much of the 1970s, that person had been Manuel Carrasco; when he eventually ran afoul of too many people he fled town and with time — and after a few shootouts — control passed to an up-and-coming trafficker named Pablo Acosta. 'He's their guy'According to the journalist Terrence Poppa, who chronicled the rise and fall of Acosta in his 1991 book "Drug Lord," Acosta came to power in Ojinaga in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and by 1982 he was either directly involved with, or charging a tax on, all illegal merchandise flowing across the border.Acosta, like Amado, was treated to a sympathetic portrayal in Narcos: Mexico. The actor Gerardo Taraceno plays Acosta up as a sentimental, old-school cowboy — reckless and violent at times, sure, but living by a code of honor and harboring a sentimental streak to boot. This flies in the face of all available evidence. Poppa — and a number of sources I spoke with who either investigated Acosta or did business with him — said that the real-life Acosta was a brutal thug, quick to mete out violence and shocking cruelty against anyone he saw as a threat. He shot men down in the street in broad daylight, subjected people to brutal torture, and was said to have once strapped a rival to the back of his pickup truck and dragged him to his bloody, horrible death. And as the years wore on, Acosta grew ever more erratic, thanks in part to his growing number of enemies and also to his fondness for basuco, a crude cocaine paste that he sprinkled into cigarettes and smoked around the clock.He was, in other words, the polar opposite of Amado. Little is known of Amado and Acosta's working relationship, one the young face of the drug trade to come and the other the proud, battle-scarred avatar of what came before. Amado was there not to do Acosta's bidding but to look after the interests of his uncle's syndicate in Guadalajara, which was increasingly coordinating shipments of cocaine on behalf of the Colombians and moving it through Ojinaga. David Ramirez (r); Rachel Mendelson/InsiderOne player who had the opportunity — or misfortune — to see that dynamic up close was Don Henry Ford, Jr, a former drug trafficker working in the region in the '70s and '80s."Amado Carrillo was never working for Pablo Acosta, not for one fucking day," Ford told me. "He represents the big guys down there, the cartel, he's their guy."When Pablo Acosta was finally gunned down in a raid by Mexican police in the tiny village of his birth in 1987, rumors immediately proliferated that Amado had paid a corrupt police commander $1 million to take him out. Unrepentant cowboyIf Ramirez that night in 1985 saw the amiable, confident face that Amado showed when being detained, Don Henry Ford Jr., two years prior, saw something closer to the real Amado — the careful balance of friendly and ruthless with which Amado gained the trust of business partners and government benefactors, while rooting out potential traitors and rivals.Ford grew up on a Texas ranch a few hundred miles north of the border, but as his family's business started to fail in the late 1970s he began to drift down to Mexico, making trips back and forth across the border in search of easy money and unlimited weed."You may consider one side Mexico and one the U.S., but it ain't either. It's the border," Ford told me recently when I reached him by phone. "People in Presidio and Ojinaga have more in common with each other than with anyone in Washington or Mexico City."By the time I talked to him, Ford had been out of the drug game for decades. The beginning of the end had come in 1986 when he was arrested in Texas but then managed to escape and spend a year or so as an honest-to-god fugitive outlaw, laying low in a tiny communal ejido south of the border, guarding multi-ton shipments of Colombian weed in a cave with just a rifle by his side. In 1987, he was caught while moving about a hundred pounds of weed in southern Texas and ended up serving seven years of a 15-year sentence before being released on good behavior — after which he spent another few years under tight restrictions, pissing in a cup for his parole officer as many as three times a week. As much as he hated giving up those years to prison and parole, Ford knows how lucky he was: less than a year after his second arrest, in 1988, the US eliminated parole for federal offenses and introduced mandatory minimums for large-scale drug trafficking. If he'd been busted any later, he could have spent the rest of his life behind bars, as did many drug traffickers — particularly Black and Brown people — sentenced amid the drastic ramping up of the U.S. war on drugs.He put that life behind him — raised kids, raised cattle, and even put aside some land and a business to pass on to his children. But he still has the spark of an outlaw in his voice. Even his email address, which includes the words "unrepentant cowboy," makes clear that he remains resolutely nonconformist. The south Texas ranch where Ford spends his days is so remote that his cell phone barely gets a signal. When we spoke, his voice crackled out of earshot every time he moved in the wrong direction or when he sat down.Ford had a rather haphazard start as a drug trafficker, running into some greedy cops on his first trip to Mexico who were happy to relieve him of his seed money and send him packing. But before long he found a knack for the business, and developed a lucrative operation trading with a loose network of marijuana growers and wholesalers, trafficking hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars in weed at a time.He did most of his business in the state of Coahuila, east of Acosta's territory in Chihuahua, where he could work without having to deal with Acosta, who he knew by reputation to be a fickle and violent man. Years later, Ford would find that out firsthand, when he was attacked by men he believes to have been working for Acosta, and interrogated at length by a man he believes to be Acosta himself. He believes it to have been Acosta because he was blindfolded, and Ford is not one to say things he's not 100% sure of. (I had to take Ford's word on this incident, as there's no record of it aside from Ford's memory of the experience, and Acosta is not around to confirm it.)But before his near-death encounter with Acosta, it was in Coahuila, in the home of his main connect, a guy named Oscar, that he first met Amado around 1983.Their first meeting was just in passing; Amado was one of several cowboy-looking guys milling about during a visit to the home of his partner, where Ford was visiting on one of his many trips south to score wholesale loads of weed. Amado was dressed, like the rest of the guys, in wide-cut polyester pants and the boots popular with Mexican cowboys with a high, slanted Spanish riding heel."He didn't look like anybody extraordinary at all, he looked like Oscar was giving him some work on the farm," Ford told me. "He wasn't wearing a bunch of gold jewelry and shit that would give away the sense of being wealthy. His boots were worn."For most of his career, Ford had stuck to marijuana. And even in the early years of the cocaine boom he said he could see the effect that the introduction of cocaine was having on the business of smuggling. Guys he had known to be sworn pacifists motivated by peace and love as much as money, began carrying weapons, acting all jittery."All of a sudden it was like Miami Vice," he recalled. But he wasn't so altruistic as to turn down good business, and it soon became clear to him that the real money was in cocaine. He wanted in. So he made some inquiries and was told the person to talk to was Amado — that quiet guy in cowboy boots he'd met once a while back.The meeting happened sometime in 1983, just Ford, his cousin, his partner Oscar, and Amado in a motel room in the city of Torreon, in the southern reaches of Coahuila. It started off well enough — like many meetings between drug traffickers, it was mostly a chance to size each other up. Amado brought with him some of the product he had on hand, and for a few hours, the wirey Texan and the Sinaloan trafficker hung out, drank, sniffed cocaine, and chatted pleasantly. Just as Ramirez would observe later, Ford recalled Amado as a smooth customer, calm and collected but friendly. Even a few drinks and a few lines deep, Amado kept his wits about him."He did a lot more listening than he did talking," Ford said.Ford liked that, and he told Amado that he didn't have any interest in working with a hothead like Acosta."I told him 'If you're like that, I don't wanna do business with you,'" Ford said. "I'm interested in fuckin' moving some drugs and making some money."Ford and Amado didn't make a deal that night, but Ford said they agreed to "something tentative." When it was time for Amado to go, but he left the remaining coke as a gift, more where that came from, and Ford and his cousin set about enjoying it.Rachel Mendelson/InsiderA few hours later, as they were trying to sleep off their coke jitters, there came a series of thunderous knocks on the door, bam-bam-bam, and chaos descended on them. A team of heavily armed men rushed into the hotel room. They wore no uniforms, but they moved with such trained precision that Ford immediately took them for cops of some sort. Over the next few hours, he said, they questioned the pair relentlessly."This motherfucker did this to see if I was a cop," Ford said. "He didn't trust us, and decided he was gonna find out who we were."He never saw Amado again.200 miles from El PasoTwo years or so after Ford met him in Torreon, Amado sat patiently in the Border Patrol station in Presidio with agent David Ramirez. The other driver, the one Amado had slowed down to let escape, had made it to the point of entry. His car was clean and, after showing his ID — along with a DFS badge like Amado's — the agents who spoke to him had nothing to charge him with, and let him cruise back into Mexico. (In an interview, Ramirez told me ruefully that he had written the man's name down in his notebook but later lost it, and the question of the man's identity piques his curiosity to this day.)As for Amado, Ramirez may not have caught him trafficking drugs in flagrante, nor had he proven any collusion with the driver of the pickup truck. But there was the AR-15 he'd found in the trunk. For a nonresident of the United States, it was a serious crime to be in possession of a loaded assault rifle. If charges were brought, it could have earned him a few solid years in a federal prison. No one knew it then, but that could have put a serious crimp in Amado's upward trajectory. But that wasn't the purview of the Border Patrol. If they were going to hold Amado, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms — 200 miles away in El Paso — would have to get involved. If they agreed, someone would have to come in from El Paso, a four-hour drive away, bring Amado back, and then take him to magistrate court in Pecos, another two-hour drive from El PasoRamirez made the call, and waited. In the meantime, in case Amado would be charged, Ramirez fingerprinted the suspect, and took a couple mugshots.By now it was around three in the morning. Amado had been pretty quiet as they drove into Presidio, but sitting in the Border Patrol station, he started to open up a bit more, chatting with Ramirez, even boasting a bit as they made small talk to kill time."The guy, once again, had not a worry in the world," Ramirez said. "Real easy guy, and you know it was strange, he offered a lot of info, like that his uncle was Don Neto and that Caro Quintero was his partner."It might seem strange that an experienced heavy in the drug trade would brag about his connections to a well-known trafficker like Don Neto and the notorious killer of a federal agent like Caro Quintero, but the code of silence only applies to the saps at the bottom of the totem pole, or to the civilians ensnared in the web of violence, corruption, and extortion that funnels money up to the bosses. For the guys making the real money, the relationship with law enforcement is a lot more fluid, with a lot more give and take. Perhaps Amado saw an opportunity to cultivate a contact, pocket a card that he could play at a later date. Or maybe he just knew that no ATF agents were getting their asses out of bed at three in the morning and driving all the way to Presidio and back to book him. Much more likely was that he'd be back in Mexico by sun-up no matter what he said to Ramirez.An hour passed, and then Ramirez got word from the Bureau that they weren't going to bother with this one. Coming all that distance to Presidio, it was too much trouble. So he let Amado go. Ramirez held on to the box of ammo, but Amado drove back into Mexico a free man with the illegal AR-15 in his trunk.'You can't live in what-ifs'Looking back to that night in Presidio in 1985, It's hard to fathom how it was possible that agents of the federal government had one of the top drug traffickers in Mexico in their custody and didn't even know it. But according to Ramirez, that was par for the course back then. "At that time, in that area, there was no intelligence collection. It was very primitive," he said. "We were patrol, we weren't really trained for intelligence gathering. Unfortunately that was the attitude back then."Ramirez doesn't pester himself much wondering how things might have gone if the ATF had bothered to haul Amado in. "He coulda done some time, sure," Ramirez replied when I pushed the point. "But you can't live in what-ifs."After that night in 1985, Ramirez would see Amado from time to time around town on the other side of the border. Ramirez would mostly avert his gaze so as not to make eye contact with the man whose night he'd ruined. He saw him at the border crossing too, and from the way Amado carried himself there, Ramirez said he could tell Amado had pull among Mexican officials."He was a charismatic kinda guy," Ramirez recalled. "He made friends with the inspectors there on the U.S. side, the Customs inspectors and the immigration inspectors, invited them to his ranch and they would go over and come back and tell about the cookouts and the time they had." One of the inspectors even invited Ramirez to the party. Ramirez politely declined.Whatever scrutiny caused him to flee Guadalajara did not appear to have followed Amado to Ojinaga, according to Ramirez. "He wasn't hiding! I mean he was out in the open," Ramirez said with some bemusement.In the years that followed, Amado continued to plot his deliberate, careful rise to power. That evening he spent with Ramirez would go down as his only known brush with US authorities — or at least the only one in which he was a suspected criminal rather than a guy asking Customs inspectors over for lunch. Alongside other major traffickers of his generation, like "El Chapo" in Sinaloa and Sonora and the Arellano-Félix brothers in Tijuana, Amado expertly navigated every power vacuum that presented itself — or triggered power vacuums himself. By the late 1980s Amado had moved his base of operations to Ciudad Juárez, the sprawling metropolis that sits across the river from El Paso, where the multiple ports of entry allow a far greater amount of train, truck, and car traffic — and contraband — than Ojinaga ever could. It was there that Amado truly came into his own, controlling organized crime in the city so tightly that normal, everyday street crime became a rarity, lest criminals incur the wrath of the henchmen tasked with keeping things quiet and orderly. David Ramirez had left Presidio as well, transferring to his hometown of El Paso, where he began doing undercover work investigating trafficking networks alongside Mexican cops. He saw firsthand the control that Amado exercised in the city.He even saw Amado once. Ramirez was in Juárez, eating breakfast with some Mexican colleagues, including a federal police commander, when who walks in but Amado, surrounded by a swarm of burly, heavily armed guards. Amado made a beeline for their table and greeted the commander warmly as Ramirez studied his food and preyed that he wouldn't be recognized. "I thought 'oh shoot, this is the guy I arrested!'" Ramirez recalled. "Everybody says they're looking for him, and he's right there!" Once again, though, Ramirez's hands were tied: no matter how much the U.S. might want its hands on Amado, he was out of reach in Mexico, where his massive web of bribes and political connections made him largely untouchable. Still, even if Ramirez's actions did nothing to stop Amado's rise to power, it wasn't all for naught.The Lord of the Skies is deadOn July 3, 1997, Amado Carrillo Fuentes entered Hospital Ángeles Santa Mónica in the ritzy Mexico City neighborhood of Polanco. Amado had had a rough time of it recently, and it would have shown, his voracious cocaine habit and relentless workload taking their toll on his face and his increasingly heavy frame. The hospital was under heavy security, with an entire wing shut down for the guest of honor's privacy. Reuters; Rachel Mendelson/InsiderAmado was by now the undisputed public face of the drug trade in Mexico, with mansions all over the country and countless men doing his bidding. Being the boss is great for a guy like Amado, but not if everyone knows it. In Juárez he and his henchmen had worked hard to keep his name out of the papers, intimidating and threatening journalists and even discouraging singers from composing narcocorridos, the norteño ballads penned in honor of prominent drug traffickers that form an important role in the folk history of organized crime in Mexico. But when you amass power and wealth like Amado had, you can only remain in the shadows for so long. Things had really taken a turn for Amado that February, when one of his most important guardian angels — General Jesús Héctor Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's drug czar  — was arrested and publicly accused of collaboration with Amado. Just a few months earlier, Guttierrez Rebollo had been feted in Washington, described by his American counterpart as "a guy of absolute, unquestioned integrity." So it was with a deeply embarrassed vengeance that the attention of both governments now trained itself on Amado.Amado knew as well as anyone that a drug lord's days are numbered as soon as he becomes a liability to the government. By multiple accounts, Amado started looking for an exit almost immediately. He bought property in Chile, moved money abroad, and was even rumored to have approached contacts in the government to offer a massive bribe in exchange for his freedom to retire in anonymity.On July 3, he checked in under a fake name at the hospital in Polanco to undergo plastic surgery to alter his features. (Or, it was rumored later, for a bit of liposuction. It may have been both.)He was never seen alive again.The next day, July 4, about two miles away from the hospital in the similarly posh Lomas Altas neighborhood, Fourth of July festivities were underway at the fortress-like mansion that was home to the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. Diplomats and dignitaries, bureaucrats and spooks were spread out across the lawn, mingling with their spouses. Among the revelers were a handful of agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who, as Amado might have suspected, had been racing to pin down Amado before he could vanish.Their day off came to a sudden end when one of the DEA agents got a call. According to his source, Amado had succumbed to an overdose on the operating table and the body was headed for burial in his home state of Sinaloa.The call kicked off a furious race by U.S. and Mexican officials alike desperate to confirm the drug lord's death. Rumors were swirling that it was all a lie, that Amado couldn't possibly be dead, and to quiet this talk Mexican officials would a few days later take the extraordinary step of laying out Amado's body — puffy by now; his skin a ghastly grey-green — for a viewing at a government building in Mexico City, inviting journalists to show his corpse to the world.Meanwhile, a young intelligence officer for the DEA named Larry Villalobos was racking his brains to think of a way to confirm that the body was Amado's.Then it hit him: the fingerprints. Villalobos had worked for a while as a fingerprint technician with the FBI before joining the DEA, and, prior to his posting in Mexico City, he had been stationed at the DEA field office in El Paso, where he'd helped build a dossier on Amado. As part of his research, he had learned of Amado's brief detention by Border Patrol agent David Ramirez back in 1985, and he knew Ramirez had taken Amado's mugshot and fingerprints. Villalobos made some calls, and it wasn't long before Ramirez found himself awoken by the ring of his telephone. Amado may not have been worth getting out of bed for when Ramirez called the ATF back in 1985, but he sure was now.."They called me about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, wanting to know if I still had his prints," Ramirez recalled rather matter-of-factly. "So I dug 'em up and I sent 'em to him."In Mexico City, Villalobos received a fax of the prints and headed to the morgue to compare them with those belonging to the corpse.They were a match.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Musk has got into spats and even long-running feuds with an eclectic bunch of people, often over his preferred medium of Twitter. Tesla CEO Elon Musk.Getty Images Elon Musk has a habit of getting into bizarre fights. He is headed for a big legal fight with Twitter after he said he'd back out of a deal to buy the company. Musk has feuded with a variety of people and entities, including Azealia Banks, Jeff Bezos, and the US government.  See more stories on Insider's business page. Elon Musk has a serious combative streak.The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is famously unpredictable as chief executives go, a personality trait which has sometimes landed him in trouble — particularly with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.But Musk's combative side doesn't just express itself in skirmishes with government bodies. The Tesla billionaire has ended up in bizarre spats with a strange array of people — from fellow billionaires to artists to rescue divers — and often via his preferred medium of Twitter.Musk is now headed for an intense legal battle with Twitter itself after he announced he plans to abandon his deal to buy the company for $44 billion.The twists and turns in the stories of Musk's various battles are often baffling, and it can be hard to remember all the different ways Musk has squared up to various public figures and even regular citizens.We've cataloged his biggest and weirdest fights.Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, then decided he didn't want it.Elon Musk at the 2022 Met Gala.Andrew Kelly/ReutersElon Musk offered to buy Twitter on April 14 2022, and although the board initially resisted the takeover the deal was struck two weeks later with Musk agreeing to buy the company for $44 billion.Musk said his proposed acquisition of Twitter was spurred by a desire to promote "free speech."In May, however, Musk tweeted to say the deal was "temporarily on hold," saying he needed more detail on how the company calculated the proportion of accounts that are actually spam or fake.Musk repeatedly accused Twitter of withholding its data about bots.Elon Musk (left) and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.Getty ImagesAt one point Musk replied to a Twitter thread from CEO Parag Agrawal about bots with a poop emoji.Analysts speculated Musk's fixation with bot accounts could be a pretext for the billionaire to renegotiate the price tag on the deal amid falling tech stocks or even abandon the deal entirely.Twitter handed over a huge trove of internal data known as its "fire hose" to Musk's team in June, The Washington Post reported.On July 8, Musk's lawyers wrote to the Securities and Exchange commission saying he wanted to back out of the deal.Twitter's board responded by saying it will take Musk to court to close the deal at the agreed-upon price.Experts told Insider Musk is headed or a difficult legal battle."Musk's best argument is a tough one," University of Michigan Ross School of Business Professor Erik Gordon told Insider."He can't win on anything in the actual acquisition agreement because it doesn't leave room for many loopholes," Gordon added.Musk has a long-running rivalry with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and has traded jibes with him about which parts of space to conquer.Jeff Bezos unveils Blue Moon, a lunar lander designed by his spaceflight company, Blue Origin, on May 9, 2019.Blue OriginJeff Bezos owns a space exploration company called Blue Origin, a rival to Musk's own space exploration firm SpaceX.Bezos and Musk have sporadically interacted about their companies' successes, sometimes applauding each other, but more often locking antlers.When Blue Origin unveiled its new lunar lander Blue Moon in May 2019 Bezos reportedly took a swipe at SpaceX's plans to colonize Mars during his presentation, saying that the moon was a much more realistic prospect. According to Bloomberg, Bezos showed a slide with a picture of Mars accompanied by the labels "Round-trip on the order of years" and "No real-time communication."Musk responded by mocking the lander's name."Competition is good. Results in a better outcome for all... But putting the word "Blue" on a ball is questionable branding," Musk said in a pair of tweets on May 10, 2019.Musk also called Bezos a "copycat" over his plan to launch thousands of satellites.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersIn April 2019, Amazon announced its plan to launch 3,236 satellites with the aim of providing broadband to communities without high-speed internet, nicknamed Project Kuiper.The project bears some resemblance to a SpaceX project called Starlink, which won FCC approval in November 2018 to launch almost 12,000 satellites into orbit. CNBC also reported that Amazon hired a former SpaceX executive to head up Kuiper.After news of Project Kuiper broke, Musk tagged Bezos and tweeted the word "copy" followed by a cat emoji.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2019Bezos did not respond.Musk tweeted in June 2020 that Amazon should be broken up after it de-listed a book written by a coronavirus skeptic.AP Photo/Pablo Martinez MonsivaisWhen Amazon's Direct Kindle Service refused to publish a book called "Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns," it caught Musk's eye.The author of the book, Alex Berenson, is a former New York Times reporter who has written claiming the threat posed by the coronavirus has been overblown.Musk, who has also been vocal in his opinion that the virus was not dangerous enough to warrant lockdown measures (despite evidence to the contrary) spotted a tweet by Berenson presenting the email he got from Amazon saying his book did not comply with its guidelines."This is insane @JeffBezos. Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!" Musk tweeted.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2020 Amazon later confirmed to Business Insider the book had been removed in error and would be reinstated. In mid-2021, Musk started attacking Bezos repeatedly claiming the Amazon founder retired so he could sue SpaceX.Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesOn August 26, Elon Musk tweeted saying Bezos had "retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX."Musk repeated the joke on September 1, and during an interview at the Code Conference on September 28 said he can't "sue your way to the moon."These attacks were prompted by both Amazon and Blue Origin mounting challenges against SpaceX.Amazon filed a protest letter with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in August 2021 urging it to block SpaceX's Starlink from putting up more satellites.Blue Origin also sued NASA in August after the agency granted an exclusive moon-lander contract to SpaceX.While Bezos tends not to engage personally in his feud with Musk, Amazon and Blue Origin have openly criticized Musk's companies. Amazon sent an unprompted 13-page list to The Verge of all the legal actions SpaceX has taken stretching back as far as 2004, claiming it showed SpaceX is just as litigious as itself. In a complaint submitted to the FCC on September 8 Amazon also said: "The conduct of SpaceX and other Musk-led companies makes their view plain: rules are for other people, and those who insist upon or even simply request compliance are deserving of derision and ad hominem attacks."Musk traded barbs with Senator Elizabeth Warren in 2021, calling her "Senator Karen."Sen. Elizabeth Warren (left) and Elon Musk.Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty/Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty ImagesElizabeth Warren tweeted a Propublica report in June 2021 on the tax records of the wealthiest individuals in America and highlighted Musk had not paid any income tax in 2018.Warren called for a wealth tax after Musk was named Time's Person of the Year in December 2021, and Musk shot back."You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason," he tweeted."Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen," he added.In May 2020, Musk squared up to Alameda County officials over coronavirus restrictions.Elon Musk.AP PhotoReports surfaced in May 2020 that Tesla was asking workers in its California factory to return to work despite Alameda County's shelter-in-place order forbidding the factory from re-opening as only essential businesses were allowed to operate in California at the time due to the coronavirus pandemic.Musk confirmed the reports on May 11 in a tweet. "Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules, I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me."Tesla threatened to sue Alameda County.The view of Tesla Inc's US vehicle factory in Fremont, CaliforniaReutersTesla's suit hinged around the fact that California Gov. Gavin Newsom said manufacturers in the state would be allowed to reopen, but Alameda County extended its shelter-in-place order only allowing essential businesses to open.Tesla's suit argued that Alameda County's forced shutdown ignored an order from California Gov. Gavin Newsom allowing businesses from "16 crucial infrastructure industries" to remain open, one of which is transportation.The fight prompted Musk to leave California altogether. "Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependent on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA," Musk tweeted in May 2020.This prompted California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez to tweet: "F--- Elon Musk."Musk confirmed in December 2020 he had moved to Texas.Alameda County gave the Tesla factory the go-ahead to reopen on May 13, 2020.A Tesla Model 3 is assembled at the Fremont, California factory in 2018.Mason Trinca/The Washington PostAlameda County officials said on May 13 Tesla would be allowed to reopen its Fremont factory so long as it implemented robust safety plans for its workers, and a Tesla executive sent a letter to employees saying it would resume "full production" the following week.Tesla dropped its lawsuit against Alameda County the same week it resumed production.Musk picked numerous fights over the severity of the coronavirus over the course of the pandemic.Elon Musk speaks during the Satellite 2020 at the Washington Convention Center on March 9, 2020, in Washington, DC.Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty ImagesMusk has consistently espoused the theory that the threat posed by the coronavirus is overblown, and tweeted misinformation about the virus including saying that children are "basically immune."He has also been openly hostile towards state lockdowns, calling them "fascist," and questioned the official death count as it includes people with underlying health conditions.As Business Insider's Dave Mosher and Aylin Woodward wrote, Musk's rhetoric was dangerously misguided. Scientific evidence overwhelmingly suggests lockdowns help curb the spread of COVID-19 and slow the death rate. Underlying health conditions make people more vulnerable to the virus, and so should not be discounted from death tolls.Musk's frustrations were tied to Tesla's fortunes.A worker descends from the top deck of a car carrier trailer carrying Tesla electric vehicles at Tesla's primary vehicle factory after CEO Elon Musk announced he was defying local officials' coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions by reopening the plant in Fremont, California on May 11, 2020.REUTERS/Stephen LamMusk said during Tesla's Q1 2020 earnings call that the forced closure of the Tesla factory posed a "serious risk" to business."I should say we are a bit worried about not being able to resume production in the Bay Area, and that should be identified as a serious risk," Musk said.During the same call, Musk went on a tirade against lockdowns in general. "I would call it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights. That's my opinion, and breaking people's freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not why people came to America or built this country — what the f---. Excuse me, the outrage. It's just outrage," Musk said.In 2018, Musk called a complete stranger "pedo guy."British caver Vernon Unsworth looks to Tham Luang cave complex during a search for members of an under-16 soccer team and their coach, in the northern province of Chiang Rai, Thailand, June 27, 2018REUTERS/Soe Zeya TunVernon Unsworth is a British diver who participated in the rescue of 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave system in June 2018. It was a difficult, complex operation and the boys were successfully rescued after being trapped for 17 days by international divers and Thai Navy SEALs. Unsworth, an experienced cave explorer, was asked by Thai officials to aid in the rescue.He had never met Elon Musk, but would go on to spend most of 2019 locked in a legal battle with the Tesla billionaire.Musk had inserted himself into the Thai rescue operation and offered to build a mini-submarine to fetch the boys. The idea never materialized.Unsworth was asked about Musk's submarine in an interview with CNN, and described it in unflattering terms, describing it as a PR stunt. He added that Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts."That angered Musk, who subsequently wrote a post on Twitter calling Unsworth a "pedo guy." When a Twitter user challenged him over it, he replied "bet ya a signed dollar it's true."His remarks immediately triggered headlines around the world, despite the fact he provided no proof for the "pedo" claim.Musk doubled down on the allegation by emailing BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac and calling Vernon Unsworth a "child rapist," with no evidence.Brendan McDermid/ReutersCensured by critics for using the slur, Musk deleted his tweet and apologized, but he didn't leave it there. A month later he responded to a Twitter user who criticized him."You don't think it's strange he hasn't sued me? He was offered free legal services," Musk tweeted, referring to Unsworth.Then in September 2018, he doubled down. BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac emailed Musk asking for comment on a legal threat made by Unsworth's lawyer. Musk replied, suggesting Unsworth was a "child rapist" and "I hope he fucking sues me." Musk prefaced the email to Mac with "off the record," but the journalist had never agreed to go off the record, and published the entire exchange. Documents later revealed Musk called himself a "fucking idiot" for sending the email to Mac in the first place.A few weeks after Mac's article was published Unsworth sued Musk for defamation.Court filings revealed Musk hired a detective to investigate Unsworth — but the PI turned out to be a conman.Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens to engineer and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk of The Boring Company talks about constructing a high speed transit tunnel at Block 37 during a news conference on June 14, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois.Joshua Lott/Getty ImagesThe case threw up some bizarre findings.Court filings revealed that Musk paid a man named James Higgins-Howard $50,000 to investigate Unsworth and relay reports to Musk's family office.Higgins-Howard emailed Musk out of the blue following the initial "pedo guy" tweet to offer his services as a private detective. "You may want to dig deep into Mr. Unsworth['s] past to prepare for his defamation claim," Higgins-Howard wrote, adding "no smoke without fire!"Higgins-Howard didn't find any evidence, however, and BuzzFeed's Ryan Mac later reported that the would-be PI had previously been convicted of fraud. Musk admitted in a deposition that he later realised Higgins-Howard was "just taking us for a ride."In depositions Musk has also argued that by calling Unsworth "pedo guy" he wasn't literally accusing him of being a pedophile because the term was used to be synonymous with "creepy old man" when he was growing up in South Africa. He also claimed he was genuinely worried Unsworth could be "another Jeffrey Epstein."The trial began on December 3, 2019.  On December 6, 2019, Elon Musk won the defamation case.Elon Musk arriving at court in California.AP Photo/Mark J. TerrillAfter a four-day trial in California, the jury found Musk not guilty of defamation.The jury took less than half an hour to reach their decision, which reportedly hinged on the fact that Musk did not identify Unsworth in his tweet, according to the Times of London.The foreman also said that Unsworth's lawyers had made the case too emotive. "The failure probably happened because they didn't focus on the tweets... I think they tried to get our emotions involved in it. In a court of law you have to prove your case, which they did not prove," said foreman Joshua Jones, per The Guardian."My faith in humanity is restored," Musk said following the verdict.Unsworth's lawyer Lin Wood said in a tweet that his team would "explore legal options" for challenging the verdict. Pablo Escobar's brother accused Musk of stealing an idea from him in July 2019.Roberto Escobar (left).YouTubeMusk ended up in a spat with Roberto Escobar, brother of deceased Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, over an accusation of intellectual property theft.TMZ first reported that Escobar had accused Musk of stealing his idea for a flamethrower when Musk's venture The Boring Company announced its "Not-A-Flamethrower" flamethrower in January 2018, beating Escobar's own flamethrower to market.Escobar claimed to TMZ that one of Musk's engineers had stolen the idea while visiting an Escobar family compound in 2017."It's not a flamethrower, Mr. Escobar."The "Not-a-Flamethrower."Robyn Beck/Pool via REUTERSElon Musk responded to the story in classic Muskian style — on Twitter.Musk tweeted a link to the TMZ story accompanied by the words, "It's not a Flamethrower, Mr. Escobar," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the device's name.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2019In a follow-up tweet he added he stole the idea from the comedy movie "Spaceballs."In June 2018, Musk took a liking to some farting unicorn art but didn't pay for it, leading to a copyright dispute with a potter.Tom Edwards' farting unicorn mug.Tom Edwards, WallywareMusk locked horns with another unlikely member of the public in June 2018.Colorado-based potter Tom Edwards caught Musk's attention with a mug. The mug carried a painting of a unicorn farting rainbows to power an electric car. Musk tweeted a picture of a mug in February 2017 calling it "maybe my favorite mug ever." Two months later friends of Edwards' told him they had seen the same farting unicorn image used as an icon on Tesla screens, and the image was later used on Tesla's company Christmas cards.The Christmas card spurred Edwards into action. "I decided to make it my New Year's resolution to pursue getting compensation, because artists are always seeing their work just taken, and it happens all the time," he told Insider in June 2018.In later-deleted tweets Musk attacked Edwards, saying taking legal action would be "kinda lame.""If anything, this attention increased his mug sales," he said. Musk also claimed (also in subsequently deleted tweets) to have offered to pay for the work twice. Edwards said he'd had no contact from Musk or Tesla at that point.Despite Musk's protestations, the two eventually settled.Brendan McDermid/ReutersA month after the farting unicorn argument erupted on Twitter, Musk and Edwards came to a settlement. The terms of the settlement were not made public, but Edwards posted on his blog that it "resolves our issues in a way that everyone feels good about.""It's clear there were some misunderstandings that led to this escalating, but I'm just glad that everything has been cleared up," he added.Musk for his part tweeted a link to the blog accompanied by three emojis: a unicorn, a gust of wind, and a peace symbol.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2018 Musk ended up in a fight with Azealia Banks after she waded into Tesla's regulatory troubles in August 2018.Rapper Azealia Banks became embroiled in Elon Musk's infamous "funding secured" saga.GettyOn August 7, 2018, Elon Musk sent his infamous "funding secured" tweet, in which he claimed to be taking Tesla private at $420 a share.Tesla did not go private, and Musk landed himself with a $20 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the tweet. He lost his position as chairman of Tesla's board, leading to long-running bad blood with the agency.It triggered another unlikely feud with rapper Azealia Banks.A week after Musk sent his fateful Tweet, Banks wrote on her Instagram that she had been at Musk's house at the time when he'd sent it. She had visited to collaborate with Musk's then-partner Grimes (real name Claire Boucher), and claimed she had been annoyed when the crisis caused by "funding secured" dominated Grimes' time."I waited around all weekend while grimes coddled her boyfriend," Banks wrote, and compared the weekend to the horror film "Get Out.""I saw him in the kitchen tucking his tail in between his legs scrounging for investors to cover his ass after that tweet," Banks told Insider at the time.  Banks accused Musk of taking her phone.Getty ImagesOn August 20, Banks was back on Instagram, tagging Elon Musk. Banks posted "@elonmusk you need to contact me. ASAP." and "I need my phone back now.  @elonmusk," on her Instagram story — she later deleted the posts.Banks then shared a screenshot with Insider that appeared to show a text from Grimes saying the choice of share price ($420) was a weed reference. "He just got into weed cuz of me and he's super entertained by 420 so when he decided to take the stock private he calculated it was worth 419$ so he rounded up to 420 for a laugh and now the sec is investigating him for fraud," the text read.Musk told The New York Times that he rounded up the price because $420 had better "karma" than $419, and denied using weed.Musk didn't really respond publicly to Banks except to say he had never met her.Reuters / Rebecca CookMusk told Gizmodo that he hadn't met Banks "or communicated with her in any way," but confirmed to the New York Times that he had seen her at his house."I saw her on Friday morning, for two seconds at about a 30-foot distance as she was leaving the house... I'd just finished working out. She was not within hearing range. I didn't even realize who it was. That's literally the only time I've ever laid eyes on her," he told the Times.The Banks-Musk feud dragged on for months after the story blew up.Isaiah Trickey/FilmMagicIn January 2019, a court granted a motion to subpoena Banks, Grimes, and publications including Insider.In July 2021, Grimes posted in a Discord chat that she'd written a song, called "100% Tragedy," which was about "having to defeat Azealia Banks when she tried to destroy my life."Musk announced in September 2021 that he and Grimes had broken up after three years together. Banks responded to the news on her Instagram, saying: "Ok girl, can we finally make those darn songs now that apartheid Clyde is out of the way?"The nickname "Apartheid Clyde" is an apparent reference to Musk's South African upbringing.And finally: Musk has a long-running animosity towards David Einhorn, a billionaire short seller he loves sending short shorts to.Greenlight Capital president David Einhorn.REUTERS/Brendan McDermidMusk has a pretty well-documented hatred for short sellers, tweeting in October 2018 "what they do should be illegal."One short seller, in particular, has drawn Musk's ire. David Einhorn is president of Greenlight Capital, and is typically pretty scathing in his notes about Tesla and Musk.When Einhorn blamed Tesla's good performance in the first half of 2018 for denting Greenlight's hedge fund, Elon Musk promised to send him a box of "short shorts" — and he followed through.—David Einhorn (@davidein) August 10, 2018In November 2019, Musk renewed the offer of short shorts after Einhorn published a damning note on Tesla's Q3 results, drawing attention to a shareholder's lawsuit against Tesla, which alleges that Musk acquired his cousin's company SolarCity at an inflated value to bail it out.Musk posted a sarcastic note on Twitter following Einhorn's letter, addressing him as "Mr. Unicorn." Einhorn is German for unicorn.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

40 Arrested In Huge People-Trafficking Raids In UK & 3 EU Countries Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times, Forty people have been arrested in coordinated raids across Britain and three European countries, and law enforcement agencies claim they have smashed a huge gang which was trafficking illegal immigrants across the English Channel in tiny boats. Almost 13,000 people have crossed the Channel from France in dinghies and RIBs (Rigid Inflatable Boats) since the beginning of January, with the monthly total for June at 3,136, the highest of the year. But on Tuesday, in an operation coordinated by Eurojust—the European Union’s criminal justice cooperation agency—homes in Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands were raided and more than 40 people were arrested. Eurojust is expected to reveal more about Operation Thoren at a press conference in The Hague later on Wednesday. Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) launched its own Operation Punjum—part of Operation Thoren—to smash an organised crime gang thought to have brought 10,000 people across the Channel since the beginning of 2021. UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said: “These arrests send a clear message to the criminal gangs who are preying on vulnerable people across Europe and beyond: we will stop at nothing to end your sordid trade, bring you to justice and save lives. This hugely significant operation once again shows the NCA and our international partners working diligently to dismantle people-smuggling networks.” The NCA said, in a statement, it was the “biggest ever international operation targeting criminal networks suspected of using small boats to smuggle thousands of people into the UK.” They said it was launched following the arrest of a people-trafficking “kingpin” in London in May this year. Hundreds of lifejackets discovered by investigators are piled up outside an address in the city of Osnabruck in Germany on July 5, 2022. (National Crime Agency/PA) Hewa Rahimpur, 29, an Iranian national who was living in Ilford, east London, is now facing extradition to Belgium. The NCA’s Director of Threat Leadership, Chris Farrimond, said: “It was actually our intelligence which started this all off and which led to the culmination. Many of those arrested overseas have been targeted as a result of evidence that we provided into the taskforce.” The NCA said they seized 50 small boats and hundreds of life jackets. NCA officers arrested a 26-year-old man in Catford, southeast London, and a 22-year-old man on the Isle of Dogs in east London, on suspicion of conspiring to facilitate illegal immigration. Four other arrests were made in Britain, two of which were suspected illegal immigrants who had been handed over to the immigration authorities. Germany’s DPA news agency said prosecutors in the German city of Osnabruck oversaw raids involving 900 police officers at 36 properties in Lower Saxony, Bremen, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Wurttemberg, and 18 people were arrested. Illegal immigrants are brought ashore near Dungeness, Kent, by the RNLI after a small boat was intercepted in the English Channel on March 15, 2022. (Gareth Fuller/PA) Farrimond said the illegal immigrants were paying the gang around 3,000 euros (£2,570) each to bring them across the Channel to England. He said Operation Punjum would not stop the flow of illegal immigrants to Britain but would “absolutely” make a difference. Farrimond said: “It will take some time for this group, or whichever group succeeds it, to recover. Now we’re not going to stop at this point. Ideally we’d like to stop the supply of small boats much earlier on so that they really have difficulty getting their hands on them, and we’d also like to attack the money flows in a lot more detail than we do right now. So there’s plenty more to do. It’s not going to stop it but it is going to make a dent.” Tyler Durden Thu, 07/07/2022 - 05:00.....»»

The Criminal Order Beneath The 'Chaos' Of San Francisco's Tenderloin Authored by Leighton Woodhouse via RealClearInvestigations, The epicenter of the political earthquakes rattling San Francisco’s progressive establishment is a 30-square-block neighborhood in the center of downtown known as the Tenderloin. Photo: Michael Shellenberger Adjacent to some of the city’s most famous attractions, including the high-end shopping district Union Square, the old money redoubt of Nob Hill, historic Chinatown, and the city’s gold-capped City Hall, it is home to a giant, open-air drug bazaar. Tents fill the sidewalks. Addicts sit on curbs and lean against walls, nodding off to their fentanyl and heroin fixes, or wander around in meth-induced psychotic states. Drug dealers stake out their turf and sell in broad daylight, while the immigrant families in the five-story, pre-war apartment buildings shepherd their kids to school, trying to maintain as normal an existence as they can. “If you happen to be walking through the Tenderloin and you feel unsafe, imagine what it feels like to live there,” said Joel Engardio, head of Stop Crime SF, a civilian public safety group. “The Tenderloin has one of the largest percentages of children in the city. It’s untenable, inexcusable to ask them to confront this hellscape.”  “The Tenderloin is out of control,” said Tom Ostly, a former San Francisco prosecutor who used to work there and lives nearby. “It has never been worse than it is now.” Nancy Tung, a prosecutor who once handled drug enforcement in San Francisco, called it “ground zero for human misery.” Kathy Looper, who has run a low-income, single resident occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin for more than 45 years, said, “It feels like we’re in Gotham,” adding that she once considered putting a spotlight on her hotel roof and projecting a Batman signal into the sky. The crime and disorder of the Tenderloin may appear to be symptoms of deep and mysterious sociological forces. Chesa Boudin, who was ousted last week as San Francisco’s district attorney because of his lenient policies, argued, “We can’t arrest and prosecute our way out of the problems that are afflicting the Tenderloin.” But there is a fairly straightforward kind of order beneath the chaos: an illicit market economy operating in plain sight. The Tenderloin is home to two sprawling, overlapping transnational organized crime networks – one centered on drugs and the other on theft – which thrive in that neighborhood because of the near-total absence of the enforcement of laws. The Tenderloin, an infamous attraction to some, next to some of the city's most famous attractions. Google Maps Crowded onto its street corners and inside the tents congesting the sidewalk, countless petty criminals play their roles in a structured and symbiotic criminal enterprise. Its denizens fall into four main groups: the boosters, typically homeless and addicted, who steal from local stores; the street fences who buy the stolen merchandise; the dealers who sell them drugs for the money they make from the fences; and, at the top of the stack, the drug cartel that supplies the dealers and the wholesale fences that resell the goods acquired by street fences. Each has a role to play in keeping the machine moving, and the police know exactly how to disrupt it. Experts say the city could, in fact, arrest and prosecute its way out of most of the problems in the Tenderloin if it chose to. It thrives, instead, as a zone of lawless sovereignty in the heart of a major American city – the criminal version of the area commanded by Seattle anarchists in the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, in 2020. Where those extra-legal districts were eventually dismantled, the Tenderloin’s structure is entrenched. The following portrait of the Tenderloin crime syndicate is based on dozens of conversations with law enforcement officers, prosecutors, recovering street addicts, parents of addicts, and community activists over many months, as well as direct observation of the area. “Everyone knows what’s going on. The cops, mayor, and D.A.,” said Tom Wolf, a recovering addict. “Everyone knows it's organized and cartel-backed. They just don't think it's worth it to stop it, because nothing’s going to change anyway. They've surrendered.” Dealing in the Tenderloin: a low-risk business. KPIX CBS/YouTube The Dealers The drug pushers are easy to spot: Unlike the users, they look healthy and wear clean clothes. They’re almost universally young men, mostly Honduran (on the streets of San Francisco they’re called “Hondos”). You see them standing on street corners on every block in the Tenderloin selling pills out of prescription drug bottles and white and colored powders out of plastic sandwich bags – fentanyl, meth, heroin, cocaine. The dealers stand in packs of eight to ten on a corner, in their jeans and hoodies, with their stashes in their backpacks. According to both drug enforcement authorities and recovering addicts, each works for a different supplier and each supplier leads back to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. They compete for customers, but they also look out for each other: If someone tries to rob one of them, Wolf explained, they all jump in to defend him. Dealers have their assigned corners – like Turk and Hyde, across the street from a playground, or Golden Gate and Hyde, or United Nations Plaza. They mostly live in apartments on East Oakland’s International Boulevard, according to Ostly, and take the BART train to the Civic Center station each morning with the other commuters. Both civilians and police officers have observed them splitting up bindles of drugs and divvying up cash in plain view of commuters on the BART trains. During his tenure, Chesa Boudin resisted calls to prosecute these dealers, instead referring to them as victims of human trafficking. (Boudin, whose replacement is to be named by Mayor London Breed, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) “There’s not a whole lot to support it,” Nancy Tung said of Boudin’s human trafficking claim. The dealers are usually smuggled into the United States by the cartel. When they arrive in San Francisco or another American city, they owe the cartel for getting them there – typically $10,000 to $15,000, which they can earn in a couple of weeks byselling the cartel’s drugs, both law enforcement and recovered addicts say. Once they repay the cartel, they’re free to do whatever they want. Usually, they stick with drug dealing, because no other job can make them that much money with so little risk. Dealers in the Tenderloin typically make about $1,000 a day for an eight- to 12-hour shift. Under Boudin, drug dealing was a low-risk business. Lou Barberini, a retired San Francisco police officer who worked narcotics in the 1990s and 2000s in the Tenderloin, said dealers used to shield drug deals with their hands or bodies as they sold them. Wolf, the recovering addict, said that before the pandemic, they would hold their drugs in baggies concealed in their mouths and spit them out when they made a sale.  “Now,” Barberini said, “they display what they have in their hand, and the person will select what they’re going to buy.” The worst consequence of being arrested is losing your stash, so for high volume transactions they might duck behind a car. That’s about the extent of the precautions they feel it necessary to take. Addicts: heat-seeking missiles when they need a fix, listless as nursed babies when they get it. AP  The Boosters The buyers, or addicts, are usually homeless and unsheltered, and, like the Bay Area, racially diverse. They’re often gaunt if they’re not obese, hunched over, in ill-fitting clothes draped across their limbs. They’re like a heat-seeking missile when looking for their next fix, and as listless as a nursed baby after they’ve found it. They would stand out in any other neighborhood, but in the Tenderloin it’s the non-users who are conspicuous, and the users who blend into the crowd. Finding drugs in the Tenderloin is about as hard as ordering a kebab from a food cart. On any corner, dealers holler out their inventory like hot dog vendors at a ballpark: “Green is fire! Shards! Chiva! Nickel!” (Translation: “The green pills or powder are great! I also have meth, heroin, and crack.”) Or “Fenty! Bars!” (As in: “Get your fentanyl! I got some Xanax!”)  The addicts often suffer from schizophrenia, depression, or bipolar disorder, which is often induced by meth. They are almost always unemployable. Cash flow is thus a daily concern.  Typically, they turn to professional shoplifting, known as “boosting.” Boosting is “basically a job” for addicts, said Lieutenant Kevin Domby of the California Highway Patrol. To fuel their addiction, boosters need to bring in up to $60 daily. Since they usually get a dollar or two per item, no matter the value of whatever they’re stealing, they have to steal as many as 60 items a day. There are roughly 6,000 homeless people in the Tenderloin and adjacent SoMa neighborhoods. (The last official, citywide count, in 2019, reported just over 8,000 homeless, and pretty much everyone says that figure has jumped in the past three years.) Tom Wolf estimated that about one in five of the homeless in the Tenderloin, or 1,200 people, are boosters. That means thousands, if not tens of thousands, of items are being stolen daily. “I still get letters from Target,” said Gina McDonald, a former addict and the mother of a Tenderloin user who’s now in rehabilitation. Her daughter started boosting years ago to feed her addiction, and her mom has been hearing from the retailers’ lawyers ever since. Like drug use and drug dealing, shoplifting has been effectively decriminalized in San Francisco, and some chains have reduced their presence in the city. California’s Proposition 47, passed in 2014, reduced shoplifting of less than $950 in goods from felonies to misdemeanors. On top of that reduction in severity, Boudin scaled back prosecution of these crimes. Together, Prop 47 and the DA’s non-enforcement policy have removed any incentive for police officers to make arrests for shoplifting, which, in turn, has made it far less likely that retailers will even call the police in the first place. For that reason, it’s difficult to estimate the actual scale of the problem. But you get a pretty good sense how normalized it has become. Today, in San Francisco, you can walk into a Walgreens, a Safeway, a Target or a CVS, take hundreds of dollars of products off the shelf in front of customers and employees, walk out the door, and then come back a few hours later and do it all over again. “We’ll see the same folks go into multiple retailers, multiple times a day,” said Ben Dugan of the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail. “The stores are their ATMs.” The Fences But stolen goods aren’t money, so the boosters take their goods to the fences. They’re often middle-aged Latino men or elderly Chinese men and women. Fences sometimes roam around the Tenderloin or United Nations Plaza looking for boosters, or they might work out of a nondescript storefront. Some sell the stolen goods out of their own stores in the Tenderloin or in Chinatown, while others source for larger wholesale fencing organizations that launder the goods through online retailers on Amazon, EBay, or Facebook Marketplace. Often, Domby says, fences will text the boosters on WhatsApp or Snapchat or on a private Instagram page and tell them what products they’re in the market for: Tide Pods or cold medicines with long expiration dates or makeup or razor blades. Then, the boosters fill those orders, stealing as much as they need to get their next fix. “Boosters will go into a pharmacy with a shopping list,” Dugan told me. The fences and the dealers work in a kind of synergy with each other – so much so that they sometimes collaborate directly. “The dealers will post up where the fences are,” Dugan said. “Fences will direct the thief to the drug dealers.” The fences, like the boosters they buy from, are the lowest rung on a towering totem pole. Most are middlemen. Some buy stuff not just from boosters but also from burglars and muggers. (In 2019, the San Francisco Police Department and then-District Attorney George Gascón retrieved more than $2 million in personal and commercial property from a couple that ran their fencing operation out of their Tenderloin camera repair shop.) Some fences sell the stolen goods directly to the public, laying boosted deodorant and frozen shrimp – so freshly stolen it hasn’t yet thawed – out on a blanket on the street in UN Plaza, or at the flea market in Berkeley. But more typically, they sell to a bigger fence, who can move a high volume of product out of the Tenderloin quickly and efficiently. Ostly compared street-level boosters and fences to street walkers in the prostitution business. A tier above the street addicts is a more specialized, entrepreneurial tier of boosters – the equivalent of escorts, per Ostly’s analogy.  Part of the cops' haul from a fencing operation out of a Tenderloin camera repair shop. Twitter The Larceny Industry There are at least two or three levels of fences above the street-level fences. At the top are the wholesale fences. They buy from the mid-tier fences who buy from the street-level fences who buy directly from the boosters, who use their paltry profits to buy drugs from the dealers. San Francisco’s addiction crisis provides the larceny industry with a permanent low-wage workforce. Drug addicts there and in other cities are, in effect, the exploited sweatshop workers of an international organized retail theft network that operates on an industrial scale. The fences at the wholesale level amass $100,000 to $200,000 worth of merchandise each day, which they sell to a “diverter.” The diverter repackages the stolen goods in counterfeit packaging and sells the products online. Nationally, just five diverters dominate the trade in stolen merchandise from the national drug store chains. Those five companies sell more than $20 million in product a year. Wholesale fences also sell their goods to fences overseas. Consumer electronics are often shipped to Vietnam or China to be sold in black markets there. Luxury accessories are sent to Russia. In 2020, a major multi-agency bust called Operation Proof of Purchase took down a $50 million fencing operation centered in the Tenderloin. When the police seized the warehouse in the North Bay, it took about 40 officers to photograph and box all the inventory, and numerous semi trucks and box trucks to move it all. Officers recovered more than $1.6 million in razor blades alone. The operation wasn’t just large, it was meticulous. “Just a terrifically organized operation for distribution,” said Lieutenant Domby, who assisted in the operation. “If a box was marked 400 boxes of pills for aspirin, there would be 400 boxes inside.” “The fences have better inventory control and logistics than the retailers they're stealing from,” Ostly said. Wolf told me that the way the organized retail theft business operates is “common knowledge” on the street. “Even the street addicts know how this works,” he said.  Whether Boudin is to blame now or not, the Tenderloin's problems are longstanding: sex worker, 2010. AP  'Nothing Has Been Done' Taken together, the dealers, boosters, and fences comprise a vast illicit industry that generates the cash that pays a Mexican drug cartel to import narcotics into San Francisco’s streets. Those drugs kill two people a day directly. The organized robberies and thefts they spawn create thousands more victims, from targets of muggings, burglaries, and home invasions to working class, elderly San Franciscans whose local pharmacies keep shutting down or reducing hours, to retail employees who are laid off as those stores are closed. Ostly, who was fired by Boudin the day after he took office, believes the rampant criminality in the Tenderloin is “ninety percent because of Boudin.” Tung, who ran unsuccessfully in 2019 against Boudin, said, “San Francisco has completely lost the deterrent effect of prosecution. You have to have some reason for people not to commit crime. People are weighing what’s going to happen, and in San Francisco, nothing is going to happen to you—not if you sell drugs, even if you mix them lethally, not if you break into cars, stores, homes.”  Randy Shaw, who runs the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which operates many of the low-income, single-room occupancy hotels in the area, isn’t a fan of Boudin, but he says the city’s mayor and police department are largely responsible for the area’s problems. “Police have been blaming DAs since the 1980s; this is nothing new,” he said. “Chesa has done a great job taking the flack off the SFPD because all of the recall movement people want to make sure he’s blamed for everything,” he said before the June 7 recall vote. He said that after Mayor Breed invoked a “State of Emergency” in the Tenderloin last year (which has now lapsed), “there literally has been no increase in police at all. None. The crackdown she’s getting credit for in the national media has never happened. Nothing has been done.” Shaw wants to see the drug dealers arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned. Breed’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Joel Engardio of Stop Crime SF is also dismayed at what he sees as the human tragedy that city officials are allowing to unfold. “If you’re not going to arrest and prosecute the dealers, people are going to continue to die,” he said. “I don’t believe we should prosecute users. Users need help and treatment. But dealers are committing manslaughter every time they sell fentanyl.” Leighton Akira Woodhouse is a freelance reporter and documentary filmmaker. He writes at leightonwoodhouse.substack.com. Tyler Durden Sun, 06/19/2022 - 23:30.....»»

Andrew Fahie was caught in a sting operation by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, whose agents posed as members of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.Bianca De Marchi-Pool / Getty Images Liz Truss said she is "appalled" by the arrest of Andrew Fahie, premier of the British Virgin Islands. Courts documents say Fahie was involved in money laundering and conspiracy to import at least 5 kg of cocaine. BVI Governor John Rankin said it was "shocking," adding: "I would call for calm at this time." The UK's foreign secretary has said she is "appalled" after the premier of a British territory was arrested for drugs trafficking and money laundering. Andrew Fahie, premier of the British Virgin Islands, was arrested in a sting operation in Miami on charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the US and money laundering.In a statement, BVI Governor John Rankin said it would be "shocking news for people in the territory", adding: "I would call for calm at this time."The BVI governor acts as a representative for the Queen, while the premier is in charge of daily legislation and law enforcement.Court papers filed in Florida alleged that Fahie was involved in conspiracy to import at least 5 kilograms of cocaine and money laundering between October 16, 2021, and April 28, 2022, The Guardian reported.According to the report, undercover agents with the US Drug Enforcement Administration posed as members of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and set up a meeting between Fahie and Hezbollah operatives to establish a place to store thousands of kilograms of drugs arriving from Colombia.Liz Truss, the UK's foreign secretary, said: "I am appalled by these serious allegations. This arrest demonstrates the importance of the recently concluded commission of inquiry."Last year, the UK set up a commission of inquiry into misgovernance in the BVI, which has heard allegations of systemic corruption and misuse of public funds.Screengrab from the BVI Commission of InquiryYouTube/BVI InquiryLast year Sir Geoffrey Cox, the former UK attorney general, came under pressure over allegations he had used his parliamentary office to conduct meetings while working on the inquiry. While the opposition Labour Party referred the matter to the Standards Commissioner, the case was not pursued.Rankin, who is due to set out the country's next steps on Friday, declined to comment on the specifics of Fahie's arrest but said it was not related to the UK's inquiry."What I can confirm is that the arrest was a US operation led by the DEA and is not linked to the commission of inquiry report," he said. "The remit of the commission of inquiry focused on governance and corruption, and was not a criminal investigation into the illegal drug trade."To avoid unnecessary speculation, I intend to move ahead urgently on publication of the Inquiry Report so the people of the BVI can see its contents and its recommendations in the areas it addresses."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The US recently increased its rewards for two major cartel figures, and another was quietly released from jail earlier this year. Mexican Federal Police outside Puente Grande prison in Zapotlanejo, Jalisco state, August 9, 2013.HECTOR GUERRERO/AFP via Getty Images Conflict is brewing within the Sinaloa cartel. The US recently increased its rewards for two major cartel figures, and another was quietly released from jail earlier this year. Reports indicate that fighting between them has already begun in some parts of Mexico. Culiacán, Sinaloa - In the middle of the night on September 1, Jesús Alfredo Beltrán Guzmán was freed from a Mexican prison without fanfare after serving five years of a 10-year sentence for drug trafficking.Beltrán Guzmán is the son of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, aka "El Mochomo," a longtime Sinaloa Cartel associate who broke away in the late 2000s and formed the rival Beltrán Leyva Organization.Beltrán Guzmán, known as "El Mochomito," is also the nephew of jailed kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, and his release adds to the list of players thought to be battling for control of the Sinaloa Cartel.El Chapo's brother, his sons, his nephew, and his shadowy former peer in the cartel, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, are fighting over what's generally considered to be one of the most powerful criminal groups in the world.US authorities also recently increased the reward for two of those men: $5 million is now on offer for El Chapo's brother, Aureliano Guzmán Loera, aka "El Guano," and $15 million is being offered for Zambada.Old rivalries, new fightingAlfredo Beltrán Leyva, known as "El Mochomo," is escorted at Mexico City's airport, January 21, 2008.AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, FileThe Beltrán Leyva Organization was run by Alfredo and his brothers, Arturo, Héctor, and Carlos. They began their criminal careers alongside El Chapo, first as an armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel and later on their own.Alfredo was arrested in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, in January 2008. Arturo was killed by Mexican marines in the city of Cuernavaca in December 2009. A few days after Arturo's death, Carlos was also captured in Culiacán. Hector was captured in the state of Guanajuato in October 2014.After the arrest of the Beltran Leyva Organization's top bosses, Beltrán Guzmán stepped up as the new boss. He then declared war on the Sinaloa Cartel.Beltrán Guzmán was arrested on December 9, 2016, in the city Zapopan in the state of Jalisco while fleeing a military operation to capture him. He is allegedly responsible for kidnapping two of El Chapo's sons, Jesús Alfredo and Iván Guzmán Salazar, from a restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, also in Jalisco.Shortly before fleeing to Jalisco in 2016, Beltrán Guzman led about 50 armed men into a shootout near La Tuna, a rural town in Sinaloa, where they robbed El Chapo's mother's home. They were reportedly looking to kill El Chapo's brother, Aureliano.According to a Sinaloa Cartel operative who asked for anonymity to avoid reprisal, Aureliano has an old vendetta against El Mochomito."These people never forget. What El Mochomito did before being arrested, and the fact that the Guzmán Loeras firmly believe they were betrayed by the Beltráns, is an old problem that has not been solved," he said.The US recently increased its reward for Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada to $15 million.US State DepartmentThe operative said Guzmán, Beltrán Guzmán, three of the Guzmán Salazar brothers, and Zambada, are all still in Sinaloa, but only the Guzmán Salazars, who are El Chapo's sons, live in Culiacán."Everything is in a tense calm. I personally know El Mochomito, and the morning he got out he returned to one of his ranches here in Sinaloa. The government returned everything they seized during his arrest," the operative added.Mexican authorities were not able to confirm or deny these allegations.Aureliano "El Guano" Guzmán has kept a low profile, remaining outside the Sinaloa Cartel until very recently when the US put out a $5 million reward for him. A 2020 DEA report describes Aureliano as a "notable" Sinaloa Cartel commander and as responsible for shipping "large quantities of fentanyl" from contacts in China.Aureliano is known for being "much more violent than his brother," shown when "he killed Ernesto Guzmán, Mochomito's grandfather, for being considered as unreliable," two official sources told Insider.The fighting may remain between members of the Guzmán family, according to Mike Vigil, former chief of the DEA's Mexico bureau."Mayo Zambada has a stronghold in the Sinaloa Cartel. He is too strong and too respected for someone like Aureliano, Mochomito, or Los Chapitos to fight him," he said, using a nickname for El Chapo's sons.Vigil — who infiltrated the Guadalajara federation before it broke into competing cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, in the late 1980s — said Zambada's leaders had kept the Sinaloa Cartel "as the biggest cartel in the world.""Zambada is an intelligent man, keeping his low profile but at the same time keeping a pyramidal organization in the Sinaloa cartel," he said.War on and in cartelsA Mexican marine looks at the body of a gunman after a shootout between marines and armed men in Culiacan, February 7, 2017.(AP Photo/Rashide Frias)Mexican media reported in late 2020 that more than 17 factions of the Sinaloa Cartel were fighting for control of the cartel, and another source within the cartel told Insider that the Guzmán Loera family's fight against El Mayo has already started in some parts of Mexico.According to the source, the state of Durango is today where Aureliano's, Zambada's, and Mochomito's factions are fighting over the cartel."El viejón [Zambada] has his people fighting for Durango. They are called Fuerzas Especiales Barrera, and very recently they were attacked by Los Guanos, an armed group by El Guano," the source said."They can't fight inside Sinaloa, [which] is a sacred territory where the order and the agreement is to keep things calm," the source added.The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel remain the largest and most powerful in Mexico, but the country has more than 400 gangs operating inside it. Their proliferation is a consequence of the "war against cartels" started by right-wing Mexican President Felipe Calderon in 2006."The current Mexican security policy approach of 'hugs not gunshots' is clearly not working. Mexico needs more cooperation with the US and to have a frontal strategy against criminal groups," Vigil said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Workers in the Palm Beach home were told what they said to Epstein and then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was just "as important as what you do." Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend Batman Forever/R. McDonald Event on June 13, 1995 in New York City.Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Workers at Jeffrey Epstein's home were told how to speak, according to a  household manual. The manual was recently submitted as evidence in the ongoing trial of Epstein's longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Workers in the house were forbidden from saying words and phrases like "yeah" and "no problem." Smile at all times, no direct eye contact, never say "yeah." Workers at Jeffrey Epstein's Florida home were informed on how to respond and act around Epstein and longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell with a household manual.The manual, which includes directions like "do not address Mr Epstein, Ms Maxwell and their guests with your hands in your pockets," was handed out to all staff members of Epstein's Palm Beach, Florida, home.The manual was recently submitted as evidence in the ongoing trial of Maxwell. Federal prosecutors accused Maxwell of sex-trafficking girls with Epstein, sexually abusing them herself, and lying about her actions in a deposition. Her trial started on Monday. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty. Epstein, who was arrested in 2019 on charges of trafficking dozens of girls, killed himself in jail while awaiting trial.Epstein's longtime housekeeper, Juan Alessi, interpreted the strict household guidelines as "a kind of warning that I was supposed to be blind, deaf, and dumb," according to his testimony at Maxwell's trial on Thursday, Insider reported."Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer any question directed toward you," Alessi read from the manual during his testimony.Banned words and phrases in the 58-page manual that workers in the house were forbidden from using include:"Yeah""Sure""No problem""You bet""Gotcha""Right""I dunno"Instead, workers were encouraged to say things like "my pleasure," "I would be very pleased to," and "You are quite right.""What you say is as important as what you do," the manual reads. "Your language must include good diction and exclude swear words and slang. Pay attention to how you speak to Mr Epstein, Ms Maxwell and their guests."Other directions in the manual include what to say when entering a room, how to respond to a compliment or criticism, and how to answer the telephone. Workers were not allowed to eat or drink in front of Epstein and Maxwell and were reminded to smile at all times, and avoid direct eye contact, according to the manual. Maxwell's attorneys and family members have argued that her decades-long relationship with Epstein has been overstated. The indictment against Maxwell alleges she and Epstein ran the child sex-trafficking operation together. Maxwell's trial is expected to last up to six weeks. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

"What is worrisome after the arrest of Otoniel is not if he was bigger than Pablo Escobar," one expert said. "[It] is who is next." Dairo Antonio Usuga with Colombian military personnel after his capture. Reuters Colombia's president compared the recent capture of the kingpin known as Otoniel to that of Pablo Escobar. Escobar's death was a blow to his cartel, but many smuggling groups have emerged to replace him. That dynamic leads some to worry about more bloodshed after Otoniel's arrest. Mexico City - The same day Colombia's armed forces captured Dario Antonio Usuga, known as Otoniel, Colombian President Ivan Duque said the arrest was "only comparable to the fall of Pablo Escobar."Otoniel's capture is a major blow to a powerful drug-trafficking group, but many feel it is not something to brag about and fear that, as after other major arrests, the country could plunge into something worse.Otoniel, first a member of the guerrilla organization Ejercito Popular de Liberación and later a prominent paramilitary leader, rose to be the most wanted cartel boss in Colombia, with the US offering a $5 million reward for him.Otoniel led Clan del Golfo, also called Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia (AGC), considered by Colombian authorities to be a "Class A Organized Armed Group."US authorities say the group is the main Colombian ally of Mexico's powerful Sinaloa Cartel, partnering with it to profit from drug-trafficking and human-smuggling rings worth millions of dollars.He now faces charges related to drug trafficking, the killing of police officers, recruitment of minors, and sexually abusing children, according to US and Colombian authorities.Who's next Colombian anti-drug police inspect packages of cocaine seized during an operation against Clan del Golfo near the Gulf of Uraba, September 12, 2011.. REUTERS/Fredy Builes The vast quantities of cocaine that Otoniel smuggled drew comparisons to Escobar and the infamous Medellin Cartel, but many Colombians saw Duque's pronouncement as a media stunt, as Escobar's involvement in terrorism and national politics sets him apart."It was a political stunt to get some press attention and legitimize [his] administration," Carlos Bohorquez, a Medellin resident, said of Duque."To me, having lived through the Escobar years, Otoniel has nothing to do [with it]. But it doesn't mean it was not a good thing that he was arrested and put behind bars," Bohorquez said.The operation that led to the arrest - which involved 500 Colombian special-forces personnel and 22 helicopters and in which one police officer died - received major attention from Colombian politicians and diplomats."Congratulations! To our Police and to our Military Force. Many years of persecution of this individual who has done so much damage to the country," Juan Carlos Pinzón, Colombia's ambassador to the US, wrote on Twitter. A solider and a policeman patrol near a wreckage of a passenger bus torched by Clan del Golfo members, in Medellin, April 1, 2016. REUTERS/Fredy Builes While many in Colombia celebrated Otoniel's arrest, others now expect rough times."The market has diversified immediately after Otoniel's arrest. His detention has thrown away a monopoly, opening the doors to new players," said Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a Colombia-based security and risk-analysis firm.Guzmán said this has happened in the past, first with former Medellin cartel boss Carlos Lehder and later with Pablo Escobar.Escobar's death and the collapse of the rival Cali Cartel allowed paramilitary groups to expand into drug trafficking while also conducting robberies, extortion, and kidnapping. Those groups were followed by "bandas criminales," which are generally more dispersed and compartmentalized - making them harder to root out and more resilient.The AGC was the most powerful of those latter groups, and Otoniel was a demonstration of their resilience. Pinzon noted that Otoniel took over when his brother was killed in 2012."What is worrisome after the arrest of Otoniel is not if he was bigger than Pablo Escobar or not. [It] is who is next," Guzmán said.'Progressive fragmentation' Dairo Antonio Usuga, drug lord who has been captured by Colombian military. Reuters Otoniel's arrest and the power vacuum it creates could lead to more violence as criminal groups fracture and compete, according to Colombian government officials. Such fragmentation is visible in Mexico, where a decade of targeting top kingpins has caused major cartels to fracture into hundreds of gangs.Currently there are about 10 major criminal organizations operating in Colombia, according to Indepaz, a nongovernmental group that promotes peace and justice."A progressive fragmentation of the criminal organization is expected, since Otoniel … was the only leader with total command and control," Gen. Fernando Murillo, who leads Colombia's judicial police, part of the National Police force, said in an interview with local media.Differences that "transcend" internal disputes could arise among AGC members seeking control, Murillo added, predicting the group's "atomization" into smaller, less capable factions. Colombian police guard an under-construction submersible seized from Clan del Golfo, in Puerto Escondido, October 18, 2011. REUTERS/John Vizcaino Murillo listed Wilmer "Siopas" Giraldo Quiroz; Jobanis de Jesus Avila, aka "Chiquito Malo"; Jose "Gonzalito" Sanchez; and Orozman Osten Blanco, aka "Rodrigo Flechas" as Otoniel's potential successors."Siopas" is considered AGC's second-in-command and is wanted for his involvement in organized crime. "Chiquito Malo" is in charge of production and shipment of AGC's tons of cocaine to the US. Colombian authorities have a bounty of $133,000 for his capture."Gonzalito" is considered "a brother" to Otoniel, according to media reports and a prominent member of the AGC. "Rodrigo Flechas" is one of the most violent criminals in Colombia, responsible for killings and kidnapping in the Cordoba municipality.The AGC's main business is cocaine - cocaine production in Colombia rose 8% between 2019 and 2020, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime - and its main blocs still control some of Colombia's most important cocaine-producing regions.But the group has found other lucrative enterprises. Stranded migrants from Haiti at a makeshift camp in Necocli, Colombia, September 24, 2021. RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images Before his arrest, Otoniel was making millions from smuggling US-bound migrants through Colombia. His smuggling ring out of Necoclí in northern Colombia transported migrants toward the border with Panama, demanding payment for all sorts of things along the way.An AGC operative said after Otoniel's arrest that his capture hadn't affected business, telling Insider that "the organization has continued working under a new administration."Colombian officials have said they're working on extraditing Otoniel to the US and made clear they will keep going after whoever replaces him."We will continue to combat the Clan del Golfo and will not rest until this organization is finished. We're going for Siopas, for Gonzalito, for Chiquito Malo," Murillo said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Conspiracy theories about the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Lord of the Skies, have lingered for years, most recently among fans of Narcos: Mexico. The casket with Amado Carrillo Fuentes' remains at his mother's ranch in northwestern Mexico on July 11, 1997. Reuters When Mexico's most powerful drug lord died an unbelievable death, a team of federal agents raced against the clock to identify his body. Conspiracy theories about his demise have lingered for years, even getting a wink in Netflix's Narcos: Mexico. Speaking publicly for the first time, DEA agents who helped confirm his death give the full story behind one of the strangest chapters in the annals of Mexico's drug war. The departed smiled up at the ceiling, his lips pulled back to reveal a row of bright white teeth.The skin on the man's hideously distended hands shone a sickening gray-green color of rot, and his long, puffy face was heavily bruised, with deep, dark circles ringing his eyes and nostrils. Mottled patches of discoloration spread up his high forehead and across his cheeks.Under the harsh glare and buzz of fluorescent lights, the body of one of Mexico's most powerful men lay in state, nestled within the plush white confines of a metal casket. The body was clad in a dark suit and a blue-and-red polka dot tie, his deformed hands deliberately forced together at his waist to mimic a state of repose, a hideous parody of an open-casket funeral.In the place of mourners, photojournalists pressed up to the edge of the casket, inches away from a man who just days before could have, with a wave of his hand, ordered unspeakable violence against anyone insane enough to have treated him with such disrespect.Along one wall, a row of men, some in white lab coats, others in drab, police-issue suits, stood with grim discomfort written across their faces as shutters clicked.This ghastly wake in a government building in Mexico City on July 8, 1997 was the first glimpse of a man whose name much of the country knew but few dared to utter. Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Lord of the Skies, the boss of Ciudad Juárez, and arguably the most powerful criminal kingpin in the nation's history was dead and his rotting corpse was displayed for all to see. Amado's body was displayed on July 8, 1997, at the Judicial Police morgue in Mexico City. A group of police pathologists look on. Reuters It was perhaps one of the most macabre press scrums in history, and a bitterly ironic fate for a man who had so carefully seen to it that so few photos of his likeness existed.News of Amado's death had begun to filter out days before. According to the Mexican Attorney General's office - known by its Spanish acronym as the PGR - Amado had died on the operating table while undergoing plastic surgery, to alter his appearance, and liposuction.Amado's family soon confirmed the story, lipo and all, telling reporters that he'd suffered a heart attack while under anesthesia. But for many Mexicans, the story was almost too bizarre to believe. The PGR had invited reporters to see the body in hopes of dispelling any rumors or suspicion about Amado's fate. It didn't work. The idea of Amado faking his death and vanishing into retirement flourished in Mexico's bustling rumor mills. One doubter, a barber cutting the hair of a Los Angeles Times reporter, insisted that the key to the coverup lay in the corpse's decaying limbs."Those aren't his hands," the barber said. "Those are the hands of a classical pianist.""Some poor unfortunate person"In the nearly quarter-century that has elapsed, a host of rumors and conspiracy theories have, unlike Amado, stubbornly refused to die - even in the archives of the wire service Agence Press Press, which listed a photo of Amado's "alleged" body.In 2015, the idea found new life thanks to an article published on the English-language site of the Venezuelan state-sponsored news network Telesur. According to the report, which relied mostly on the extremely dubious word of a supposed cousin of Amado, Sergio Carrillo, the drug lord was doing just fine."He is alive," Carrillo said, according to Telesur. "He had surgery and also had surgery practiced on some poor unfortunate person to make everybody believe it was him, including the authorities."This claim would be easily dismissed were it not for the larger constellation of conspiracies surrounding Amado's death. Instead, it's taken on a life of its own in a string of tabloid stories that have repeated Sergio Carrillo's claim.(Attempts by Insider to verify Carrillo's existence or reach him for comment were unsuccessful.)The persistence of such stories has also been helped along thanks to the popularity of the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico, which stars a heavily fictionalized - and rather sympathetic - version of Amado. In the third and final season, which became available on Friday, Amado takes center stage as the show follows a greatest-hits summary of his empire building and eventual fall from grace. Eduardo Gonzalez Matta, a general director of the Mexican Attorney General's office, points to evidence charts at a July 10, 1997 press conference aimed at convincing the public of Amado's death. OMAR TORRES/AFP via Getty Images In one of the final scenes, a moody Amado is shown prowling around the empty operating room prior to his surgery, and the narrator says outright that Amado has died. But then the show slyly drops an easter egg to superfans in the form of a final post-credits scene: As Amado's girlfriend wanders about in a seaside mansion, the camera cuts to a shot of a toy airplane that her lover had given her.The myth has resonated for a reason in Mexico, where a toxic mix of authoritarian governance, pervasive corruption, a powerful criminal underground protected by the state and shrouded in lies and half truths has fueled a highly justified skepticism of any official narrative.Here, for the first time, is the most complete account of one of the strangest chapters in the annals of Mexico's drug war. Speaking publicly about the episode in detail for the first time, agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration who helped identify the body and confirm his death have laid out the full story behind one of the strangest incidents in the annals of the war on drugs.Lord of the SkiesLike virtually every major drug trafficker of his generation - Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, Benjamín and Ramón Arellano-Félix, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada García - Amado was a native of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, that long, thin state in Mexico's northwest whose western borders greet the waves of the Gulf of Cortez and whose eastern borders end in the highlands of the Sierra Madre Occidental.It's a rugged, hardscrabble region populated by ranchers with weather-beaten faces and farmers who for the better part of a century represented the bottom rung of the marijuana and opium trade in the Western Hemisphere. Amado and his 10 siblings grew up in a tiny settlement in the scrubland just north of Navalato, a tough little bread-basket town surrounded by fields of sugarcane, maize, and wheat.Also like many of his fellow future kingpins, Amado's family had been involved in the drug business in one way or another since who-knows-when. It was a more humble business back then, small-time farmers selling opium and weed to small-time traffickers who brought the stuff north to the border. But thanks to the booming demand for marijuana in the late 1960s, and the shutdown in 1972 of the main pipeline for Turkish heroin from Europe to New York, Sinaloa's illicit economy became turbocharged. An undated photo of Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Reuters So it helped that Amado's uncle was one of those traffickers. A murderous brute of a man, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, better known as Don Neto, was by the 1980s a key partner in the trafficking network often referred to as the Guadalajara Cartel.It was the advent of the cocaine boom, when Mexican traffickers began to branch out from weed and dope and made use of their existing smuggling routes to move Colombian cocaine, and the cash flowing back south twisted and perverted every facet of society.Amado was an innovator in his own right, and is often credited as a pioneer of moving drugs by airplane, overseeing ever larger fleets of ever larger planes groaning under the weight of ever larger shipments of Colombian coke. This vocation earned him the nickname "el señor de los cielos," or the Lord of the Skies, and made him fantastically wealthy, with money to buy as many cops, judges, generals, and politicians as he needed to stay on the right side of things.As the criminal landscape in Mexico shifted in the late 1980s following the breakup of the old guard in Guadalajara, Amado had relocated to Ciudad Juárez, a sprawling desert city just across the Río Grande from El Paso, Texas.With its bustling border crossing that sees billions of dollars in cargo cross each way every year - an economic engine that leapt into overdrive with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement - Juárez was the crown jewel in the constellation of smuggling routes into the United States.The local capos who controlled the Juárez smuggling route, or "plaza," soon began to display a curious habit of dying, one after another. Amado, for his part, showed a talent for stepping out from the wings to claim their turf. Vehicles crossing from Ciudad Juarez towards El Paso, Texas. Ivan Pierre Aguirre/AP Photo Amado was a skilled smuggler. He was also a brilliant manager with a head for politics, and he built a vast network of street enforcers, informants in every agency of Mexican law enforcement and military, and connections to powerful friends capable of easily quashing the political will to arrest him.While other traffickers fought bloody turf battles and moved coke, weed, and heroin across remote border crossings in the desert, Amado was consolidating power and largely keeping the peace in Juárez, where he proved a reliable colleague to corrupt officials turned off by the ostentatious violence of his competitors. In a few short years, he had become the most influential drug trafficker in Mexico.But even for a guy with the political savvy that Amado had in spades, remaining atop the tangled web of shifting alliances and competing priorities that dictate the status quo in Mexico was a deadly game, and any number of brand-name narcos who came before him had enjoyed that sweet spot for a time before they attracted too much attention and with it their own expiration date.By the mid-1990s, Amado had become the most powerful drug lord in the country."A guy of absolute, unquestioned integrity"Early in 1997, the balance that Amado had so skillfully maintained was thrown into a tailspin with the arrest of General Jesús Héctor Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's top drug warrior. He had worked closely with agents of the DEA to pursue trafficking networks and had the endorsement of many in Washington.President Ernesto Zedillo had appointed the general to lead the fight against drugs as part of an effort to cut out the notoriously corrupt alphabet soup of police agencies in favor of the military, which despite its own legacy of corruption and human-rights abuses enjoyed a level of trust and respect that most other branches of the government had long ago squandered. Washington had enthusiastically supported the appointment, and General Barry McCaffrey, President Bill Clinton's drug czar, had praised the general as "a guy of absolute, unquestioned integrity" as recently as in December of 1996.So the DEA and their higher ups in D.C. were shocked when, on Feb. 17, 1997, the general was suddenly dismissed, and even more so a day later when Mexican officials announced that Gutierrez Rebollo had been arrested for receiving payoffs from one Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Amado (L) is seen at a party in an undated photo. Reuters As winter turned into spring, Guttierez Rebollo was sitting in irons, and Washington was sporting a deeply embarrassing black eye. At a hearing in March, DEA chief Thomas A. Constantine mused that major traffickers in Mexico "seem to be operating with impunity," and a congressional subcommittee convened soon thereafter to discuss slamming shut the faucet of foreign aid to Mexico.The Mexican government has never reacted well to its frenemies in the drug trade catching the undivided attention of the U.S. government, as a long line of Amado's former compatriots found out the hard way.And now the high-beams were focused on Amado. As one of the key public faces of drug trafficking in Mexico - and as the man whose bribes were the stated reason for the general's arrest - Amado found himself suddenly, dangerously exposed, and desperate to disappear, according to Ralph Villaruel, a retired DEA agent who was stationed in Guadalajara at the time."We were hearing he was in Russia, that he was in Chile," Villaruel told me in an interview. "We heard that he wanted to pay [the government] to be left alone, that he didn't want nothing to do with drug trafficking no more."Amado was a wreck. Overweight and reportedly strung out on his own personal stash carved off the tens of thousands of kilos his men continued to smuggle north, he seems to have opted for a radical solution: he would alter his appearance with plastic surgery.So on July 3, 1997, he used a false name to check into a hospital in a ritzy neighborhood of Mexico, and, in a heavily guarded operating room, the lord of the skies succumbed to a lethal dose of anesthesia and sedatives."We think Amado Carrillo Fuentes is dead"Mauricio Fernandez wasn't getting much sleep in those days.Fernandez, newly married, had been working at the Mexico City office of the DEA for about a year. He'd joined the agency in 1991 after serving in the Marines, and threw himself into his new vocation with a zeal inspired in part by the ravages of drug addiction he'd witnessed back home growing up in the Bronx.A dedicated posting to the resident office in Mexico City should have brought a bit of stability to his life after having spent the past few years working in an elite unit with special-forces training, bushwhacking coca fields in the high Andes of Bolivia, raiding drug labs in the lush mountain valleys of Peru, and chasing down a Colombian rival of Pablo Escobar whose brilliance earned him the nickname "the Chessmaster." A gun that once belonged to Amado Carrillo Fuentes is displayed in the Drugs Museum at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Mexico City. Henry Romero/Reuters But when he arrived in Mexico City, he was soon stunned by the level to which drug traffickers were entangled with the state at every level, from local cops on up to judges, military officers, and members of the political and business elite. It was hard to know who to trust. He was getting death threats."The deception was more sophisticated in Mexico," he told me in an interview. "The level of deception was so embedded that even for people you thought were vetted, even them you could not trust. There was no such thing as safe partnership."Cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico on anti-drug policy was then and is now deeply fraught, riven with well-earned mutual distrust. But Fernandez and his fellow DEA agents had worked hard to build relationships with a few key members of Mexican anti-drug units, and it was starting to pay dividends. Through a contact in the Attorney General's office, or PGR, Fernandez and his partner had extensive access to sensitive information, and did their best to share intel with their counterparts. Fernandez and his partner were the lead case agents on investigations into some of Mexico's most notorious drug traffickers, and they routinely pulled 80-hour weeks, living and breathing their work, sleeping at the office. They were investigating a handful of different drug-trafficking networks, but one man stood above the rest: Amado Carrillo Fuentes. A photograph that includes this caption: "Mexico City, Mexico. Hospital Santa Monica, where ''drug lord'' Amado Carrillo Fuentes died whilst having plastic surgery to change his identity to help him evade police." Getty Images Most roads led to Amado in some way or another, or they led as close as the DEA could get anyway. Any time they thought they might be getting close, witnesses had a way of turning up dead, warning had a way of finding itself to their query, and Amado cruised along as always.As he played the delicate game of political maneuvering necessary to survive in the underworld of Mexican organized crime, Amado was building a business empire of global proportions.Even now, decades later, Fernandez still speaks of Amado with the grudging respect of a guy who knows the folly of underestimating one's enemies."It was a slap in the face to say that Amado was simply a drug trafficker," Fernandez told me. "His span was incredible. He touched Asia, he touched Europe, all parts of the world, and that's when you start to understand the vastness of his enterprise."With a query like that, no, Fernandez wasn't sleeping much.So when July 4, 1997 rolled around, Fernandez was looking forward to a bit of R&R, a chance to spend some time with his wife and shoot the shit with his colleagues and their families at the annual Independence Day bash at the ambassador's residence in Lomas de Chapultepec, a lavish neighborhood of rolling hills and the gated mansions of the Mexican elite.But work found him anyway, as it often did, in the form of a call from a high-ranking Mexican law-enforcement official. It was one of the men with whom he'd spent the past year building up a cautious but increasingly strong rapport. The ramifications of the news that came through the phone are still playing out today."We think Amado Carrillo Fuentes is dead," the official told him."All kinds of rumors are going to spring up"The details were sketchy, no one knew for sure what to believe, but Fernandez' source told him what he could: the Lord of the Skies had the day before slunk into a private clinic in Mexico City for some kind of operation, maybe liposuction, maybe plastic surgery, and had died on the operating table. Whether it was negligence or homicidal intent was unclear. ut word was, Amado was dead.Those words hit Fernandez like a thunderclap. After hanging up, he sidled over to his boss and his boss's boss, who were standing about chatting and soaking up the unique glory of a Mexico City summer day. Fernandez pulled the two more senior agents aside and told him what he had just heard.Before long, the news rippled out through the crowd and the DEA agents in attendance huddled up to figure out what do do next.In the middle of that scrum was Larry Villalobos, a DEA intelligence analyst who'd arrived in Mexico the year prior after a stint in El Paso building dossiers on the major drug traffickers operating in Mexico. He knew everybody. To this day, Villalobos has the uncanny ability to summon up the names of men long dead and recall the bit-part roles they played in the larger action. Mexican special forces police guard the morgue in Mexico City where the remains of Amado Carrillo Fuentes were held after his death. Reuters At the ambassador's residence the party continued. But for Fernandez, Villalobos, and the rest of the DEA crew in attendance that day, there was work to do. They had a window in which they could confirm that Amado was dead and that window was already closing rapidly, Villalobos recalled."We knew from working in Mexico that if you wait any goddamn longer than that all kinds of rumors are going to spring up," Villalobos told me.A fingerprint matchAs they hustled away from the ambassador's residence, Fernandez, Villalobos, and the other DEA agents knew that the first thing they had to do was find the body.According to the law-enforcement source Fernandez, by the time the DEA agents hightailed it away from their aborted Fourth of July party, the body was already on a plane en route to Sinaloa. But by the time it landed, a team of agents with the Attorney General's office were waiting.They seized the casket and immediately put it on a plane back to Mexico City. According to an Associated Press report a few days later, the agents had to forcibly part Amado's mother from the casket that she clearly believed held the remains of her son. Amado's mother, Aurora Fuentes (L), arrived at the morgue to collect the body of her son on July 10, 1997. Reuters Some of the field agents began to press all their sources for information. But for Villalobos, who had worked as a fingerprint technician with the FBI before joining the DEA, it all came down to the body. And suddenly, he recalled an astonishing fact: the U.S. was in possession of Amado's fingerprints, taken by Border Patrol agents in Presidio, Texas way back in 1985 and later unearthed from the files of the Immigration and Naturalization service.He got on the phone with his old intelligence office in El Paso, and had them overnight a set of the prints to Mexico City while a Mexican technician did his best to harvest a set from the corpse, which had long since gone stiff with rigor mortis. As the body decomposes after death, the quality of the available prints start to degrade, but after comparing the prints on file with those taken from the corpse, Villalobos was certain.His boss wanted to know how certain he was that this was, in fact, Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Ever precise, Villalobos clarified the issue."I didn't say that it was Amado. What I said was that the fingerprints that were taken from a young man who resembles the Amado that we all know, and was fingerprinted as an illegal alien 20 years ago, is the same person as this corpse," Villalobos recalled telling the senior DEA attache in Mexico City. Amado's sister, Alicia Carrillo Fuentes (L), and other family members mourn Amado's death at the home of his mother. Huge wreaths were delivered, including some by other alleged drug barons. Reuters "Whether it's Amado or not, that's a different matter, but it would have had to been some type of conspiracy over 20 years that some guy was gonna die and they were gonna substitute the body of the guy who was in Presidio, Texas 20 years ago."In other words, it was Amado.The positive ID on the fingerprints that Villalobos made came no more than 72 hours after Amado died in surgery, but already speculation was buzzing about the possible death of the kingpin of Juárez.While Villalobos had been doing his thing, other agents like Mauricio Fernandez had been working their sources and keeping in constant contact with trusted Mexican officials doing the same, and they were starting to get indications from the underworld that the big guy really was gone.Meanwhile, in Mexico City, a forensics expert from Mexico's Attorney General's office held a press conference where he presented the fingerprint evidence."It would have made for a wonderful story"After the confirmation from DEA, after the confirmation from the Mexican government, after the body was returned to Amado's family and buried in his hometown of Guamuchilito, Sinaloa, the myth of Amado's survival began to grow, and it has never really gone away. Even now, Fernandez said he understands why the myth of Amado has clung on for so long."There was a lot of folklore around Amado and who he was, and I think for a lot of people, they wanted to keep that thought alive," Fernandez said. "It would have made for a wonderful story, but the fact is that that wasn't the case. It just was not the case." Chilean authorities identified this home as one of the eleven houses that Amado Carrillo Fuentes bought in Santiago several months before his death. Reuters Regardless of where one stands on the fact that Amado Carrillo Fuentes died in July 1997, no one disputes the fact that his death was a turning point, one of the periodic tectonic shifts throughout the history of the war on drugs in Mexico. Amado's younger brother Vicente took the reins, but he didn't have it in him, and people didn't respect him the way they had Amado. The alliances that Amado held together soon started to fray, and that breakdown helped contribute to the staggering wave of violence that washed over Mexico a decade later and has yet to truly recede.This dynamic within Amado's network may have played a part in the myths that sprung up so soon after his death. With a weak leader like Vicente running the ship and its increasingly mutinous crew aground, the idea of a vengeful Amado out there, maybe coming back some day, might have been useful for keeping people in line, according to Jesús Esquivel, a veteran Mexican journalist who was one of the first reporters to break the news of Amado's death. Amado Carrillo Fuentes's home in the Alvaro Obregon municipality of Mexico City. It was raffled off by Mexico's National Lottery in September 2021. XAVIER MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images "Vicente was weak, and the local criminals knew, and they said 'this is our time,'" Esquivel told me. "So they were playing with Amado's shadow."Larry Villalobos, for his part, still hears the old conspiracy theories from time to time, occasionally from unlikely sources."I had an FBI agent come up to me less than 10 years ago and he says to me 'what if I told you Amado was still alive?'" Villalobos told Insider. "I was like 'get the fuck outta here, I don't wanna hear that shit. I saw the fingerprints, I made the identification, what are you talking about?"According to Villalobos, the FBI agent was insistent, telling him that a trusted source had recently claimed to have spotted Amado in his old stomping grounds of Ojinga, just over the border from Texas. Even better, the source claimed to know where exactly they could find him.Villalobos was not moved."I hope the FBI didn't pay too much for that tip," Villalobos said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Experts say you can't overdose from touching fentanyl. So why do police officers across the country keep fainting during drug busts? San Diego County Sheriff's Deputy David Faiivae receiving aid from an officer after being exposed to fentanyl on July 3. Experts say it's unlikely that Faiivae was overdosing. San Diego County Sheriff's Department via AP Cops have collapsed after touching fentanyl, but experts say you can't overdose from skin contact. Police officers may be experiencing a disorder that converts stress into physical symptoms. Misinformation is swirling about the risk of fentanyl exposure on the job for police officers. The video is harrowing: It shows a San Diego deputy crumpling to the ground in a parking lot after accidentally touching white powder during an arrest."I got you, OK? I'm not going to let you die," someone said in a voice-over. Then someone yelled, "I need Narcan!"In the video, Deputy David Faiivae, the officer in training who collapsed, wiped away a tear after describing how his lungs locked up that day in July."I almost died of a fentanyl overdose," Faiivae, 32, said. Then Bill Gore, the sheriff of San Diego County, appeared on-screen with a public-service message."Being exposed to just a few small grains of fentanyl could have deadly consequences," Gore said. He added, "Please take the time to share this video."But experts say you can't overdose from touching fentanyl. So why did the San Diego police officer collapse?If cops aren't overdosing from touching fentanyl, what is happening? A chemical specialist in a protective suit with pills seized at a clandestine fentanyl processing lab in Mexico City on December 12, 2018. Attorney General's Office/Handout via Reuters It's not that fentanyl isn't dangerous. A record 93,000 drug-overdose deaths were reported last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, and potent synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are the most common drugs involved in those deaths.But skin contact with fentanyl is different, experts say."The only way to overdose is from injecting, snorting, or some other way of ingesting it," Dr. Ryan Marino, the medical director of toxicology at University Hospitals in Cleveland, told The New York Times. "You cannot overdose from secondhand contact."Moreover, the symptoms people describe after touching fentanyl vary widely, from dizziness to blurry vision to heart palpitations."Passive exposure to fentanyl does not result in clinical toxicity," Dr. Lewis Nelson, the director of the medical toxicology division at Rutgers Medical School, wrote in a STAT News op-ed in 2018. He added that the reactions usually resolve on their own, and faster than the drug's effects should last."They aren't consistent with the signs and symptoms of opioid poisoning - the triad of slowed breathing, decreased consciousness, and pinpoint pupils," Nelson wrote.But the police officer in San Diego wasn't the only one to collapse. Officers in Ohio, Arkansas, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina have also struggled to breathe or fainted after touching fentanyl. Faiivae declined to comment on the incident. The New Republic's "The Politics of Everything" podcast set out to solve this mystery last month, and it concluded that officers were having panic attacks, fueled by misinformation. "People are probably familiar with what in the 19th century or early 20th century was called hysteria," Patrick Blanchfield, an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research who specializes in psychoanalytic theory, told "The Politics of Everything." In classic hysteria cases, symptoms present as temporary paralysis, Blanchfield added: "People's limbs would lock up. They would start screaming, wailing - no apparent reason."In modern-day terms, police officers may be experiencing a conversion disorder - when intense stress is converted into physical symptoms, Blanchfield explained. It's similar to a panic attack. Blanchfield didn't think the officers were exaggerating or collapsing on purpose. He believed they were truly scared."That suffering is real," he said.Policing is a stressful and dangerous job, so news stories and police reports about officers who are said to have overdosed during drug busts might have led to a contagion effect, in which certain behaviors or actions spread through a group. "When your whole job is maintaining boundaries, but also those boundaries are unstable and full of contradictions, it's probably not surprising that people develop conversion disorders and contagion fears specifically, that they seize up or act out," Blanchfield said.Confusing panic attacks with overdoses has real consequences The Tulare County Sheriff's Office showed evidence seized after a traffic stop led officers to a major methamphetamine- and fentanyl-trafficking operation in Pixley, California, in January 2020. Tulare County Sheriff's Office/AP Police forces are part of a larger misinformation problem, harm-reduction experts say. News articles, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the CDC have all spread hyperbolic, unvetted, or false information about the risk of overdose from touching fentanyl. A paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy last year said news articles containing misinformation about fentanyl were shared at least 450,000 times on Facebook between 2015 and 2019, potentially reaching upward of 70 million users. By comparison, posts correcting false information about fentanyl were shared 30,000 times. Leah Hill, a behavioral-health fellow with the Baltimore City Health Department, displayed a sample of Narcan nasal spray on January 23, 2018. Patrick Semansky/AP Misinformation is a threat to both law-enforcement offers and people who use drugs, since the latter group could be less likely to be rescued during an overdose if responders or witnesses fear for their own lives. Additionally, those who possess drugs may face harsher sentencing because of this confusion. In 2017, for example, an Ohio police officer told news outlets that he'd used his bare hand to brush grains of fentanyl off his uniform during a drug bust. An hour later, he said, he keeled over from an overdose.The suspect in the drug bust, a 25-year-old, was sentenced to 6.5 years for multiple charges, reported WKBN, the local NBC affiliate. Among those charges? Assaulting an officer with fentanyl.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Experts say you can't overdose from touching fentanyl. So why do police officers across the country keep fainting during drug busts? San Diego County Sheriff's Deputy David Faiivae receiving aid from an officer after being exposed to fentanyl on July 3. Experts say it's unlikely that Faiivae was overdosing. San Diego County Sheriff's Department via AP Cops have collapsed after touching fentanyl, but experts say you can't overdose from skin contact. Police officers may be experiencing a disorder that converts stress into physical symptoms. Misinformation is swirling about the risk of fentanyl exposure on the job for police officers. The video is harrowing: It shows a San Diego deputy crumpling to the ground in a parking lot after accidentally touching white powder during an arrest."I got you, okay? I'm not going to let you die," a voice from off camera coaches. And then, "I need Narcan!" Later in the video, the collapsed officer-in-training, Deputy David Faiivae, recalls how his lungs locked up that day in July and wipes away a tear."I almost died of a fentanyl overdose," Faiivae, age 32, warns the camera. The San Diego County Sheriff, Bill Gore, then appears on screen with a public service message."Being exposed to just a few small grains of fentanyl could have deadly consequences," he warns, adding, "Please take the time to share this video."There's just one problem: Experts say you can't overdose from touching fentanyl. So why did the San Diego police officer collapse? If cops aren't overdosing from touching fentanyl, what is happening? A chemical specialist in a protective suit with pills seized at a clandestine fentanyl processing lab in Mexico City on December 12, 2018. Attorney General's Office/Handout via Reuters It's not that fentanyl isn't dangerous. A record 93,000 drug overdose deaths were reported last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl are the most common drugs involved in those deaths.But skin contact with fentanyl is different, experts say."The only way to overdose is from injecting, snorting, or some other way of ingesting it," Dr. Ryan Marino, medical director of toxicology at University Hospitals in Cleveland, told The New York Times. "You cannot overdose from secondhand contact."Moreover, the symptoms people describe after touching fentanyl vary widely, from dizziness to blurry vision to heart palpitations."Passive exposure to fentanyl does not result in clinical toxicity," Dr. Lewis Nelson, director of the medical toxicology division at Rutgers Medical School, wrote in a STAT News op-ed in 2018, adding that the reactions usually resolve on their own, and faster than the drug's effects should last."They aren't consistent with the signs and symptoms of opioid poisoning - the triad of slowed breathing, decreased consciousness, and pinpoint pupils," Nelson wrote.But the police officer in San Diego wasn't the only one to collapse. Officers in Ohio, Arkansas, Massachusetts, California, and North Carolina have all also struggled to breath or fainted after touching fentanyl. Deputy Faiivae declined to comment on the incident. The New Republic's "The Politics of Everything" podcast set out to solve this mystery last month, and concluded that officers are having panic attacks, fueled by misinformation. "People are probably familiar with what in the 19th century or early 20th century was called hysteria," Patrick Blanchfield, an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research specializing in psychoanalytic theory, told "The Politics of Everything." In classic hysteria cases, symptoms present as temporary paralysis, Blanchfield added: "People's limbs would lock up. They would start screaming, wailing - no apparent reason."In modern-day terms, cops may be experiencing a conversion disorder - when intense stress is converted into physical symptoms, Blanchfield explained. It's similar to a panic attack. Blanchfield doesn't think the officers are exaggerating or collapsing on purpose; he believes they are truly scared."That suffering is real," he said.Policing is a stressful and dangerous job, so hyped-up news stories and police reports about officers who reportedly overdose during drug busts might have led to a contagion effect, in which certain behaviors or actions spread through a group. "When your whole job is maintaining boundaries, but also those boundaries are unstable and full of contradictions, it's probably not surprising that people develop conversion disorders and contagion fears specifically, that they seize up or act out," Blanchfield said.Confusing panic attacks with overdoses has real consequences The Tulare County Sheriff's Office showed evidence seized after a traffic stop led officers to a major methamphetamine- and fentanyl-trafficking operation in Pixley, California, in January 2020. Tulare County Sheriff's Office/AP Police forces are part of a larger misinformation problem, harm-reduction experts say. News articles, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the CDC have all spread hyperbolic, unvetted, or false information about the risk of overdose from touching fentanyl. According to a paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy last year, news articles containing misinformation about fentanyl were shared at least 450,000 times on Facebook between 2015 and 2019, potentially reaching upward of 70 million users. By comparison, posts correcting false information about fentanyl were shared just 30,000 times. Leah Hill, a behavioral-health fellow with the Baltimore City Health Department, displayed a sample of Narcan nasal spray on January 23, 2018. Patrick Semansky/AP Misinformation is a threat both to law-enforcement offers and to people who use drugs, since the latter group could be less likely to be rescued during an overdose if responders or witnesses fear for their own lives. Additionally, those who possess drugs may face harsher sentencing because of this confusion. In 2017, for example, an Ohio police officer told news outlets he'd used his bare hand to brush grains of fentanyl off his uniform during a drug bust. An hour later, he said, he keeled over from an overdose.The suspect in the drug bust, a 25-year-old, was sentenced to 6.5 years for multiple charges, according to local NBC affiliate WKBN. Among those charges? Assaulting an officer with fentanyl.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

According to cartel insiders and military sources, Mexico's Jalisco Cartel has its sights set on Sinaloa Cartel turf in Central and South America. Mexican soldiers on patrol in Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state, November 22, 2019. ULISES RUIZ/AFP via Getty Images Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación is widely seen as Mexico's asendent cartel, rivaled only by the Sinaloa Cartel. But the group's ambitions are not limited to controling the drug trade in Mexico. According to sources and documents, the CJNG is stretching its empire into Central and South America with alliances and threats. Mexico City, MEXICO - Mexico's ruthless Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) is stretching its criminal empire south into Central and South America by making alliances, threatening authorities, and appropriating drug routes, according to documents and sources who spoke to Insider.Originally based in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, CJNG has spread operations to almost every state in Mexico and most recently to countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Chile.Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación has been described by US officials as the "best armed" criminal organization in Mexico and "one of the most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world."US authorities have said the organization is attempting to operate in the US through local gangs, but CJNG is looking to own the drug routes and the supply chain throughout Latin America.A recent report from Chile's Attorney General's Office describes how CJNG is trying to establish operations inside the country for "large-scale production of high-concentration marihuana." Chilean police arrange packs of confiscated marijuana in a display for the media in Vina del Mar city, November 26, 2009. REUTERS/Eliseo Fernandez Chilean Attorney General Jorge Abbott addressed the issue at a recent press conference, saying Chile had gone from being a transit country for drugs heading north "to be a country where very well known Mexican cartels are looking to settle."The cartel's expanding operations are also troubling Guatemala, where its members recently threatened Guatemala's National Police for "stealing" a load of drugs belonging to the leader of CJNG, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as "El Mencho," for whom US authorities are offering $5 million.In a video posted online in early September, supposed members of the CJNG threatened several Guatemalan police officers."No one messes with Señor Nemesio's people. Those things have an owner, and the owner is Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación," an unidentified man said in the video.Guatemalan police later confirmed the identity of the officers mentioned in the video and detailed the seizure of a drug load that could have been what the video was referring to.An operative with the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación detailed the areas of operation in Guatemala for Insider.The man, who asked not to be identified to avoid retaliation, said CJNG is currently fighting in Central and South America against the Sinaloa Cartel, specifically "Los Chapitos" and "Los Mayos" factions, linked to "El Chapo" Guzmán's sons and to the alleged active leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada."We are mostly concentrated in Sinaloa's plazas, like all the Pacific coast of Guatemala, San Marcos, Quetzaltenango, Santa Rosa, Jutiapa, but also Petén, Melchor De Mencos, Alta Verapaz, and Huehuetenango," the operative said. Anti-narcotics and military police officers prepare to incinerate more than 200 kilos of cocaine seized in Honduras near the border with Nicaragua, August 5, 2016. ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP via Getty Images An active member of the Nicaraguan military also confirmed to Insider the presence of Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación in Honduras and Nicaragua.The military member, speaking anonymously because they did not have authorization to talk to the media, said they have found bases of operation and "training camps" mostly in the region near the Nicaraguan and Honduran border."The Fonseca Gulf is widely used by the CJNG to operate, but also Puerto Lempira in Honduras [and] Corinto, Puerto Sandino and the Caribbean side of Nicaragua," the military member said.The Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación is allied with several gangs involved in shipping cocaine to Europe, according to the operative."The Sinaloa Cartel used to have a strong hold of the ports in Nicaragua, but lately we have found many operations and arrested some of them [CJNG], which leads us to think they now have more control over drug trafficking than the Sinaloas," the Nicaraguan military member said.The Sinaloa Cartel and now Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación are posing new threats to all of the region, according to Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a Colombia-based security and risk-analysis firm."These Mexican organizations used to be partners with other criminal organizations in South and Central America, but during the past few years they have been playing a more active role, to the point where they are now making decisions in many other countries," Guzman said.Mexican criminal organizations have had a growing presence in Colombia since the late 1990s, when major Colombian groups like the Medellín and Cali cartels fell from power. A farmer sprinkles cement over mulched coca leaves to prepare them to make coca paste at a small makeshift lab in the mountains of Antioquia, Colombia, January 7, 2016. AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd In the DEA's first formal investigation of the CJNG, done in 2007, the agency accused "El Mencho" of shipping cocaine from Colombia through Guatemala to the US. In August this year, Colombian authorities arrested Néstor Tarazona Enciso, an alleged member of the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación accused of money laundering, indicating that the cartel has an active physical presence in Colombia.Guzmán also detailed how the alliance between Mexican criminal organizations and the Clan del Golfo in Colombia, which is now in charge of the cocaine trade from Colombia to the US, could soon change."These two organizations, Cartel de Sinaloa and Cartel Jalisco [Nueva Generación] are trying to get closer to the chain of supply, specifically cocaine," he said.In 2019, Colombia's anti-narcotics chief said Mexican criminal groups were shipping an unrefined form of the drug called coca base out of Colombia in and processing it in Mexico, reflecting those efforts to control more of the cocaine supply chain.Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación's exponential growth is a direct threat to all of Latin America and should be addressed "by all countries involved," Guzmán said."I see a dangerous gap in the collaboration between countries where these criminal enterprises operate. There is no coordination, and that is what these groups are exploiting to their own benefit," he said.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Musk has got into spats and even long-running feuds with an eclectic bunch of people, often over his preferred medium of Twitter. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a history of strange spats. Getty Images Elon Musk has a habit of getting into bizarre fights. Recently he's been attacking Jeff Bezos over the billionaires' rival space companies. Bezos is one of an eclectic bunch of people Musk has feuded with, including rapper Azealia Banks. See more stories on Insider's business page. Elon Musk has a serious combative streak.The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is famously unpredictable as chief executives go, a personality trait which has sometimes landed him in trouble - particularly with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.But Musk's combative side doesn't just express itself in skirmishes with government bodies. The Tesla billionaire has ended up in bizarre spats with a strange array of people - from fellow billionaires to artists to rescue divers - and often via his preferred medium of Twitter.Recently, he has repeatedly attacked Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose space exploration company Blue Origin has been a thorn in the side of Musk's rival company SpaceX.The twists and turns in the stories of Musk's various battles are often baffling, and it can be hard to remember all the different ways Musk has squared up to various public figures and regular citizens.We've catalogued his weirdest fights. In May 2020 Musk challenged Alameda County officials to arrest him for reopening the Tesla factory during the coronavirus pandemic. AP Photo Reports surfaced in May 2020 that Tesla was asking workers in its California factory to return to work despite Alameda County's shelter-in-place order forbidding the factory from re-opening as only essential businesses are allowed to operate in California due to the coronavirus pandemic.Musk confirmed the reports on May 11 in a tweet. "Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules, I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me." Tesla threatened to sue Alameda County. The view of Tesla Inc's US vehicle factory in Fremont, California Reuters Tesla's suit hinged around the fact that California Gov. Gavin Newsom said manufacturers in the state would be allowed to reopen, but Alameda County extended its shelter-in-place order only allowing essential businesses to open.Tesla's suit argued that Alameda County's forced shutdown ignored an order from California Gov. Gavin Newsom allowing businesses from "16 crucial infrastructure industries" to remain open, one of which is transportation.The fight prompted Musk to leave California altogether. "Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependen on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA," Musk tweeted in May 2020.This prompted California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez to tweet: "F--- Elon Musk."Musk confirmed in December 2020 he had moved to Texas. Alameda County gave the Tesla factory the go-ahead to reopen on May 13, 2020. Alameda County officials said on May 13 Tesla would be allowed to reopen its Fremont factory so long as it implemented robust safety plans for its workers, and a Tesla executive sent a letter to employees saying it would resume "full production" the following week.Tesla dropped its lawsuit against Alameda County the same week it resumed production. Musk picked numerous fights over the severity of the coronavirus. Elon Musk speaks during the Satellite 2020 at the Washington Convention Center on March 9, 2020, in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images Musk has consistently espoused the theory that the threat posed by the coronavirus is overblown, and tweeted misinformation about the virus including that children are "basically immune."He has also been openly hostile towards state lockdowns, calling them "fascist," and questioned the official death count as it includes people with underlying health conditions.As Business Insider's Dave Mosher and Aylin Woodward write, Musk's rhetoric is dangerously misguided. Scientific evidence overwhelmingly suggests lockdowns help curb the spread of the virus and slow the death rate, and underlying health conditions make people more vulnerable to the virus, and so should not be discounted from death tolls. Musk's frustrations were tied to Tesla's fortunes. A worker descends from the top deck of a car carrier trailer carrying Tesla electric vehicles at Tesla's primary vehicle factory after CEO Elon Musk announced he was defying local officials' coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions by reopening the plant in Fremont, California on May 11, 2020. REUTERS/Stephen Lam Musk said during Tesla's Q1 2020 earnings call that the forced closure of the Tesla factory posed a "serious risk" to business."I should say we are a bit worried about not being able to resume production in the Bay Area, and that should be identified as a serious risk," Musk said.During the same call, Musk went on a tirade against lockdowns in general. "I would call it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all their constitutional rights. That's my opinion, and breaking people's freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not why people came to America or built this country — what the f---. Excuse me, the outrage. It's just outrage," Musk said. In 2018 Musk called a complete stranger "pedo guy." British caver Vernon Unsworth looks to Tham Luang cave complex during a search for members of an under-16 soccer team and their coach, in the northern province of Chiang Rai, Thailand, June 27, 2018 REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun Vernon Unsworth is a British diver who participated in the rescue of 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave system in June 2018. It was a difficult, complex operation and the boys were successfully rescued after being trapped for 17 days by international divers and Thai Navy SEALs. Unsworth, an experienced cave explorer, was asked by Thai officials to aid in the rescue.He had never met Elon Musk, but would go on to spend most of 2019 locked in a legal battle with the Tesla billionaire.Musk had inserted himself into the Thai rescue operation and offered to build a mini-submarine to fetch the boys. The idea never materialized.Unsworth was asked about Musk's submarine in an interview with CNN, and described it in unflattering terms, describing it as a PR stunt. He added that Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts."That angered Musk, who subsequently wrote a post on Twitter calling Unsworth a "pedo guy." When a Twitter user challenged him over it, he replied "bet ya a signed dollar it's true."His remarks immediately triggered headlines around the world, despite the fact he provided no proof for the "pedo" claim. Musk doubled down on the allegation by emailing BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac and calling Vernon Unsworth a "child rapist", with no evidence. Brendan McDermid/Reuters Censured by critics for using the slur, Musk deleted his tweet and apologised, but he didn't leave it there. A month later he responded to a Twitter user who criticised him. "You don't think it's strange he hasn't sued me? He was offered free legal services," Musk tweeted, referring to Unsworth.Then in September 2018, he doubled down. BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac emailed Musk asking for comment on a legal threat made by Unsworth's lawyer. Musk replied, suggesting Unsworth was a "child rapist" and "I hope he fucking sues me." Musk prefaced the email to Mac with "off the record," but the journalist had never agreed to go off the record, and published the entire exchange. Documents later revealed Musk called himself a "fucking idiot" for sending the email to Mac in the first place.A few weeks after Mac's article was published Unsworth sued Musk for defamation. Court filings revealed Musk hired a detective to investigate Unsworth - but the PI turned out to be a conman. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens to engineer and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk of The Boring Company talks about constructing a high speed transit tunnel at Block 37 during a news conference on June 14, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. Joshua Lott/Getty Images The case threw up some bizarre findings.Court filings revealed that Musk paid a man named James Higgins-Howard $50,000 to investigate Unsworth and relay reports to Musk's family office.Higgins-Howard emailed Musk out of the blue following the initial "pedo guy" tweet to offer his services as a private detective. "You may want to dig deep into Mr. Unsworth['s] past to prepare for his defamation claim," Higgins-Howard wrote, adding "no smoke without fire!"Higgins-Howard didn't find any evidence, however, and BuzzFeed's Ryan Mac later reported that the would-be PI had previously been convicted of fraud. Musk admitted in a deposition that he later realised Higgins-Howard was "just taking us for a ride."In depositions Musk has also argued that by calling Unsworth "pedo guy" he wasn't literally accusing him of being a pedophile because the term was used to be synonymous with "creepy old man" when he was growing up in South Africa. He also claimed he was genuinely worried Unsworth could be "another Jeffrey Epstein."The trial began on December 3, 2019.   On December 6, 2019, Elon Musk won the defamation case. Elon Musk arriving at court in California. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill After a four-day trial in California, the jury found Musk not guilty of defamation.The jury took less than half an hour to reach their decision, which reportedly hinged on the fact that Musk did not identify Unsworth in his tweet, according to the Times of London.The foreman also said that Unsworth's lawyers had made the case too emotive. "The failure probably happened because they didn't focus on the tweets... I think they tried to get our emotions involved in it. In a court of law you have to prove your case, which they did not prove," said foreman Joshua Jones, per The Guardian."My faith in humanity is restored," Musk said following the verdict.Unsworth's lawyer Lin Wood said in a tweet that his team would "explore legal options" for challenging the verdict.  In June 2018, Musk took a liking to some farting unicorn art but didn't pay for it, leading to a copyright dispute with a potter. Tom Edwards' farting unicorn mug. Tom Edwards, Wallyware  Musk locked horns with another unlikely member of the public in June 2018.Colorado-based potter Tom Edwards caught Musk's attention with a mug. The mug carried a painting of a unicorn farting rainbows to power an electric car. Musk tweeted a picture of a mug in February 2017 calling it "maybe my favorite mug ever." Two months later friends of Edwards' told him they had seen the same farting unicorn image used as an icon on Tesla screens, and the image was later used on Tesla's company Christmas cards.The Christmas card spurred Edwards into action. "I decided to make it my New Year's resolution to pursue getting compensation, because artists are always seeing their work just taken, and it happens all the time," he told Insider in June 2018.In later-deleted tweets Musk attacked Edwards, saying taking legal action would be "kinda lame.""If anything, this attention increased his mug sales," he said. Musk also claimed (also in subsequently deleted tweets) to have offered to pay for the work twice. Edwards said he'd had no contact from Musk or Tesla at that point. Despite Musk's protestations, the two eventually settled. Brendan McDermid/Reuters A month after the farting unicorn argument erupted on Twitter, Musk and Edwards came to a settlement. The terms of the settlement were not made public, but Edwards posted on his blog that it "resolves our issues in a way that everyone feels good about.""It's clear there were some misunderstandings that led to this escalating, but I'm just glad that everything has been cleared up," he added.Musk for his part tweeted a link to the blog accompanied by three emojis: a unicorn, a gust of wind, and a peace symbol.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2018  Azealia Banks waded into Tesla's regulatory troubles in August 2018. Rapper Azealia Banks became embroiled in Elon Musk's infamous "funding secured" saga. Getty On August 7, 2018, Elon Musk sent his infamous "funding secured" tweet, in which he claimed to be taking Tesla private at $420 a share.Tesla did not go private, and Musk landed himself with a $20 million fine from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the tweet. He lost his position as chairman of Tesla's board, leading to long-running bad blood with the agency.It triggered another unlikely feud with rapper Azealia Banks.A week after Musk sent his fateful Tweet, Banks wrote on her Instagram that she had been at Musk's house at the time when he'd sent it. She had visited to collaborate with Musk's then-partner Grimes (real name Claire Boucher), and claimed she had been annoyed when the crisis caused by "funding secured" dominated Grimes' time."I waited around all weekend while grimes coddled her boyfriend," Banks wrote, and compared the weekend to the horror film "Get Out.""I saw him in the kitchen tucking his tail in between his legs scrounging for investors to cover his ass after that tweet," Banks told Insider at the time.   Banks accused Musk of taking her phone. Getty Images On August 20, Banks was back on Instagram, tagging Elon Musk. Banks posted "@elonmusk you need to contact me. ASAP." and "I need my phone back now.  @elonmusk," on her Instagram story — she later deleted the posts.Banks then shared a screenshot with Insider that appeared to show a text from Grimes saying the choice of share price ($420) was a weed reference. "He just got into weed cuz of me and he's super entertained by 420 so when he decided to take the stock private he calculated it was worth 419$ so he rounded up to 420 for a laugh and now the sec is investigating him for fraud," the text read.Musk told The New York Times that he rounded up the price because $420 had better "karma" than $419, and denied using weed. Musk didn't really respond publicly to Banks except to say he had never met her. Reuters / Rebecca Cook Musk told Gizmodo that he hadn't met Banks "or communicated with her in any way," but confirmed to the New York Times that he had seen her at his house."I saw her on Friday morning, for two seconds at about a 30-foot distance as she was leaving the house... I'd just finished working out. She was not within hearing range. I didn't even realize who it was. That's literally the only time I've ever laid eyes on her," he told the Times. The Banks-Musk feud dragged on for months after the story blew up. Isaiah Trickey/FilmMagic In January 2019, a court granted a motion to subpoena Banks, Grimes, and publications including Insider.In July 2021 Grimes posted in a Discord chat that she'd written a song, called "100% Tragedy," which was about "having to defeat Azealia Banks when she tried to destroy my life."Musk announced in September 2021 that he and Grimes had broken up after three years together. Banks responded to the news on her Instagram, saying: "Ok girl, can we finally make those darn songs now that apartheid Clyde is out of the way?"The nickname "Apartheid Clyde" is an apparent reference to Musk's South African upbringing. Musk was accused of stealing an idea from Pablo Escobar's brother in July 2019. Roberto Escobar (left). YouTube Musk ended up in a spat with Roberto Escobar, brother of deceased Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, over an accusation of intellectual property theft.TMZ first reported that Escobar had accused Musk of stealing his idea for a flamethrower when Musk's venture The Boring Company announced its "Not-A-Flamethrower" flamethrower in January 2018, beating Escobar's own flamethrower to market.Escobar claimed to TMZ that one of Musk's engineers had stolen the idea while visiting an Escobar family compound in 2017. "It's not a flamethrower, Mr. Escobar." iJustine/YouTube/Joe Rogan Experience Elon Musk responded to the story in classic Muskian style — on Twitter.Musk tweeted a link to the TMZ story accompanied by the words, "It's not a Flamethrower, Mr. Escobar," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the device's name.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2019In a follow-up tweet he added he stole the idea from the comedy movie "Spaceballs." Musk has traded jibes with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos about which parts of space to conquer. Jeff Bezos unveils Blue Moon, a lunar lander designed by his spaceflight company, Blue Origin, on May 9, 2019. Blue Origin Jeff Bezos owns a space exploration company called Blue Origin, a rival to Musk's own space exploration company SpaceX.Bezos and Musk have sporadically interacted about their companies' successes, sometimes applauding each other, but more often locking antlers.When Blue Origin unveiled its new lunar lander Blue Moon in May 2019 Bezos reportedly took a swipe at SpaceX's plans to colonize Mars during his presentation, saying that the moon was a much more realistic prospect. According to Bloomberg, Bezos showed a slide with a picture of Mars accompanied by the labels "Round-trip on the order of years" and "No real-time communication."Musk responded by mocking the lander's name."Competition is good. Results in a better outcome for all... But putting the word "Blue" on a ball is questionable branding," Musk said in a pair of tweets on May 10, 2019. Musk also called Bezos a "copycat" over his plan to launch thousands of satellites. Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters In April 2019, Amazon announced its plan to launch 3,236 satellites with the aim of providing broadband to communities without high-speed internet, nicknamed Project Kuiper.The project bears some resemblance to a SpaceX project called Starlink, which won FCC approval in November 2018 to launch almost 12,000 satellites into orbit. CNBC also reported that Amazon hired a former SpaceX executive to head up Kuiper.After news of Project Kuiper broke, Musk tagged Bezos and tweeted the word "copy" followed by a cat emoji.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2019Bezos did not respond.  Musk tweeted in June 2020 that Amazon should be broken up after it de-listed a book written by a coronavirus skeptic. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais When Amazon's Direct Kindle Service refused to publish a book called "Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns," it caught Musk's eye.The author of the book, Alex Berenson, is a former New York Times reporter who has written claiming the threat posed by the coronavirus has been overblown.Musk, who has also been vocal in his opinion that the virus was not dangerous enough to warrant lockdown measures (despite evidence to the contrary) spotted a tweet by Berenson presenting the email he got from Amazon saying his book did not comply with its guidelines."This is insane @JeffBezos. Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!" Musk tweeted.—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 4, 2020 Amazon later confirmed to Business Insider the book had been removed in error and would be reinstated.  In mid-2021 Musk started attacking Bezos repeatedly claiming the Amazon founder retired so he could sue SpaceX. Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos (left) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Axel Springer On August 26, Elon Musk tweeted saying Bezos had "retired in order to pursue a full-time job filing lawsuits against SpaceX."Musk repeated the joke on September 1, and during an interview at the Code Conference on September 28 said he can't "sue your way to the moon."These attacks were prompted by both Amazon and Blue Origin mounting challenges against SpaceX.Amazon filed a protest letter with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in August 2021 urging it to block SpaceX's Starlink from putting up more satellites.Blue Origin also sued NASA in August after the agency granted an exclusive moon-lander contract to SpaceX.While Bezos tends not to engage personally in his feud with Musk, Amazon and Blue Origin have openly criticized Musk's companies. Amazon sent an unprompted 13-page list to The Verge of all the legal actions SpaceX has taken stretching back as far as 2004, claiming it showed SpaceX is just as litigious as itself. In a complaint submitted to the FCC on September 8 Amazon also said: "The conduct of SpaceX and other Musk-led companies makes their view plain: rules are for other people, and those who insist upon or even simply request compliance are deserving of derision and ad hominem attacks." Musk has a long-running animosity towards David Einhorn, a billionaire short seller he loves sending short shorts to. Greenlight Capital president David Einhorn. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Musk has a pretty well-documented hatred for short sellers, tweeting in October 2018 "what they do should be illegal."One short seller, in particular, has drawn Musk's ire. David Einhorn is president of Greenlight Capital, and is typically pretty scathing in his notes about Tesla and Musk.When Einhorn blamed Tesla's good performance in the first half of 2018 for denting Greenlight's hedge fund, Elon Musk promised to send him a box of "short shorts" — and he followed through.—David Einhorn (@davidein) August 10, 2018In November 2019, Musk renewed the offer of short shorts after Einhorn published a damning note on Tesla's Q3 results, drawing attention to a shareholder's lawsuit against Tesla, which alleges that Musk acquired his cousin's company SolarCity at an inflated value to bail it out.Musk posted an incredibly sarcastic note on Twitter following Einhorn's letter, addressing him as "Mr. Unicorn." Einhorn is German for unicorn. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»