EL MAYO ARRESTED! Was he betrayed by Chapo's son?!?!
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Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, the radio program where two journalists who have reported around the world on things of criminal nature, myself, Danny Gold, and my amigo, Sean Williams, take you on a journey through the global criminal underworld of past, present, and future. As always, you can find bonus episodes on patreon.com slash underworldpodcast or sign up on Spotify and iTunes. If you're new to the Underworld Podcast,

No cold open this week. No updates on Sean's life of domestic bliss. We are just going to get right into it because even though the concept of an emergency podcast is not something that actually exists, I think, you know, we threw this episode together very quickly because of what happened late last week. Might be a little all over the place. It's definitely not what we normally do, but so many people wrote to us to ask about it. So kind of, you know, we had no choice.

So obviously, if you're doing yourself, you're doing yourself down, you're doing yourself down. This is pretty amazing stuff to do over the weekend. I'm going to say that. So obviously, if you listen to this podcast, I'm sure you've seen the news. Probably the biggest underworld news since we've started doing this podcast, Elmayo Zimbada has been arrested and is in US custody. Elmayo is arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. In our opinion, maybe the most powerful cartel kingpin in Mexico's history. He's 76 years old.

He's never been arrested and has been a top level Mexican drug lord for decades, which is just not something like these guys don't usually have a long time on top. You know, it's a couple couple of years, maybe a decade before they're thrown in prison or murdered, more likely.

We just did a two-part series on him. You can find those back on May 7th and May 14th. We're not going to go over his entire resume. Go back and listen if you haven't before. But yeah, this is shocking news because, frankly, it just didn't seem like the U.S. was ever going to be able to touch him. And it seemed a lot less likely that he was going to get touched in Mexico. Basically, all of his contemporaries, anyone he came up with or that has been on his level, has been killed or jailed by now, most famously,

his co-founder and partner El Chapo. Yeah, this is like, what, the Super Bowl, the Wimbledon final, the World Series of Underworld podcast news stories, which is, I'm pretty sure, how the agents would have explained it to Maya on the tarmac, right?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Also arrested is Joaquin Jr., who is El Chapo's son and one of the leaders of the Chapitos. That's the four sons of El Chapo who got into the drug business and run a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. We also literally just did an episode on the rise of Los Chapitos. It came out on July 9th and their fentanyl empire and everything that went into that. So,

So yeah, we're not going to go super in-depth on them here as well and how they exist, basically. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that you can tell if you read in the media, right, that they don't really understand the Sinaloa cartel, that they don't mention that big split between the two sides of it, but...

No. Yeah, I've seen that a bunch, even in like really prestigious newspapers, which is pretty, pretty crap. But yeah, I haven't done much on this this week because I'm pretty lazy. And this is like, this is more your turf, I guess, the Latin American cartels. But I did manage to catch up with Vanda Felber Brown of the Bookings Institute in D.C. yesterday. She knows like everything.

a ton about pretty much everything to do with organized crime around the world. And we're going to put the full, I think it was like 25, 30 minute interview up on Patreon for subscribers there. But we're also going to sprinkle in a bit of her thoughts on this show as well. Cause she's like,

really great at connecting all the dots of this big, big drama. Yeah, if you don't know her work, it's phenomenal. She gets into everything. And we're also going to use a lot of great reporting by Luis Chaparro. He's the go-to guy on this stuff, in my opinion. We've had him on before. If you don't know him, look him up. Go sign up for his sub stack, subscribe to his YouTube, and support him because he really gets...

He gets the inside stuff, you know? But yeah. Okay. Sorry. We went on and on right there. But back to Joaquin Jr., he's kept a pretty low profile, you know? And as of the four Chapitos, he was the only one who had a 5 million bounty on his head instead of a 10 million bounty. Sinaloa cartel members said that that was by design, and he kind of let his brother Ovidio, his full brother, actually. Remember the Chapitos? It's two sets of full brothers that are all half brothers. You guys, that makes sense, right? Yeah.

He let Ovidio be more of the face of the operation. He wanted to kind of play the background, almost like Elmayo.

However, Joaquin was definitely in the mix and new reporting out of this arrest seems to indicate he was the chapito in charge of the financial side of the business. He's been likened to a CFO pretty much. Maybe we'll write to him in prison and see if he can help us out with monetizing the podcast or get ideas on how to move these t-shirts. Underworldpod.com, click on the merch tab. But yeah, here is what we actually know for a fact along with all the speculation and some theories on what is actually happening.

We have El Mayo and Joaquin Jr. arriving at a small airstrip in either Texas or New Mexico and being taken into U.S. custody.

The video of the plane is online. It's on the airstrip when two men walk up to the plane to greet the arrivals. There was also another video which shows about 15 or so, presumably they're law enforcement officials, and five or six SUVs waiting at the airstrip. A lot of people are arguing about where the plane actually took off from. Some people are saying Sonora. Others say different parts of Mexico. And a lot of people are also arguing about whether the plane landed in El Paso or a different small town in New Mexico. You know,

You know, we did most of this research over the weekend and on Friday. We're recording it on Monday. So some things may have changed, but I don't really think where it landed is like super important. But here's where things get interesting. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times are reporting that Joaquin Jr. tricked El Mayo into boarding this private plane. It's a Beechcraft 2000 with twin propellers, which is kind of lame. I thought El Mayo would be in a G6 or something.

They're saying he tricked them into going on that. He was going to go look at clandestine airstrips, while the New York Times says he was going to look at real estate assets, which could be the same thing. They describe it as a multiple-month FBI and Homeland Security investigation. It was a joint operation, and most of the rest of the media is echoing this reporting. CBS News is saying that they're citing U.S. government sources that

that Joaquin cut a deal for himself and to help out, he was trying to help out Ovidio who was arrested and then extradited early last year. Now in the English speaking big outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Reuters, places like that, a lot of what they're printing is coming from anonymous sources in the government or in law enforcement. And I'm going to speculate here, but let's just say I'm not really buying what those places have been saying. And we try not to completely speculate here and like-

conspiracies, all that, but we're going to get into why this kind of doesn't make sense. So as I mentioned, a guy who is deeply sourced up and focused on the cartels is Luis Chaparro. He's reporting a different story and shout out to him because he's just, he's in the mix. I mean, this is the guy.

He's always breaking big news on this stuff, and hopefully we can have him on the podcast again soon. He reports that there was a meeting brokered by a bunch of lawyers in Texas who are presumably cartel lawyers with the U.S. government, which could have been DEA, FBI, DOJ, even the CIA or all. Who knows? At this meeting, Elmayo himself was there and two of the three remaining Chapitos who weren't in U.S. custody. Remember Ovidio, the fourth brother involved? He was arrested last year. He's in U.S. custody.

At the meeting were Chapo's sons, Jesus Alfredo and Joaquin Jr., and some other high-ranking cartel guys, including some of Elmira's guys, too. To reiterate what Sean said and what we've said before, the famed Sinaloa cartel has kind of fractured into three different factions after Chapo was arrested and sentenced in the U.S.,

One is led by El Mayo, another by Los Chapitos, and the other, I believe, is led by Chapo's brother. Ivan is the rumored top dog of Los Chapitos, and Mayo Flaco, who is El Mayo's son and heir apparent, they were not at the meeting.

But this alleged deal was offered to them as well. And just a reminder, three of Omaio's sons and his brother have previously cut pretty sweetheart deals with the U.S. government, and all of them are already out of U.S. custody, which is kind of insane because they are high-ranking cartel guys.

Two of El Mayo's sons currently reside in the U.S. We'll get into their deals in a bit. Now, this alleged deal offered, you know, it was a pretty simple choice, right? Do you want to stay in this game where you'll likely soon be killed or jailed for life? Or do you want to take a deal, get freedom again eventually, and keep some of your stacks of cash?

Joaquin Jr. and El Mayo said yes, the others said no. Don't you think it kind of like craps on this high value target thing? If they keep saying they're going to cut the head off the snake or whatever and they just kind of cut deals with them and let them out of prison in like five, ten years? I don't know, it just doesn't really...

stack up as a tactic. Well, I mean, two of those guys testified against Chapo, you know? So that's part of the reason they got those sweet deals. And I think also too, you know, one of the reasons why if this deal theory ends up being correct, which I think it is, why it happened is, you know, why would they just give up all of a sudden? These guys know what they're getting into, right? And they've been doing it for years.

The US, the last couple of years, especially I think the last two or three years, has gotten a lot more aggressive because of fentanyl. And the Chapitos are heavily involved in fentanyl production. I believe El Mayo is involved as well. I guess they would have led to that arrest of the general as well, right? In the Mexican army that happened recently. That high ranking guy, Luis.

I'm losing his name, but yeah, that would have been a really big coup for them. Yeah. And if you think it's far-fetched that a meeting between top cartel guys and the US government would take place, we've talked about this on a bunch of other cartel episodes we've done. We've detailed some of these past meetings. During the Sinaloa cartels, various wars starting in the 2000s, there have been documented meetings between them and the DEA where the Sinaloa cartel was giving info on their enemies like the Tijuana cartel.

Here's a quote from a Reuters story that came out after this recent arrest. Quote, Matthew Allen, a former special agent in charge of HSI's Arizona division that built indictments against Guzman Lopez and other Sinaloa cartel figures, said both Zambada and Guzman Lopez had had periodic conversations with U.S. officials about surrendering over the years.

And years ago, when El Mayo's oldest son, Vicente, who was originally the guy who was going to take over from his father, was arrested by Mexican authorities, he was in a Mexico City hotel room talking to the DEA. And the DEA admits this meeting took place. About that meeting, there's always been two competing narratives. One is that the DEA was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was

One from the DEA that Vicente was just giving dirt on his rivals. But another story reported by a Mexican journalist is that he was instructed by his dad, Ann Chapo, to try to cut a deal with the U.S. government even back then in 2009. There's also a third theory by a famous Mexican journalist, Annabel Hernandez, that Vicente did in fact cut a deal with the permission of his dad, Ann Chapo, and that he wanted out of the cartel game and to live a normal life.

And that his arrest, it was all theater and a secret deal had been hatched for him to do a little bit of time and then go free, which obviously when we're looking at what happened last week, you know, very similar situation. Potentially. He's actually been out for a few years already after being extradited in 2010. I believe he was released in 2019.

So just to bring it all back to Louise's reporting, it's entirely believable that this meeting took place. You know, if you don't think the U.S. makes these deals, obviously Tokyo Vice, that's based on a true story that Jake Edelstein reported. We've had him on as well. That guy Tozawa not only cut a deal, but got a new liver, and that's 100%.

So that was them cutting a deal with a powerful Yakuza boss who then didn't even give them great information. There's other Mexican journalists and even some think tank types that cover cartels closely that are speculating that a deal was made, not necessarily exactly how Luis said it went down, but just in general. And once again, some of these Mexican journalists, their entire careers are just covering cartels, sometimes for decades. You know, there's a lot of rumors and incidences.

insane stuff that i've seen going around but a lot of these guys do have good sources inside the cartels though like like we said there's been a whole bunch of nonsense on twitter and other competing narratives shock there's also a big question i think i've just touched on it before about what going after so-called high value targets hvts like mayo actually does to benefit washington's fight against fentanyl in particular right which was

last year responsible for almost 75,000 overdose deaths in America. Like, that is more than liver disease, gun violence, road accidents. It's really, really chronic at this point. And actually, by removing Mayo, U.S. authorities might have just fired a starting gun on way more bloodshed in Mexico and beyond, especially between the Sinaloa branches and its nemesis, the CGNG, the

Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion. So here's what Wanda had to say about that. Look, I don't expect that we will see any significant decrease in the flow of fentanyl as a result of the arrests of Elmayo Zambada and Joaquim Loria Guzman.

Although they are very important men in the Sinaloa Cartel, they belong to different branches, one led by El Mayo and the other one led by the sons of El Chapo, the previous co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel.

along with El Mayo. The cartel is diversified and it has many redundancies system. The operational systems that move the drugs have many different cells. There are a lot of other command structures and systems that will continue moving drugs like fentanyl to the United States. However, the

Very significant possibility is that we are going to see great increase in violence in Mexico that could spread beyond Mexico across all of Americas and have repercussions and implications for drug markets elsewhere in the world, including in Australia and New Zealand. And that's because the Sinaloa cartel is one of the world's largest, most powerful criminal group, drug trafficking group, but in more broadly criminal group.

And it has been involved in a bipolar war with its arch-rival, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, in Mexico and across the Americas. And the two groups compete non-violently elsewhere. They have operations in Australia and New Zealand. Now, the two branches of the Sinaloa Cartel that are involved in this telenovela-like development on Thursday...

the Zambada branch and the Chapitos branch, have fallen out in recent years. And there has been infighting among them. So the fact that Joaquim, one of the Chapitos, so dramatically betrayed El Mayo, his putative uncle, his surrogate uncle, to deliver him to U.S. law enforcement will likely set up warfare between the groups and other criminal groups like Jalisco Nueva Generación are going to jump into it.

In April 2010, Mayo did an interview with the publisher of Proceso magazine where he basically teed this up. And he said, quote, one day I may decide to turn myself in so they can shoot me.

and there'll be general euphoria but we all know at the end of the day if they catch me or kill me nada cambia nothing changes yeah and that interview i think was the only one he's done if i remember correctly it was very out of yeah ever yeah very out of character for him because like we've we've talked about you know he is a ghost he is a man who does not make mistakes and does not take chances and again you know i'm actually i'm speculating but

But I am leaning toward El Mayo making some sort of a deal for a few reasons. The first being he's been untouchable for decades. He's a brilliant operator. And the DEA even said back in the day, they always thought they were one step behind Chapo and two steps behind Mayo. And Chapo has been caught what, three times?

I believe. Yeah. So now he's, he's getting on a plane that he doesn't control with walking junior to go look at airstrips. Like it just doesn't make sense. The website inside crime, who are some of the premier reporters on organized crime in Latin America, although I guess they're more like analyst, uh,

They're reporting that according to their sources, Mayo had largely taken a step back from the day-to-day operations in recent years. He's also, again, a 76-year-old man with diabetes and actually, as we learned today, I think cancer, but I'll get into that a little bit later, at the highest level of a cartel, which he has been atop for decades. And he's going to go look at airstrips? It's like Zuckerberg going out here just inspecting data centers and Bezos stopping by Amazon warehouses to make sure that everything was running tight. Yeah.

Or Musk shitposting on his own website high into the wee hours. Oh, wait. Yeah. I mean, I'm asking those questions rhetorically. They might have done that stuff. I assume they haven't, but I'm hoping the answer is no. But you get what I'm saying.

Also, in the new transcript, I think, of Mayo being, I think, a rain man, whatever it was that just happened. Honestly, there's so much going on. It said that he's so sick that they had to get him a wheelchair at the hearing. So he's really going to be out here all hands on in the desert in late July being like, oh, yeah, nice, a giant strip of pavement and dirt where planes go. I mean, it doesn't – come on. That doesn't check out. To reuse a quote from our O'Meal series from the book The Last Narco by Malcolm Bates, quote,

One DEA agent likens him to a chairman of the board who operates solely from the top floor and made the executive decisions. Elmayo knew what to do with the money, and he knew how to handle the Colombians. He also knew what was good for business. He was the guy who wants to cooperate and bring people together, the DEA believed.

And this is a book that came out 15 years ago. If anything, like he's got to be even more removed by now. Mike Tirico here with some of the 2024 Team USA athletes. What's your message for the team of tomorrow? To young athletes, never forget why you started doing it in the first place.

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So yeah, right there, I've got questions. And another question is, he's getting on a plane with a pilot he doesn't control and hasn't verified. You don't not get caught for 30 years as a cartel kingpin if you're sloppy. I mean, you can't even make one mistake. And it's been well documented, like we said, that the Sinaloa cartel as a single entity is no more, and that the Chapitos faction and El Mayo faction have been fighting, and

and that Los Chapitos weren't happy with the Zimbardo family because both Mayo's son, Vincente, and Mayo's brother testified against Chapo at his trial. So what is he doing meeting with Joaquin Jr. without like 50 of his own Sicario's there to protect him? And I think Sean mentioned this, but the New York Times said,

I don't know if you're implying other papers. They're still describing the Sinaloa cartel as one single entity, which we know isn't true. And they said that Mayo had faced a brutal public betrayal when Vicente testified against him during El Chapo's trial. But as we also discussed in our El Mayo episode, El Mayo supposedly okayed Vicente to testify against him when after he was locked up, intermediaries set up a prison call between the two. The DEA fully admits this.

So, you know, when it comes to cartel reporting, I trust someone like Luis Chaparro a lot more and Owen Grillo, another friend of the podcast. He just had a thing that came out. We're going to talk about this at the end. It came out today. And it's also another fascinating potential theory. The New York Times does say, quote, known as a pragmatist, Mr. Zimbardo Garcia had been in contact with U.S. federal officials on and off for at least three years discussing the terms of his potential surrender.

according to five people briefed on the matter. So what we're saying is that podcasts are more reliable sources of information than the mainstream media? I don't, I mean, Luis is. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know about anything else. But,

But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if El Mayo has been in contact with them for way more than three years. The New York Times also says that the DEA was trying to persuade Joaquin Jr. to turn himself in since 2019. The video of the plane landing also seems a little off. You know, we see two men going to greet the plane. Louise says it's one person from the FBI and one from the DEA. Everyone agrees that this is the plane. My question is,

One of America's most wanted men is being greeted by two people. You know, I've seen them arrest white-collar criminals with 20 people and guns out and tactical teams the whole nine yards. You know, I've seen more cops on my block for a fight between teenagers. But for a cartel kingpin, two actually, it's just two guys walking up without weapons drawn. It kind of just doesn't compute. No, that's a really interesting point. You might know the difference between these like three-letter agencies more than me, but

I read somewhere yesterday that this is primarily a Homeland Security investigation, it's like HSI operation, and apparently that's a bit of a coup for them over the DEA or the FBI. I'm not really sure how all these agencies work with each other, but that was something that I read that might be...

sort of a little interesting tidbit yeah i'm actually surprised if that it wasn't the dea so that's actually really interesting and i'm also not i don't know what the mo is right now with this you know going after cartel guys what homeland security's involvement is you know i haven't really worked with them ever so uh it's i mean i i honestly have no idea i guess there's like tons and tons of people trafficking now right that's done by the cartel so maybe that brings in homeland security i'm not sure it's true to quote inside crime here about that

Several sources within the U.S. government who had knowledge of the operation but were not authorized to speak on the matter told Insight Crime the pair orchestrated their handover to U.S. authorities. Insight Crime, you know, those guys are very well connected, especially with government officials. To a degree, I don't even think the big newspapers can match.

And on Luis's sub stack he just published, which again, go subscribe. He said he's been in contact with one of El Mayo's grandsons who said his grandfather was very sick, getting close to the end. And all he wanted was to see his sons Vicente and El Mayo Gordo again. And both are in the U.S.

Just to quickly touch on the deals, Miles, kids and brothers have gotten Vicente and Elmira's brother were both X-rayed to the U S I believe in 2010 and 2012, both have been out of prison for a few years already. Someone even snapped a picture of a Sente at a U S airport. I think it was Dallas not that long ago. And my old brother is apparently starting a music career. So yeah, I mean, definitely, definitely look for that on, on Spotify when it drops, they really didn't do that much time. All things considering they,

But again, they did both testify against El Chapo, who was the most wanted man in the world at the time and someone who the US government really wanted and really wanted to put away for a long time.

There's another El Mayo child, Seraphim Zambada. Jeez, these guys have a lot of kids. It's hard keeping track, you know? He was caught with enough weight that his minimum sentence should have been 10 years, but he got sentenced to 5.5 and was out in 4.5 as a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel. Doesn't appear to have testified against anyone, but he's been sentenced to 5.5.

But he also disappeared three months into a sentence from the prison database, which could mean he did provide something of value. It needs to be protected. Maybe he's in WITSEC. It's all very –

This stuff is not as transparent as you would assume it would be, especially with active investigations going on. This is a kid, too, who his godfathers, when he was born, were Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was the leader of the Juarez cartel at the time, and Benjamin Arellano Felix, who was the leader of the Tijuana cartel. Basically, narco royalty. So 4.5 years. But yeah, I mean, these guys, they are not staying locked up for long. I don't even think we know where Serafin is right now. I also think...

there's a good possibility Mayo cut some sort of deal with him thinking of his family. He's old, sickly, near the end, far outlived all his colleagues, probably didn't expect to live this long. And when I say his family, I mean like, obviously the three of the four sons have deals, but he also has four daughters that aren't in the drug game, but they're working on sort of the financial side of the Zimbardo family fortune. They have a lot of legitimate businesses at this point, real estate, also allegedly some money laundering through those businesses, but

Normally, if these businesses were started with drug money, they could get taken by the government. Unless, of course, there's a deal that allows them to keep some stuff and a whole lot of money. But yeah, there's also reports, I think, Luis reported this, that El Mayo's last wish was that the US government state that he didn't turn himself in. To instead say that he was captured or tricked.

And as I'm writing this, Elmayo's lawyer just said in court after Luis reported this that, quote, Elmayo did not surrender voluntarily and pleads not guilty to all charges. Elmayo's lawyer also released a statement to the LA Times where he says that Elmayo went to go meet Joaquin with very little security and that six guys dressed in military fatigues tied him up.

placed a black bag over his head and threw him in the back of a pickup truck where Mayo was tied down on the plane and then only Joaquin, his pilot, and El Mayo were on the flight. There was a photo of him released where it looked like his wrist was bruised and

and he was wearing what looks to be a yugo boss shirt which is irrelevant but pretty funny to have on my own caught wearing a shirt that just says boss on it also like what is happening with his nose it's all kind of collapsed he looks like a mexican michael jackson i mean 76 years old living that life could have been booze could have been cocaine like who who knows but uh i don't think um what's what's it called you're shaming him for his looks there's there's a term for that right uh

Yeah, I'm not up on it, but I'm sure that's cancelable. It's not very nice, Sean. Not very nice at all. All of this, again, it just kind of sounds ridiculous to me. These guys were the heads of two factions of a Mexican cartel that were not getting along. Now, I'm not a cartel boss, but I don't think you stay alive too long in that world if you assume the other guy is acting in good faith.

So, yeah, we have, you know, we have U.S. officials feeding to all the major media outlets that Maya was tricked to getting on this plane. And now the new story is that he was kidnapped and had little security as he's going to meet the heads of the cartel he's currently fighting with and also someone who has a grudge against him and his family because his brother and son testified against their dad, El Chapo. It's, you know, a little...

song and dance action a little misdirection if you ask me but again I am speculating without real evidence and look you know listeners of this podcast know I don't usually speculate wildly or I'm not into conspiratorial thinking with stuff like this but this whole thing is just messy I could very well be wrong too I think hopefully we'll soon find out but who knows

It would actually make sense for Elmao to go along with this, you know, Joaquin orchestrated the whole thing story for a few reasons. It's not far-fetched that he would have wanted to help out the Guzman family. He started off very loyal to Chapo for decades. They had the strongest cartel partnership, not including family members. I think the most successful one ever too in the drug world. When Chapo was in prison from 93 to 2001, Elmao kept sending him a lot of money, kept him in the loop, kept him at the top when he didn't have to.

You know, they kind of had some antagonism later on after Sean Penting and with the kids testifying, but again, they were arguably the most loyal cartel bosses to each other ever.

And this helps out Joaquin. He's definitely getting a good deal. And it likely also helps out the other recently incarcerated Chapo's son, Ovidio, who was just removed from the prison database for some reason. It says he was released on July 23rd. I think that could mean he was moved prisons too or into WITSEC. It could mean switching. There's a lot we don't know. And you know, just as I was saying this, I kind of realized July 23rd was Tuesday. Mayo and Joaquin are arrested on Thursday.

So they just happened to move him from prison for security purposes, which is the official story two days before Joaquin and Mayo are in custody. I mean, I don't know. This could be a peace offering for Mayo in a way to the remaining chapitos and the Mayo faction. Now, I assume being led by his other, uh,

always having remained free son, who is known as Mayo Flaco. Maybe prevents a further war because it's Monday as we're discussing this. And as far as I know, Sinaloa is not convulsing in bloodshed, which I imagine if Mayo Flaco and the Mayo faction Sinaloa believe Los Chapitos had just set up El Mayo,

would be something that would be happening, right? I assume that would mean all-out war. Not only would Maio Fonka want revenge for his dad being tricked and just completely set up and brought to the U.S., but if he didn't do anything, they would look incredibly weak, not just to the other factions of Sinaloa, but to their main rivals, Jalisco New Generacion. So yeah, I mean, let's talk about what the motivations of Joaquin Jr. could be. I think it's pretty obvious. Obviously, he doesn't want to end up in prison forever like his dad.

and his brother Ovidio or be killed like his older brother Edgar. So why not cut a sweet deal, do some years, maybe help out his brother Ovidio. One thing that bears mentioning too, I think in the wake of Los Chapitos essentially building this massive fentanyl empire, the US authorities have gotten

much more aggressive. They are pissed and they are directly gunning for Los Chapitos in a way that, you know, if they were simply moving cocaine and meth, I think would not be the case. I'm sure that he is on in a way that it hasn't been on before. You know, Joaquin might have just been ready to throw in the towel and work things out as best he could. He's already in too deep to retire in Mexico. The U.S. has this 5 million bounty on his head and El Mencho and his boys don't care if you're retired, you're still going to be a target.

And we know Joaquin Jr. kind of thought he was this smarter, more elevated brother, and this kind of seems like it might be the smart play for him. One important thing to keep in mind is

Everyone's reporting has not made mention of the Mexican authorities being involved in any of this. In fact, I'm pretty sure they've denied knowledge of it. To quote Reuters one more time, quote, Mexican security minister Rosa Rodriguez said that Mexico was informed of the detentions by the U.S. government, but that Mexican authorities did not participate in the operation. And not to get too much into politics, but the current Mexico president, AMLO, no fan of the gringos, and I also imagine a lot of high-level Mexican officials,

Right now are Googling the phrase countries without extradition treaties. Mayo is said to be the most politically connected kingpin in Mexico currently and maybe in history. You don't avoid arrest for decades without it. And a lot of people who said, well, you know, who would a kingpin like a Mayo even have to implicate in terms of said people being a bigger fish? You know, if he wanted to actually cut a deal himself, well...

You know, high level Mexican officials that could or military officials, anything, politicians, those could be the people. And I'm sure they're very concerned right now. And, you know, Mexico is always pissed.

When the U.S. is operating on Mexican soil without really bringing them in. So this is not good for their relations. And if you recall, Mayo got into the trafficking business with his brother-in-law who had alleged ties to both the CIA and Cuban intelligence and was an extremely shady dude. And on my own self, you know, he's also kind of been shrouded in mystery and is quite shady himself.

So it would make sense his trafficking career ends in such a shady way. Yeah, and like beyond that even, there's been a lot of talk about Mayo, something that I didn't really know about actually, being in bed with Russian intelligence in recent years, especially since Russia's been going around the world causing sort of more criminal chaos with underworld groups, be it

Through the GRU, that's military intel, or the SVR, that's basically the CIA of Russia, or non-state actors like Wagner, I'm not sure how to say that still, which you've done a bunch of stuff on recently. But here's what Van Dyke had to say about the potential intel coup from this capture. And he's also the man who knows where the corpses are among the former and current Mexican government officials, right?

security forces, law enforcement officials. He is potentially a goldmine of information on corruption networks in Mexico. And to me, the most important thing that U.S. law enforcement can get out of him, despite the fact that his arrest will likely trigger a lot of violence, is precisely this intelligence on the Mexican government.

Now, separately, El Mayo has been rumored to have connections to Russia. These rumors have increased, especially in the past several years, though no really detailed evidence or even detailed information remains.

really has been out there in the public domain. So I don't know whether it's true or not, but I've been hearing that in my trips to Mexico regularly and increasingly so in the past several years. But if that were the case, I think that would be a good enough reason to

try to bring him to the US to prevent any possibility that Russian intelligence establishes connections with him, and more broadly to counter efforts by Russian intelligence to develop networks in Mexico. Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Russia has been running around Europe, cultivating connections to criminal networks across the continent.

Russian intelligence has long used criminal networks for a variety of purposes. But since the invasion of Russia, this has now become much more institutionalized to use various criminal deals and criminal rackets such as drug trafficking to generate money for clandestine operations of various Russian intelligence services, and also to use criminal groups for the conduct of

sabotage, assassinations, threat operations in Europe. And, you know, obviously, Russia would be enormously tempted to mount similar operations in Mexico. Two years ago, the head of U.S. Northern Command testified in the Congress that there are more Russian intelligence officers in Russia than anywhere else in Latin America.

and that there were significant concerns about their espionage activities and potentially what kind of connections with criminal groups they sought. This had been dismissed by the government of López Obrador, who considers himself a friend and supporter of Putin, who has repeatedly endorsed Putin, even despite Putin's egregious invasion of Ukraine.

So certainly the presence and freedom of action that Russian intelligence has had in Mexico has been a significant national security concern for the U.S. And if this were to develop into linkages with criminal groups, that threat would grow even more. I think, you know, one thing I'm thinking about, and again,

I don't know the details here, but I assume El Mayo and Joaquin Jr., definitely Joaquin Jr., have intricate knowledge of fentanyl coming from China and precursors coming from China and have a lot of information they could potentially give up involving people involved in that from China, people that are trafficking it, people that are making the deals, the go-betweens, the money and all that. And that kind of seems like something the U.S. would prize heavily.

I mean, you've done a lot of work on Chinese money laundering and fentanyl stuff. What do you make of that? Yeah, I actually spoke to a guy last night who was like a forensic accountant and he was like an attache

back in Beijing like years and years ago and he said it's really really interesting what could fall out from this capture because I kind of assumed that Chinese and Mexican groups had kind of met each other going way way back you know like going back to like the weed trade and then the meth trade for fentanyl but he was like nah this

This is shadow banking in China is so massive and everyone uses it so much that it's just an accepted part of legal trade there. So they would have just met Mexican cartel leaders probably through legitimate business in South America and Latin America and then taken it from there because the cartels are so kind of all encompassing.

So this could be like a really, really, really big deal if the US wants to... I mean, there's a political question of if it can really do this because it would cause so much problems. But whether it wants to kind of tie Chinese legitimate trade directly with the state to the illegal kind of precursor flow, and that would be massive. And Mayo definitely will know where the sort of bodies are with all of that stuff. But...

that's kind of a million dollar question, right? Because if they really want to stop Fentanyl, you've got to stop the stuff getting into Latin America. And they cannot do that at the moment. Yeah, and I mean, if Joaquin Jr. was the CFO type that he's being portrayed as, you know, the money guy, he's going to have some information too because they were heavily, I mean, Los Chapitos were heavily involved in Fentanyl. They were kind of, I think, the biggest players almost. So they're going to, he's going to have some information

interesting things that he could potentially give up to get that deal shortened. Everyone seems to agree, the no deal people and the deal truthers like us, that this is going to change nothing actually in the drug cartel world in terms of stuff coming in. Though it kind of sounds like maybe it potentially could have an effect on fentanyl. They kind of think, I think most people sort of think both factions of the

And Jesus Alfredo too, they seem to be in firm control of their faction. And while they took some heavy hits as of late, they still seem to be chugging along. And the Mayo faction, which presumably people would think would be more at risk since their legendary leader is now out of the game, seems to be like it could be okay as well. As we said above, Mayo had stepped away from the day-to-day operations from the last couple of years to leave Mayo Flacco and some highly trusted lieutenants in charge.

And apparently the Mayo faction of the Sinaloa cartel has a deep roster of experienced people ready to take the reins. But again, if this actually was a situation where it was a setup, Mayo was essentially tricked by a Chapito. And I could foresee some sort of bloody war between those two factions because that's not something that they could abide by.

Now, just a little bit on Mayo Flacco, who is basically taking control of his faction of the cartel of Mayo's faction. Much like his dad, information on him is extremely scarce. Even on cartel rumor websites, there's not that much on him.

There's information from a 2015 federal indictment, and according to the DEA, he was in charge of drug smuggling from Asia for the cartel. He also apparently likes fancy cars because the DEA confiscated two Lambos and McLaren and some other stuff from him, but I'm sure they all like that sort of stuff. But yeah, much like his dad, he's keeping it extremely low profile.

So, yeah, this could be a situation where, you know, it's just kind of like a symbolic arrest. You get the top dogs and not much changes. But like we said, it could go the other way. If they're going to be giving up stuff about Chinese precursors, money, money laundering with those guys, the money trade, all the fentanyl stuff. I mean, that could really play things out. Either way, this is kind of like a feather in the cap for China.

the U.S. law enforcement agencies that were involved, everyone involved, you know, they're going to use these arrests to advance their career. They look great. They're part of this historic arrest. They can dine out on forever. And I don't know if you guys have heard, there's an election going on in the U.S.?

Sean, have you? Yeah, we don't really get much about it. Yeah, so fentanyl, I mean, that's a huge issue. That's definitely going to be a heavy attack line on the current administration, the border too. So this kind of gives them maybe some leverage to counter those attacks.

Yeah, it's all about narrative, right? On the political side. And it's like you saw Merrick Garland coming out with his grandiose stuff about like, you know, half an hour after they made the arrest. But it's pretty politically hard to parse. I mean, like, you'd think Moreno, which is the left wing populist party of AMLO, and his successor recently won their election there, Claudia Scheinbaum. You think they would be more comfortable dealing with a Democrat White House and not just because their ideology is closer, right? Border crossings

were at their highest under the last Trump presidency. And the thinking in most quarters in Mexico, from what I've read, is that the Democrats are more likely to work with counterparts in Mexico City rather than against them in trying to get crossings and drug crime down. But I'm not saying whether that works better. I'm just saying that's pretty much how it's viewed. And then you'd think that the timing of this arrest is useful for the Democratic campaign. Like you said, it's a direct counter to the soft-on crime attacks that Kamala Harris is going to come under. But

There was a lot of, you know, it's worth mentioning that actually this sort of happened before a little bit. Like there was a lot of cooperation between Obama and Peña Nieto in 2016 when El Chapo was arrested. That was just a few months before that year's election that Hillary Clinton was, well, was widely expected to win, but of course didn't.

But then this year has seen a DEA probe into links between cartels and AMLO's administration. And like Vander said before, El Mayo really, really knows where the bodies are buried in terms of corrupt officials and state leaders. So the Mexican government is claiming it knows nothing about the arrests, like you said before. So political speculation is, I think it's just all going a little bit too far at this stage. I mean, we could just come out with the same old story.

tinfoil stuff about Clintons and Pelosi's and whatnot that other podcasts have done from what I've seen. But yeah, I don't know. This is all like super, super fresh stuff.

And there is tons and tons of political stuff going on behind this arrest. But it's probably best to see how things pan out in the next week or two, right? Yeah. And to be fair, I know we are speculating a bit here too, but I think that speculation is grounded in reality. And coming just as we're about to record another frequent guest on the podcast and someone I always look to to make sense of cartel stuff.

Anything criminal in Mexico, really. Owen Grillo. He just published a new report, I believe, on his sub stack. It kind of throws the turning himself in theory out the window. I'll just read the opening paragraph of it. It's on a sub stack. Again, another that you should definitely subscribe to if you want to stay up to date on all this stuff. Quote,

The drug lord El Mayo was lured to a meeting in Sinaloa's state capital, Culiacan, that was supposed to be with Joaquin Guzman Lopez as an envoy of the Chapitos cartel faction and a prominent Sinaloan politician. Mayo came from a hideout in the mountains of Durango to Culiacan about a week earlier to see doctors about a cancer he is suffering from and then went to the rendezvous.

Grillo describes an ambush and that Mayo did have bodyguards who may have been killed and cites as the source a former member of Mayo security who was incarcerated. Mayo was then driven to the airport, to an airport loaded up and flown to the U.S. The source also told Grillo that U.S. agents were at the house where the ambush took place. So again, you know, take everything with a grain of salt. Owen says to do that as well. This is a wild one. It's kind of, I think, scary.

you know, in between the tricking him just to get on a plane and what we were saying that, well, I guess not even in between, but this seems believable to me as well. I don't know if U.S. agents would be on the ground there. That seems a little wild for them to do, especially in the age of social media. So it's unverified. Adding to it, Grillo says that a Sinaloan politician, that one who was supposed to be at the meeting with El Mayo, hours after the capture, he was ambushed and killed immediately.

Which means, like I talked about earlier, there has already been some retaliation from Miles' faction. If this is true, what we're hearing here, I think the bloodshed is only getting started

But, yeah, I mean, there's just so many questions right now. We're going to try to keep up on this. I think we'll try to get Luis to talk. Maybe we'll try to get Owen to talk, those guys. Yeah, for sure. And we've got that Vonda Feldbar-Brown, that interview going up on the Patreon, patreon.com slash The Underworld Podcast, Spotify, iTunes as well. You can subscribe. And, yeah, this one, we're a little all over the place, this one, but, you know, we wanted to get something out quickly because…

Everyone just wanted to hear something, so hopefully this makes sense when you listen to it. ♪♪♪