A day after a top figure in one of Mexico’s largest drug cartels was extradited to the U.S., federal prosecutors in Virginia indicted four more people in a widening effort to dismantle one of the cartel’s rural trafficking hubs.
The case — initially detailed in a Courier Journal investigation that found the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) operating in at least 35 states — offers a deeper glimpse into the cartel’s U.S. operation at a time when the Trump administration is pushing Mexico to ramp up its drug war.
U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen and Jesse Fong, head of the DEA’s Washington Field Division, announced the indictments Friday, adding to about a dozen from 2019. They alleged that CJNG recruited people to live in rural Axton, Virginia, using trailers and homes to funnel large quantities of drugs to mid-Atlantic states.
Cullen has called CJNG “one of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world.”
The indictments came just as the cartel’s alleged second in command, Rubén Oseguera González, known as “Menchito,” lost a legal battle and was put on a plane to the U.S. to face drug-related charges.
Menchito, the son of El Mencho, was next-in-line to head the dangerous CJNG cartel. Now he’s jailed, awaiting extradition to the U.S. (Photo: Courtesy of the DEA)
He’s the son of CJNG leader Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” who remains at large. The U.S. is offering a $10 million reward for El Mencho’s capture.
González’s attorney has said he’s innocent and called the extradition illegal. It was part of an increasing number of extraditions as Mexico faces pressure from the U.S.
Six Mexican cartels maintain significant distribution cells in the U.S., with the Sinaloa Cartel the largest, followed by CJNG, according to a December 2019 National Drug Threat Assessment report.
CJNG’s rise among Mexico’s fracturing cartel landscape has been accompanied by extreme violence, even by cartel standards.
Federal officials have said CJNG smuggles at least 120 tons of high-purity meth and cocaine into the U.S. a year, making it a top target.
The Virginia investigation goes back to at least 2016, when authorities discovered a tractor-trailer in Texas hauling cocaine bound for the Axton area, DEA task force officer Christopher Young said in a criminal complaint.
Read more: No. 2 leader of brutal Mexican cartel faces US judge
Authorities have said CJNG shipped in at least 20 kilos of cocaine each month since 2015, along with other drugs such as marijuana it sent through U.S. mail.BY COMPARISONS.ORGNew Rule in Leesburg, VASee more →
At the same time, large amounts of money were flowing back to Mexico, according to the latest indictments on money laundering charges of Alejandro Escarcega-Avila, Francisco Alvarez-Rosales, Meliton Alvarez-Rosales and Noe Salvador Becerra-Gonzalez.
In just one instance, the suspects met outside a rural Dollar General store in October 2019 to exchange a suitcase and bag packed with $1.1 million to be laundered.Think big. Read local.Subscribers get exclusive news about local investigations and politics. Only 99¢ per month for 3 months. Save 90%.Subscribe Now
A short drive away, $4 million was being wired over 16 months from an Axton-area tortilla shop to the tiny Mexican town of Ixtlan del Rio, in Nayarit. Investigators say it was drug profits.
Across the country, U.S. law enforcement officials in 2018 reported 4,654 seizures of bulk cash worth $234 million, but that’s fallen from $741 million in 2011 as networks include other methods, such as smaller wire transfers and bank deposits, the DEA reported.
Buy Photo
The rural community of Axton, Virginia has been identified as one of the places that the Mexican Cartel been using to conduct business. Aug. 29, 2019 (Photo: Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal)
In Virginia, investigators alleged in documents that CJNG was contracting people to deposit drug money and conduct transactions at locations across the U.S.
Court documents also suggest that cartel drugs continued to flow to the area even after at least seven properties were raided in the Axton area in 2018, leading to arrests and seizures, including a drug ledger detailing millions in cocaine sales.
The yearslong investigation reflects challenges faced by U.S. law enforcement to stanch the flow of drugs amid America’s deep demand for meth, cocaine, heroin and other drugs.
The Trump administration recently has focused attention on the issue, with Trump last fall threatening to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. He later backed off on the idea, which critics said would be ineffective and lead to economic strains in Mexico.
Our investigation: El Mencho’s cartel empire is devastating American small towns
That was prompted in part after cartel violence killed nine people — including six children — with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, and after cartel gunmen in Mexico were able to free the son of Sinaloa cartel leader “El Chapo” after his capture.
Trump said in a tweet in November that “This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.” U.S. Attorney General William Barr has also traveled to Mexico, where homicides have reached historic levels, to discuss the issue in recent months.
Trump has often conflated the drug trade with migration from Mexico, but most drugs come in through legal ports of entry instead of remote areas without border structures, said Maureen Meyer, director for Mexico and Migrant Rights at the Washington Office for Latin America.
In this wanted poster, the U.S. announces a rare $10 million reward for help finding El Mencho, a ruthless cartel boss and billionaire. (Photo: Courtesy of the DEA)
A trial is scheduled for later this year on some of the others indicted in the Axton area in 2019.
It wasn’t the only small-town Virginia case with CJNG connections. Several people in Winchester, Virginia, were jailed in 2018 on drug-related charges.
Prosecutors alleged the defendants were traveling to California and Texas, and recruiting others to do the same, to direct the transport of large quantities of cocaine, as much as $150,000 worth at a time.
Some suspects’ lawyers have argued their clients played insignificant roles and were not connected to the cartel as prosecutors alleged.
Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry, whose county includes Axton, told local media the investigation isn’t finished and more arrests are possible.
“I still can say they’re right in the middle of it,” he said.