El Chapo's Sons Built a Fentanyl Empire: Los Chapitos
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And sold. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. 2019 in Culiacan, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. And the Mexican National Guard is conducting a raid at a nondescript house.

Sinaloa is, of course, what would be considered the capital of top-level narcos. Its mountainous and lawless territory has long been a base for bandits and outlaws, though in recent years, some of the Kimpins have barely bothered to conceal themselves. Like the guy who's just been arrested at this normal-seeming house. He happens to be Ovidio Guzman, son of legendary cartel leader Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. He's cuffed and taken away.

Ovidio bears a slight resemblance to his infamous father, but he's handsome, square-jawed, and short, just like his dad. He kind of looks like an annoying rich kid you'd see out of Miami, except, well, he's at the top of thousands of train killers. Ovidio is one of four of Chapo's many children, collectively known as Los Chapitos, who have risen to the top to lead his faction of the powerful Sinaloa cartel after his final arrest in 2016 and eventual extradition.

And getting captured by the Mexican National Guard is an amateur move on the part of a 29-year-old, especially in his home state of Sinaloa. But it's never a good idea to count this family out. And this time, the cavalry is coming. Within hours of him being detained, upwards of 700 cartel gunmen spread out across the city.

absolute chaos ensues. Roadblocks, fires, shootings. It's complete anarchy as Culiacan turns into a Mad Max style war zone, leaving the entire city paralyzed and terrified. Scenes are broadcast all over social media and the Mexican government is put in a tough spot. Things get so hectic that surrounded Mexican troops call Ovidio's brother Ivan on the phone, trying to calm things down.

Ovidio tells him, tell them to stand down. I don't want chaos. But Ivan replies, hell no. We are coming to rescue you. A few years earlier, Ovidio had been indicted by the U.S. for trafficking coke, meth, and marijuana. So if he gets locked up, there's a good chance he'll soon be joining his dad in ADX Florence. Not the kind of surroundings the so-called narco juniors have grown up accustomed to.

The cartel Sicario's are desperate to keep him free and even start plotting to kidnap the families of soldiers and police.

Some civilians are being held at gunpoint, others are fleeing for their lives. The battles last about four hours before, strangely, the sicarios and National Guardsmen meet up, some even shaking hands, and put their guns down. The president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has decided to step in. He orders Ovidio set free immediately, saying that the violence isn't worth it for just one criminal.

It's a stunning display of weakness for the state, one that's broadcast all over the world. In the aftermath of the aborted arrest of the Chapo heir, surprisingly, only eight people are dead, seven soldiers and one civilian, and a bunch wounded. But the message has been sent. Los Chapitos are willing to directly take on the state, and they're a force to be reckoned with in Mexico, even with their infamous father locked up in an American supermax with no chance of being let go.

In fact, according to a Reuters special report on how the Chapitos built the Fentel empire, in the ensuing months after Chapo's extradition in 2017, 13 police officers in Sinaloa are either killed or disappeared. To quote Reuters, that spree was the start of a shift in tactics within Guzman's Sinaloa cartel, according to four intelligence and security officials, one that signaled the arrival of a new force inside one of Mexico's most powerful drug syndicates.

The Kingpin's Four Sons. This is the Underworld Podcast. ♪♪

Welcome back to the audio experience where every week a British man by the name of Sean Williams and an American me, Danny Gold, bring you stories of organized crime, disorganized crime, and everything in between from around the globe. We are two journalists who have each spent over a decade reporting in the field on topics of this nature, sometimes even successfully. And now you can listen to us drone on while you barely pay attention and scroll through Instagram.

Make sure you DM her the fire emoji. It's going to start a great convo. Sean, you just wrote 50,000 words in one week and a podcast episode. How is that working out for you? Yeah, I actually wrote 15,000 words in a podcast in a week while solo parenting and slipping into a deep, deep depression. My hero. My hero. Okay. Yeah.

Sorry, you sound so dejected when I, but no, I'm proud of you. You did great work even without the sole parenting thing. Well done. You're a good man.

As always, a quick plug for our Patreon, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast, where you can sign up and we usually post at least two bonuses a month that we've been slacking lately. We'll do interviews with journalists, shorter episodes, things like that. You can sign up on Spotify, Patreon, or on iTunes, help us keep this going. Also, you know, follow us, rate us, do all those things of that nature that we used to be ashamed to mention week after week, but we've since accepted that this is our reality now.

If you listen to the show or even remotely follow the news, you know who El Chapo is. We've done episodes on him, on his friends, his colleagues, his enemies over the years. But you might not know much about his four sons who have since stepped into his shoes to lead his faction of the all-powerful Sinaloa cartel. Chapo reportedly has dozens of illegitimate children, much like my partner, Sean Williams. But these are the four who have gone into the drug business and have gained the most prominence.

They are brothers Ovidio, who you know from the cold open, and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, who have teamed up with their half brothers, Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar to form Los Chapitos, which the name kind of sounds like, I don't know, like, it doesn't sound like a like a four top sort of group or like a.

Mariachi bands. I thought it sounded like a sort of like Midwestern pizza place. Yeah. Or like, I guess, Midwestern taco place, not pizza place. But yeah, Los Chapitos is their name. For those of you who don't know Spanish, that means the Chapitos. Oh, okay. That was in the works for what, two, three months? Yeah. I've been, it was really, I don't know if I delivered it right, but really, really proud of that one. So it's two sets of Full Brothers albums.

And the full brother sets are half brothers with each other, if that makes sense, right? There was also a fifth brother, Edgar, but he was killed decades ago. We're going to get to him in a little bit. These guys, of course, these brothers have a very different upbringing from their infamous father. Chapo himself grew up dirt poor in the mountains of Sinaloa and dropped out of school in the third grade to sell fruit on the side of the road.

Ivan was the oldest. He was born, we think, in 83 or 84 when his dad was already a rising star in the Guadalajara cartel. He was already getting lots and lots of money. So these kids really wanted for nothing except for maybe attention from their father, hugs, him to say he's proud of them.

Things along those lines. By the early 90s, when Ovidio was born, their dad was bringing in hundreds of millions as the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, along with our previous podcast subject, El Mayo. We did two episodes on him that have been doing really well. So people are interested in that. If you go back a couple of weeks, you'll hear them. I think I plugged like 10 old episodes in this episode because we just have so many that we've done on these topics. Feel free, go back, listen to them all.

So yeah, it's a very different childhood than many of the first generation traffickers who had to kind of claw their way to the top from nearly insurmountable odds, dirt floor poverty, that sort of thing. And they call the sons of traffickers who get involved in the family business, narco juniors, which is kind of defamatory, I feel like. Yeah, I mean, narco junior sounds like a footballer Chelsea going to buy for 120 mil. I mean, I should add actually while I'm on the subject, go England. Oh my God. I was going to ask right Wednesday.

What's that guy? Southgate, right? Don't you all hate him anyway? It's like the weirdest thing ever. Everyone hates him and loves him exactly the same time. It's very British. We hate ourselves and we channel him. And just like the Underworld podcast. So, Yvonne, I'll cheer for you. Why not? I like the Netherlands too, but I want you to be happy and successful. Yeah, go on then. That'll make a difference. Yeah.

So Ivan, who is the rumored leader of Los Chapitos and whose nickname is actually Chapito, was the first of the brothers to get in real trouble with the law. And while Sean Penn once characterized him as, quote, attentive with a comaturity in his seminal piece on the Guzman family for Rolling Stone in 2016, Ivan was anything but attentive and mature in April of 2004.

That month, a young Canadian exchange student, a woman and a Mexican guy she had just met that night were leaving a suburban Guadalajara nightclub. There had been a fight at the club with the guy. I don't think the woman was aware of it.

Apparently it was over the woman, so maybe she was aware of it. She was, like I said, a Canadian exchange student. Both of them are ambushed outside the club later that night by men in a red BMW. It's Yvonne and his goons. They shoot them, both die. Authorities name Yvonne as a suspect in that killing, but nothing ever comes of it. And it just seems like very... There's a couple moments like this. It just seems like...

Like a bad Netflix series about the sons of drug dealers. Like that's the kind of thing they do. Get into a fight in a nightclub over a woman they don't know and then kill the guy who stands up for her. Right? That's like a – it's cliche. And we can do better than that. What are we thinking about attentive with a calm maturity? What do we think about that? I don't think he displayed those characteristics that evening and as we'll see later on.

The following year, he gets arrested again, this time in true rich kid fashion, for flipping his SUV after leaving a party in that same Guadalajara suburb, which just sounds like it's a nonstop barrel of fun. In his car, the cops find drugs for partying, not for distribution, and weapons also for partying. This time, he's actually indicted for money laundering and organized crime offenses, which

But his bail of $50,000 is soon posted and he's released. But as soon as he's released, the cops detain him again for questioning on other charges, including some murders. The original charges against him actually end up not sticking due to insufficient evidence and high-powered cartel lawyers doing their thing. But he's still stuck in jail on those new money laundering charges.

And while he's in jail, we get a psychological profile from the prison that was leaked to the Mexican news site, Sin Embargo, which, yeah. I should just say, if you don't speak Spanish, that means an embargo on your sins. I don't think, I think it means no embargo, right? It means no doubt, I think. Yeah. It's a great name for a website that publishes this kind of thing. The profile describes Ivan as, quote, anxious, suspicious, reserved, and evasive, with veiled hostility. He

he becomes sensitive. Again, exactly like a young Sean Williams.

Okay, young. In the anger management section, it says that Yvonne positively channels his anger into recreational activities such as car racing. But on the negative side, the profile says he shows probable psychological violence toward persons that he does not consider of his socioeconomic level. I mean, this is just, again, rich cartel kid cliche, flipping cars when he's yacked up, fighting in clubs and murdering people over some woman he just met, and just being violent to people who he perceives as poorer than him.

Yeah, yeah, I do that too. I mean, there's not many on the streets, but I do that. It's a lot of fun. I should also say, I just looked up Sin Embargo because I was like, that's not right. And it means however, not without doubt that Sin do the real-time fact-checking. But Sin means like no. Without Sin. Oh, yeah.

This is embarrassing. While Ivan is in jail, he complains to his dad that the jail is too cold. So El Chapo, being the attentive good father that he is, he pays a huge bribe to get Ivan some sweats and thermals and stuff like that. He's actually ripped off by soldiers serving as his go-between with the prison officials who jacked the price up from, I think, $100K to $500K.

When Choppo finds out, well, this is a family organized crime podcast, but the results are not so good and not the kind of thing that will get us banned on YouTube. In 2008, Ivan is finally formally charged and found guilty of money laundering. He's sentenced to five years, but soon after the verdict, he's surprisingly released from jail on appeal. There's

There's multiple theories to why this occurs. One of them is that to get his son released, Chapo trades Alfredo Beltran Leyva to the Mexican government. He's of the powerful Beltran Leyva faction of the Sinaloa cartel, who Chapo was allied with at the time. And we've gone into detail on quite a few podcasts on the battle that results from that. I think in the Acapulco one as well, we talk about that. But the Beltran Leyva, they were a very powerful, I think,

I don't even remember how many brothers it was. I think it was at least four. And they were sort of, you know, they were beneath Chapo and El Mayo, but they were a very powerful faction, very well connected.

When Alfredo is arrested, it causes a huge internal Sinaloa cartel war between the Belgian Levas and the Chapo Mayo faction, which Chapo and Mayo end up winning. There's another theory that's much simpler that the judge was just bribed to quote Forbes magazine. In a recent statement, the Federal Judiciary Council, Mexico's top federal judicial agency, said,

said that it had opened an investigation on Judge Jose Luna Altamirano after determining that he had made bank transfers in the millions of dollars that were not reflected in his financial disclosures.

The council said several family members also made large bank deposits. Yeah, I mean, remember when Forbes actually did reporting? When was the last time they actually... I mean, when did they go under? Like, it's so weird now, Forbes. I mean, every magazine is going under, but the list... I think they still do the list, right? Which also, like, when they're doing the math for that, I think it's also sort of like speculation. Yeah.

Not factual, but... Yeah. Didn't Chapo make one of those lists? Chapo did make it. I don't think Mayo's ever been on it. Everyone always says Mayo has more money than Chapo, but he somehow left off it. Now that Ivan is freed, he starts working more and more with his dad in the cartel. It's pretty typical sometimes in Mexican cartel families that their children follow their father's footsteps in the cartel game, which...

I don't know, kind of strikes me as, you know, not great. The smarter organized crime bosses we've covered, they always want to seem to keep their children out of it. Like why have them go through the same thing when they can just be movie producers or real estate developers, right? But alas, El Chapo is also following the path of his older pal and business partner, El Mayo, who had his sons and daughters follow him into the underworlds.

We don't know much about the dozens of other rumored Chapo sons, but from what we can tell, these four sons, the Los Chapitos, are the ones who gain prominence in the underworld besides Edgar, who we'll get to in a second. And following Ivan, those other three also enter the cartel when they become teenagers. I mean, I'm guessing he's got plenty of help at home and he's not, like, worried about sharing the mental labor or whatever the Instagram stories say. But, uh, like...

12, 15 kids? That's just horrible, isn't it? I don't know. Even if you're not even looking after them, it just sounds shit. Maybe I'm just...

Speaking from a particularly bad week. I think he might be doing a better job than Nick Cannon. I think they're around the same numbers, but they don't know how many kids Chapo has. I've seen 12. I've seen 15. I've seen dozens. I assume most of them or many of them are illegitimate, even though I don't know how you classify that. You know, the known ones are basically the ones that we're talking about here. And speaking of those three, besides Ivan, let's rewind a little bit to the childhood of Ovidio. He went to one of the most exclusive schools in Mexico City. And he was a kid.

And while little Ovidio was seen as a normal kid by his classmates, you know, he went to the other children's birthday parties and participated in normal childhood stuff.

The moms of his former classmates saw it differently. And that comes to a head when his grade is planning a trip to Disney and the other mother's scheme to make it so little video is not included. His mother even offers to pay for everyone's trip, but he still gets denied. A day after the other children return from the Disney trip, they all find their mothers no longer have their heads attached to their bodies.

And I made that up, but it's kind of dark. I don't know if I want to keep it a little dark, but I just wanted to make sure that you were paying attention, son. But his mom does pull him out of the school after the great Disney debacle. And that's kind of all we know about his childhood. And this story, too, seems kind of made up to me like a little iffy. I mean, I have to assume there were other connected families in this school. And this was probably around the late 90s, early 2000s. So Chapo wasn't like completely infamous yet, but still.

I mean, who's going to single out and deny the kid of a top level narco? Anyway, not much is known also about the other two brothers, Jesus Alfredo and Joaquin, their childhoods. But back to 2008, Ivan is released. Alfredo Beltran Leiva is arrested and the Beltran Leivas declare war on El Chapo. In the beginning of this war,

They take out one of Chapo's sons, Edgar, who's a brother of Ovidio and Joaquin. Edgar was older. He was already poised to follow in his father's footsteps. He was well-connected. He was the first of the sons to be heavily involved. And he had been running his own little operation independently, kind of, like under their umbrella, but, you know, getting his own contacts, his own logistics sorted, making his own money. And really, you know, he was seen to be the heir to Chapo.

before he was killed but 40 of the belch and leyva sicario's they catch edgar at night in a shopping center parking lot and cool the icon and gun him in a security detail down even supposedly using bazookas in the ambush yeah well i feel like that didn't get the crazy treatment like it is like there's 40 guys there's some of them carrying rpgs and they're just hanging out at a mall parking lot like they're in gta like what the hell is going on there and how has he won bought into it

Cool you con, man. I mean, it's like hunting. Like they've talked about this, not them specifically, but it's like hunting parties. You know, they're going out looking to kill. They're on a mission to do that. After Edgar dies or is killed, Joaquin Novidio, they inherit their murdered older brother's connections, taking over a bunch of his trafficking relationships and getting all his drug money.

That's actually according to the State Department, which classifies the two brothers as drug traffickers as early as 2008. And I think they're both pretty young at that time. Ovidio definitely is still a teenager. So, you know, definitely a nepo baby in that regard really rose up to the top. Every day, Chenier Energy is hard at work in the state of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, where we've created thousands of jobs and help make a difference in the communities where we live and work.

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The State Department calls them the Guzman-Lopez Transnational Criminal Organization and says they work under the umbrella of the Sinaloa Cartel, which is how the Sinaloa Cartel works. We've talked about this before over and over. It's a collection of affiliated organizations that work together and share resources. It's not a completely hierarchical pyramid organization. El Mayo's got his guys, Chapo's got his guys, the Beltran Levas had their guys, and on and on and on.

It's interesting, though, that these two guys, these two brothers who are sort of doing their own thing in a way as opposed to just being directly under in El Chapo's organization. I'm trying to think of an analogy that works, but it's maybe like if your dad owns a bunch of McDonald's franchises and instead of working under him at the office, he gives you a few restaurants to run on your own. Does that make sense? Does that work? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Probably does more harm to the average punter's health as well. Am I right? Yeah.

No way, dude. I'm pro McDonald's. But it is interesting, though, that they were going out there. They were striking it on their own instead of... I don't know how that would work. I guess they would be lieutenants for him or something along those lines. I'm sure they could call him up and ask for advice.

In 2012, the U.S. government designates Chapo as a kingpin, the top dog, through the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, aka the Kingpin Act, and Ivan and Ovidio are both named as key lieutenants to their dad. Now, just to reiterate one more time, because I know there's a lot of names flying around, Ivan and Jesus Alfredo are full brothers, and Ovidio and Joaquin are full brothers. So we get one brother each from the two sets identified as key lieutenants.

So, you know, these kids, they're working their way up, they're doing their thing, but they're about to be thrusted into a much more prominent role when Choppa was captured for the third time in 2016 and finally extradited to the US in 2017. Though I think, you know, anyone who has seen Mystic River is willing to forgive Sean Penn. I mean, yeah, but wasn't that all Andy Dufresne's work anyway? Dude, no, that's the wrong movie.

Oh, damn. Wait, what's the Tim Robbins one? Isn't there a Tim Robbins one? Oh, no, you're right. Mr. River. No, you're right. Sorry, I'm off. Yeah, Tim Robbins was in Mr. River. You're right. Incredible movie, though. Initially, when their father's arrested in January 2016, Los Chapitos are said to be under the protection of El Mayo as they start asserting themselves within Sinaloa. El Mayo is, of course, the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel. And for those who haven't listened to our recent two-part series on him, he's one of the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico's history, if not the most powerful.

No one really knows what to expect with Chapo's heirs. They didn't claw their way up from the bottom. And they're obviously seen as the spoiled sons of the boss man. But with Elmayo overseeing things, this is when the four brothers kind of link up to form that one unit and become known as Los Trepitos.

So around this time, there's now three factions in the Sinaloa cartel. We get the Chapo faction, which Los Chapitos come in to take over. Then we get El Mayo's faction. And again, he's sort of overseeing them a little bit. And finally, we get another faction led by Chapo's brother, the uncle of Los Chapitos, who does clash with the Chapitos as well.

So Los Chapitos, they get off to a bumpy start trying to establish themselves independently in the drug world. After their father's arrest, one in the summer of 2016, one of the four we haven't mentioned much on, Jesus Alfredo, he's kidnapped at a high-class restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, by the Jalisco New Generacion cartel. Some stories say it was Jesus Alfredo and Ivan, but CNN has it as just Jesus Alfredo being kidnapped. And according to them, quote,

The kidnapping was an important development because it affects the power structure of the Sinaloa cartel. His son was supposed to be part of the new leadership. That's a senior Mexican law enforcement official said, referring to Jesus Alfredo.

The article goes on to cite a source inside the investigation that says Jesus Alfredo was partying a lot and kind of not taking his role seriously and was caught off guard, which is typical. He's probably looking at his phone as the other government just rolled up to him just not paying attention. And we've done an episode a ways back on El Mencho and Jalisco, the Jalisco New Generation cartel. But even for cartels...

They are incredibly psychopathic and brutal. So not the kind of guys you want to catch you slipping. No, not at all. Isn't it like just so wild that this multi-billion dollar business that's sort of stretching literally all over the world is run by this like incestuous clique of guys from one place? I don't know. It just feels weird. I guess the Colombians did do their own thing in the day, but it always just shocks me how the South Americans didn't really try taking these Mexicans out and keeping the cash for themselves or whatever.

Maybe they did and they got killed, but yeah. That ground route into Mexico, you know, once they shut down Miami, that became the thing. And then the Mexicans just made so much that they, you know, took everything over. But yeah, and it's also, it's not just, you're not just talking about Mexico, right? Sinaloa itself. I mean, that's where a lot, not all the traffickers, but that this one state, it's fascinating.

Luckily for Los Chapitos, El Mayo kind of comes to the rescue and Jesus Alfredo is released after being held for several days. It's kind of a mystery why they would release him and not kill like a major operative, major leader in their biggest rival cartel. We can only really speculate on what the reasoning was, but El Mayo has been known throughout his career to be very adept at negotiating and brokering deals with rival cartels.

There's also a wild rumor that El Mayo got El Mencho's son, El Mencho being the head of Jalisco, and said, if you don't release him, we're going to kill your son, which, you know, it's a master negotiator move right there if you want to know how to negotiate. There's also another unsubstantiated rumor that he just kind of paid a ransom for him. According to Proceso Magazine, which is a popular Mexican magazine, after this ordeal, Jesus Alfredo heads to Medellin,

Did I do it right that time? Yes, Medellin. I always get that wrong. Medellin. For several months under the protection of a gang known as La Terraza, who are one of the most powerful criminal gangs in the area. They're a strong faction of a group that we've talked about before, La Oficina de Embagado. They were originally, I think, the enforcement wing of Pablo Escobar's cartel. And they broke off, I think, when he was killed. But we've talked about them with our guest, Toby Muse, because when I visited Toby, he

In Colombia in 2011, I want to say, we actually got to meet some of those guys. He's interviewed them a bunch. He's well-connected there. I think we talked about that in one of Toby's Colombia episodes. The magazine goes on to say that Jesus Alfredo was there for months, kind of moving between several apartments in the most exclusive parts of the city to get a crew of 12 armed guys from La Terraza for protection at all times. He chauffeured around in like an armored or bulletproof truck to do some business.

And it says the area is considered a safe place for top traffickers of the Sinaloa cartel that they go there when they're having trouble at home. But not like, you know, not like domestic issues. They mean people wanting to murder them issues, that sort of thing. Jesus Alfredo was apparently setting up some coke labs and working on money laundering, but still managed to party a bit because, you know, it is Colombia and even sponsored a local soccer team.

At the same time this is going on, Los Chapitos are clashing with their dad's old right-hand man, who, Damaso? I don't even know how to say that name. Damaso Lopez. Yeah. Shortly after their dad is locked up, they start squeezing Lopez, who had previously been in charge whenever Chapo was locked up. He was kind of a guy who filled in as the top-level outside prison guy.

According to Mexican Marines who spoke to Reuters, the Chapitos cut off Lopez's access to water in Sinaloa. I think they all get water from the same dam, which prevented him and his cartel faction from manufacturing drugs and seriously dented his finances. Jesus Christ, like Cold War in North Africa or something. Yeah, I mean, they're squeezing him too. I mean, there's gun battles, all that sort of stuff. And then in 2017-

That's when those 13 police officers are killed or go missing in Sinaloa that we mentioned in the cold open. It turns out they were actually on Lopez's payroll and Los Chapitos were picking them off. They're also doing this kind of sick, twisted things you would expect from a terrible Netflix series again on Narco Juniors. Here's the Reuters special report again. Quote, one of the U.S. indictments unsealed last month details other grisly violence allegedly meted out by Los Chapitos.

Their henchmen allegedly kidnapped two officials from the federal attorney general's office in early 2017, torturing one by inserting a corkscrew into his muscles, ripping it out, then placing hot chilies into his open wounds and nose. Yeah, I think I read about this one on Gwyneth Paltrow's website. It's really good for your pores, apparently. You know, we should say, like, these are rumors. These are, like, Justice Department reports. It doesn't mean they're necessarily true.

Ivan finished off the victims with gunshots with Jesus Alfredo, pitching him to shoot one in the face, according to the indictment, which said the two brothers also killed some enemies by feeding them alive to the pet tigers they kept at their ranches. Again, super cliche.

The brothers actually go so far as to release an open letter, I think their first time doing that, where they say, quote, they deny all the charges and they say, quote, a tiger may kill a person, but eat him? We do not have, nor did we have, tigers. Yeah, and that's why there's never been the phrase man-eating tiger, right? I'm pretty sure, too, they did. Like, there were these Instagram accounts that were out there that were allegedly them, and most people think it was them, though, you know, they weren't verified. But a lot of tigers on those.

Yeah, they did have tigers, but I think we did a, that, there was that episode that we did like a year ago about tigers and criminals and they were definitely part of it. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good idea for an episode. And if it's on our show, then it's true. Good for you. Good for you, Sean. Los Trapitos, they, they went out. Lopez is actually arrested in 2017, ex-riding to the US and later testifies against El Chapo. And there's now speculation he has entered into witness protection. So if you're out there, give us a call. We'll, uh, we'll do a little, little Patreon episode.

Then in 2018, Jesus Alfredo actually makes the DA's list of the top 10 most wanted fugitives. That, along with this 2015 US indictment that lists Chapo and Mayo and some other top cartel figures, but none of the other kids besides Jesus Alfredo has convinced some that he's actually the leader of Los Chapitos, even though Ovidio and Ivan get a lot more attention. And we'll learn why Ovidio is just kind of operating on a different level soon. He's actually a lot smarter than we're giving him credit for.

I actually just checked the DA's most wanted list and Jesus Alfredo is no longer in the top 10 while Yvonne is. So, you know, there you go. It's a bit more likely that Yvonne might be the top one. So congrats are in order to him.

So we haven't talked that much about the fourth brother, Joaquin, who is Ovidio's full brother, and that's for good reason. He keeps it tight. He's very low profile, more like El Mayo than Chapo, I would say. So low profile that when the USA issued their first most wanted poster of him, they actually used the wrong photo of an uninvolved Chapo kid and had to re-release the poster with his actual photo.

And while the other kids would eventually have 10 million bounties on their head, he only has a 5 million bounty on his head, which I think we can all agree is real amateur hour type stuff. In an interview with a Mexican journalist, Lopez's son, Chapo's, you know, the guy we just talked about, Chapo's right-hand man who Los Chapitos fought, says that Joaquin's low profile isn't by accident. Quote, he told Ovidio, you do the negotiations, you give everything. But the one who had the last word was Joaquin.

He does add, though, that this was several years ago, so maybe Ovidio has taken a bigger role since then and matured. And he goes on to say that Joaquin believed that he was the smartest brother of the four. I mean, that's going to be a tense, drunken game of Scrabble at Christmas, that's for sure. Yeah, I mean, they haven't turned on each other since, like, but who knows what could happen. So, yeah, we're roughly in 2019 now.

That's when we have the cold open scene with Ovidio getting detained and Ivan and Los Chapitos getting freed by plunging Culiacan into anarchy and forcing the state to back down, which is a huge power move from them and seen as a pretty emphatic statement about like, hey, we're here and we are running things. In the chaos of Ovidio's release, there's some dispute with Omao's role. One Mexican journalist said that nothing happened in Sinaloa without the approval of Omao and that his own men were participating in everything. Other

Others have said that El Mayo actually held his men back. We don't know exactly what happens, but after Ovidio is freed, organizations connected to Los Chapitos begin fighting organizations connected to El Mayo, which, you know, the way these guys conduct themselves could be random, but also seems a little more than coincidental. So they're kind of, you know, they're splitting at that point, the El Mayo faction and Los Chapitos. It's no longer this sort of like big, you know, your dad's friend helping you do work sort of thing.

There's also speculation that Los Chapitos seem to want to go at everything themselves. According to the website InfoBay, which I know has like a silly name, but it's not that kind of a, it has a ton of interesting stuff on the cartel war as always. Los Chapitos get into a prolonged battle with a key Mayo lieutenant known as La Russo or the Russian and his men.

Apparently, the Russian didn't participate in the attack to free Ovidio, which pisses off Los Chapitos, and then they get into a battle over who has higher ranking. And to avoid a full-on war, Amayo orders the Russian and his men to move north, and they do. But the Chapitos continue to battle with Los Rusos, the name of his squad, in other areas like Baja and Sonora. And this feud goes on for years with sort of like, you know, back-and-forth murders, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth.

On another war front, Los Chapitos get into a multi-year war with the Caborca Cartel, which is led by Rafael Caro Quintero, who was one of the original cartel kingpins and partnered with Miguel Angel Felix.

the original cartel boss in Mexico. Quintero famously murdered American DEA agent Enrique Kiki Camarena, and he somehow managed to bribe his way out of prison in 2013 after a judge ordered his release, well, led to a judge ordering his release, and then he went right back to work. Long-time listeners of the podcast, too, might remember when I was supposed to go to Altair, Mexico, and spend some time in the compound of a high-ranking Sinaloa cartel commander by the name of El Durango,

He was actually fighting the Cabo Cartel for Los Chapitos with his squad, the Grupo Delta of Gente Nueva. Of course, the Mexican National Guard decided to absolutely ruin my entire career. And he was arrested about five days before we were supposed to fly to Tucson and cross the border into Nogales to meet his men.

That episode is from March of 2023. It's called The Time the Mexican Army Ruined My Cartel Sleepover. And if you want, go back and listen to it to get the full story. Yeah, I mean, I'm still bummed out you and Boris Neufeld aren't best buddies as well. I want to know more about that. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. I have confidence that it'll work out with him eventually. Anyway.

The main point to take away here is that Los Chapitos are in the mix, battling it out and asserting themselves, even versus sort of the old guard that were highly respected. And the second point is that the Mexican military absolutely does not want to see me win. Quintero, he doesn't last long either. And a year later in July of 2022, he gets arrested again. And the Chapitos take his territory. And in the days after their arrest, they kill a couple dozen people in Caborca and nearby towns.

So yeah, they're expanding like crazy. We kind of had this image of them as these like spoiled narco kids who were going to be –

like a King Joffrey situation or like whoever the new guy is in House of Drax. And just like these kids who thought they knew it all and were going to be terrible, but it does seem at this point, like they have a lot of wins and they're good at what they do. Obviously they're terrible people, but as we're going to see, they have probably changed the game in terms of drugs coming into the US. But before that, they start making heavy investments right now in fancy weed.

And the expectation is that weed is going to be legalized in Mexico soon. This is all according to Luis Chaparro. We've had him on a bunch. He's an incredibly talented journalist, so go follow him if you're not. Yeah, Luis is great. I mean, it kind of seems like you're defeating the object if you legalize weed, but the weed industry is controlled by deadly cartels who traffic harder stuff. I don't know. It just...

Doesn't make a lot of sense, possibly, but, uh, you know, legalize weed, I guess. The, uh, the Lost Boys tried to tell us in 1994, man, it's all about getting that legal drug money. Okay, so they've set up high-end dispensaries all over Culiacán already. They're learning from the U.S. weed scene, and they're actively trying to brand and produce high-quality stuff. They also are shelling out money to lobbyists to get the Mexican government to legalize weed.

So far, they aren't all the way there, but Mexico has made some progress legalizing medical weed in 2017 and decriminalizing recreational weed use for adults in 2021. But if they're anything like the weed stocks that I've invested in, they're down 90% and the Chapito should get out of that business as soon as possible.

By the end of 2022, the Chapitos are also dominating the meth and fent trade in Mexico. And a lot of the media on both sides of the border are starting to say they built an empire, a fentanyl empire. Reuters releases that special report in May of 2023 titled, How El Chapo Sons,

built a fentanyl empire poisoning america quote once dismissed as narco brats flaunting fast cars pet tigers and a golden ak-47 on social media the brothers have emerged as key figures in the violent sinaloa cartel security officials say yeah and i'm going to do something on this soon for the show as well like specifically the way they use chinese money laundering groups to wash their fentanyl cash so uh yeah look out for that one that'll be interesting oh yeah that'll be that'll be great people love that stuff

Continuing with the quote from that article, the Chapitos pioneered the manufacturing trafficking of the deadliest drug our country has ever faced. And Milgram, the USDA chief said at an April 14th press conference in Washington. That's April 14th, 2023.

They inherited a global drug empire and made it more ruthless, more violent, and more deadly. Tributos at this point are said to have stopped acting as a transshipment point for Chinese fentanyl. They've actually started importing the precursors themselves from China and opened up super labs all across Sinaloa. According to that Reuters report that cites the State Department, in 2008, Ovidio began smuggling chemicals from Argentina to make meth. And in 2014, they

He started trying to figure out how to do the same and make fentanyl. So maybe, you know, this kid, despite being a spoiled narco son, kind of is a criminal genius in that way. Here's more. The cartel can turn $800 worth of precursor chemicals into fentanyl pills or powder that re-profits as high as $640,000. Jesus.

According to one of the April indictments, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, that cast, U.S. prosecutors say, has bankrolled a war chest used by the brothers to bribe politicians and cops and finance an ever-growing army of sicarios or hitmen to protect their interest. Again, you know, the numbers, when you're looking at DA reports or indictments, I'm never going to put 100% of faith into them, but like,

The markups, the margins for Fentanyl, that's why people start selling Fentanyl. The markups are insane. And if you're just buying the precursor chemicals and then doing that, it very well could be somewhere in that neighborhood of like $1,000 to half a million in terms of profit. It's insane. Well, at least I guess it's $1,000 in buying the…

In the chemicals, right? But there's labor, gunmen, smuggling fees and all that. So either way, they're doing okay for themselves. The Chapitos, like I mentioned earlier, they took issue with all these indictments and even went so far as to release an open letter for the first time saying none of this was true. How can any of that not be true? I don't... It's definitely true.

They've also tried to do some of the, you know, Robin Hood stuff that their dad was known for a little bit more. Like they built an outdoor school in rural Sinaloa during COVID. They're giving away washing machines and food. They have like concerts, things like that. But again, they don't have the most sterling reputation. Here's Mexican crime journalist Marcos Vizcarra.

Quote, if people needed help under El Chapo, they got help. If somebody had a health problem, they found out about it, they would get them help. And from that feeling of protection came a sense of governance. Los Chapitos have created a super capitalistic environment. They only see production. They only see a labor force and nothing else. They've also done away with the previous kind of Sinaloa narco kingpin code of not selling retail in their home state and have been having the dealers sort of all work for them.

Yeah, I mean, this is like one of the reasons drug crime is so interesting, right? It's like, it's just the most ruthless, gloves-off version of the system we're all living in. I don't know, like, that's one of the reasons I find it fascinating anyway, because...

You know who those real criminals are, right, Danny? Those crooks in Congress? Those crooks in Congress, correct. No, I mean, look, ruthlessness, I think, does not get you to the top. I think these guys are also brilliant in ways that, you know, the kind of thing you see in like Fortune 500 CEOs, which as much as people want to pretend like it's not a, you know, you're making decisions every single day that affect people.

Yeah. Especially if you're a drug lord, you know, lots of people, how the company is going to function and all that. And it's pretty much just like constant decisions, constant logistics. And you have to just problem solve nonstop. And it's not an easy thing to do. Ask anyone who tried to sell weed in college. Like it's a lot.

of headache and hassle. So rising to the top of a drug lord, like look, some of them are complete ruthless psychopaths. Mencho is a good example of that. Zetas, all that sort of stuff. But they have to be proficient. You can't just be ruthless. I mean, those that will be the Sicario's or the enforcers or things like that. You're not gonna be the head like these guys are.

So by the end of 2022, Los Trapitos, they're looking pretty good. Inside Crime even names them their game changers of the year in 2022. But the good times do not last. Ovidio is arrested again at the start of 2023 and is grabbed by the Mexican military in a rapid raid on the outskirts of Culiacan involving helicopter fire and hundreds of soldiers. 19 sicarios and 10 soldiers are killed in the gun battle.

Los Torpedos go back to the same sort of tactic of starting to cause chaos there. They're lighting up roadblocks on fire and shooting at commercial planes at the airport on the runway that were taking off.

But this time the army is prepared and Ovidio is quickly transported to Mexico City right after the raid and the chaos kind of stops once a picture of him pops up, you know, of him getting off the military helicopter in Mexico City. This is obviously a pretty big blow for Los Chapitos and it gets worse when Ovidio is extradited in September of 2023. So that's, you know, that's a wrap for him, but we'll see if he ends up testifying.

In the summer of 2023, narco banners start to go up in Culiacan with the chapito saying, all fem production must stop and people who violate the ban are going to be executed. The U.S. is not taking the fentanyl epidemic quietly anymore and the pressure is on. And even with AMLO not exactly being full on in terms of battling the narcos, it does not bode well for Mexican narcos or kingpins when the U.S. is that laser focused.

Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing it'll be more of the same under Scheinbaum as well, but when does she come in? It must be soon, right? Like, she's kind of his protégé. Right, right. So I think it might be the same, but obviously, like, there's going to be immense pressure, because the fentanyl stuff is not slowing down and...

I'm surprised it hasn't been a bigger conversation topic in the election season, but I'm sure it will ramp up. But yeah, I can't picture them letting up the pressure at all on stopping that. So yeah, initially, it seems like they are serious about this. There's like 50 fentanyl producers who I think were killed by Sicario's that the Chapitos sent out to enforce the ban.

But the ban isn't really a ban as the production just migrates north. So it's away from Culiacan and closer and not just Culiacan, away from Sinaloa and closer towards the border. In November of 2023, the Chapitos take another big hit when their security chief who goes by the name of El Nini is arrested. And the day after he's arrested, a top distributor for the Chapitos is gunned down in California.

el nini was just x-rayed a few weeks ago to the state so if he talks it'll of course lead to some more major issues for them and we should get some really interesting information out of that if he does which i think he probably will but these arrests don't really seem to be doing anything to chapito's overall operation a mexican defense analyst says quote the adjustments will be in the closest circle i don't see another criminal group that could dispute their position of power which is um

you know, kind of crazy. I mean, that's where we're at. I think, you know, I'm not someone who is laser focused on the cartel wars like our friend Lewis or other reporters, but I definitely did not expect Chapo's heirs to sort of be able to assert themselves and really be as strong as they are. I figured once he died, the whole thing would split up and the Sinaloa cartel has pretty much split up. It doesn't really exist anymore, you know, but Los Chapitos have emerged as powerful players. I guess you could kind of call them, although

Although El Mayo is around as well. It's split into different factions that do their own thing, but they're not the expected spoiled loser narco junior sons who screw everything up that I think a lot of people assume they're going to be. They've taken some hits, but like they're still pumping out fentanyl and meth.

Much like a young Sean Williams on a Tuesday night in Berlin. And that does it for this episode. There's the hat trick. I actually, I was thinking of you. There's another podcast. I forget what it's called, but someone recommended it to me. And it's called, um, like why my friends Phil and Steve didn't get into, into Berghain. Yeah.

So if you guys don't know, Burgine is like the biggest, probably the most famous club in the world at this point. But I was listening to it and it's kind of like – it's actually really interesting because it goes into the history of electronic – of techno and Detroit and East Berlin and West Berlin and these parties, how it started, and then Burgine's history. But the whole time they're talking about like how hard it is to get into all this stuff and I'm like –

You know, my friends got in every time. But, you know. Man, I'm never being turned away. Yeah, exactly. Because you got the look. I got the look. I got that sunken, dead, pallid, like disgusting complexion. Yeah. We should do an episode called Why Sean Always Gets Into Burgine. All right. Anyway, that's enough from us. Thank you guys, as always, Patreon. I don't know, man. Just keep listening. If you do Patreon, if you don't, give us a follow. Support us. Support our sponsors. And have a great, great week.

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