Juan José Esparragoza Moreno (February 3, 1949 – June 2014), commonly referred to by his alias El Azul (English: “The Blue One”), was a Mexican drug lord and member of the Sinaloa Cartel, the Guadalajara Cartel and the Juárez Cartel cartel . three large and powerful criminal organizations. Originally a member of the Dirección Federal…
Héctor Luis Palma Salazar (born April 29, 1960), better known as “El Güero Palma”, is a Mexican former drug trafficker and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel alongside Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Ismael Zambada García. After the brutal murder of his family on the orders of his boss Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Palma committed a…
The Guadalajara Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Guadalajara), also known as The Federation (Spanish: La Federación) was a Mexican drug cartel founded in 1980 by Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Rafael Caro Quintero, and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo to ship cocaine and marijuana to the United States. One of the first Mexican drug trafficking groups to work with…
Ismael Mario Zambada García (born January 1, 1948) is a Mexican drug lord, co-founder and current top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate based in Sinaloa. Before assuming control of the entire cartel, he is said to have served as a logistics coordinator for the Guzmán-Zambada organization, which oversaw the trafficking of…
Alphonse Gabriel Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), also known by the nickname “Scarface”, was an American gangster and businessman who rose to prominence during the Prohibition era as co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1925 to 1931. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison…
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera (born April 4, 1957), commonly known as “El Chapo” and “JGL”, is a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate. He is considered one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. Guzmán was born in Sinaloa and grew up in…
The Sinaloa Cartel (Spanish: Cártel de Sinaloa, CDS, after the indigenous region of Sinaloa), also known as the Guzmán-Zambada Organization, the Federation, the Blood Alliance, or the Pacific Cartel, is a major, internationally organized crime syndicate based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico, which specializes in illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. The cartel’s…
The Ochoa Brothers: The Rise and Role in the Medellín Cartel The Ochoa Brothers—Jorge Luis, Juan David, and Fabio Ochoa Vásquez—were prominent members of the infamous Medellín Cartel in Colombia, which rose to power in the 1970s and 1980s under the leadership of Pablo Escobar. While Escobar is often seen as the face of the…
Jorge Velásquez, commonly known by his nickname Navegante was one of the sicarios of the Cali cartel. In the 1980s, Navegante served as Cali cartel leader Hélmer Herrera’s bodyguard, and accompanied him to Mexico and Panama as his boss oversaw relations between their cartel and Mexican drug traffickers. In 1989, he successfully infiltrated the Medellín…
The arrest in Colombia of a leader of a faction of the Venezuelan mega-gang, Tren de Aragua, has highlighted the organization’s little-known role in the drug trade. Colombian police arrested Carlos Antonio López Centeno, alias “El Pilo,” along with ten other Venezuelans in the municipality of Riohacha, La Guajira department, in northern Colombia, on March…