Mexico City, CDMX: The Sinaloa Cartel Has Chosen This Metropolis

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Members of the Sinaloa Cartel have chosen Mexico City to close deals for the sale of cocaine and to carry out quality tests.

Imagen Noticias obtained dozens of photographs, videos, and screenshots showing their operation in the capital.

Video translation is as follows:

Humberto Padgett: The quality tests that these narco traffickers perform on cocaine who have been sent to buy kilos and kilos of South American powder. It doesn’t occur in some remote place in the Colombian jungle.

Nor is this man numb from the cold of the Durango mountains. Everything happened at the beginning of this year in a cabin in the Ajusco community of the Tlalpan neighborhood within Mexico City.

Marco Antonio Murguía Villarreal: I believe I had already sent it to you the last time I was here. The first time I came here this was the place where I stayed at. It’s gets cold as fuck here.

Humberto Padgett: The person who was speaking is Marco Antonio Murguía Villarreal, the youngest of a reputed family of Sonoran drug traffickers who work for the Sinaloa Cartel. And they have chosen the Mexican capital to close deals for the sale of cocaine. To later transfer it on commercial flights to the Mexican Northwest and turn it into crack. Increasing its value and potential for addiction.

The presence of the Murguía Villarreal family is not an isolated matter. It’s part of an investigation undertaken by federal and capital authorities that considers the increase intended by organized crime groups in the center of the country.

Imagen Noticias obtained dozens of photographs, videos, and screenshots, part of a federal and local investigation that the individuals involved sent each other. And they show how the country's capital is turning the retail of banned substances into something more than a supply center.

Another of the Sinaloans doing business here is Gilberto Pérez Camacho aka ‘El Mex’. A man linked according to the police officers consulted to validate the information with Héctor ‘El Guero’ Palma. The old boss imprisoned for decades in a federal prison.

‘El Mex’ was arrested in Mexico City on May 15th. And he is related to 5 other subjects captured a year ago in the same capital.

Marco Antonio Alvarado Ramírez, in charge of logistics, Roberto Cortes Bueno and Ricardo Parra Blanco, buyers of the cocaine. Jorge Frontado and Milton Aravelo, pilots of Peruvian nationality also hired in Mexico City. With the idea of ​​transporting by aircraft these blocks, as these white bricks are called.

Right here the identification of the shipments is made with a template and press. Kilo by kilo according to its purity and the investor who participates in the purchase of drugs.

A crown, a deer head, Gucci brands, Louis Vuitton, the numbers 777 for good luck, or 666, the number of the beast, and even the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo comes out. There is also something else that these images from Sinaloan cell phones reveals. 

And it’s that they’re not only involved in marijuana and cocaine sales. These boxes of Clonazepam and these buckets of pseudoephedrine, by the way, legally imported into Mexico from India by a company located in the Tlalpan neighborhood in Mexico City, function as precursor additives for the manufacture of methamphetamine produced in Mexican streets such as crystal meth aka 'Crico'.

This is the synthetic drug that explains a good part of the violence suffered in cities like Tijuana, Fresnillo, and Celaya. Where criminal groups dispute the local market at the rate of massacres for the control of a couple of city blocks. And this is now within the heart of Mexico.

Criminal # 1: I'm cold man.

Criminal # 2: My friend with the cold will soon enough serve himself from the big profits.

Ciro Gómez Leyva: And as Humberto Padgett has just stated. This problem is now within the heart of Mexico City. Hopefully the authorities are working away on this matter?

Ciro Gómez Leyva