CJNG's Armed Robbery Gang Terrorizing Cabo San Lucas

"HEARST" for Borderland Beat 

The leader of a CJNG group was recently arrested. His group terrorized the tourist hotspot of Los Cabos with an unusual string of armed robberies.

The Unusual MO

Cartel groups regularly impose fees on businesses located within their territory, demanding either a set price or a percent of profits in exchange for the cartel group's "protection of the area". Some industries are hit harder than others, such as avocado farming, while others remain untouched. 

Oftentimes certain types of businesses, such as bars or mechanic shops, will be hit with drive-by shootings or arson attacks over the course of a week if a new cartel group is trying to impose a fee or an older group is rallying adherence to higher fees.

It's quite unusual to see cartel groups announcing and enforcing a fee through armed robberies, but that's exactly what a Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) group has allegedly been doing in the beach resort region of Los Cabos. 

The local group's leader, Carlos Alejandro Cervera Mireles, alias "El Apache", was recently arrested. Let's look closer at the string of armed robberies and extortion carried out by his group. 

The Robbery of the Coffee Shop in Cabo San Lucas 

About 20 minutes after midnight, on July 8, 2023, a group of three armed CJNG members entered a restaurant named Infusion Art Caffe. 

The restaurant is located in the popular tourist destination of Cabo San Lucas, which lies within the state of Baja California Sur.

Infusion Art Caffe is located near a number of hotels popular with American tourists and it has a 4.5 star rating on Trip Advisor. 

The armed men approached two diners, who were sitting at a table near the entrance, and they demanded they hand over their valuables. The men take off their watches and hand them over. Some staff members slipped into the back area and fled the restaurant.

Two of the assailants refocus on a remaining staff member, making him open the cash register, which they stole from.

The two diners are told to hand over their cell phones and wallets, which makes one of the diners balk, standing up out of his chair in defiance. Two of the gunmen, however, subdue him by hitting him over the head with their firearm. Eventually both diners handed over their wallets and cell phones.

The three armed men left with the cash and valuables, jumping into a getaway car driven by a fourth CJNG member. Police officers were called to the scene and during the interviews with the two diners, one of the men mentioned that they had activated the Find My IPhone feature, which allowed him to track the current location of his phone.

Police used the tracking and found that the cellphone was moving, being driven up Highway 1 as it passed Miraflores and continued north, past Santiago, heading to another beach town named La Paz.

Police organized a roadblock further up on Highway 1. When the CJNG gunmen approached and spotted the police vehicles ahead, they pulled their vehicle, a gray Honda Civic, to the side of the road and ran on foot, towards the forested mountains, where officers were unable to find them.

 

The gunmen presumably abandoned the stolen Iphone and they were unable to track them any further. But, as luck would have it, the vehicle the gunmen abandoned had no theft report and was registered under the name of Omar Alejandro Nava Cantero.

Zeta Tijuana wrote that “the three robbers of the Infusion Art Caffe are the most wanted in Los Cabos” and that “a new type of extortion”, was worrying business owners in los Cabos. 

The more that police investigated Omar Alejandro, the more they began to suspect that he was one of the CJNG gunmen and that this gang of men was tied to another string of robberies which took place, not in Cabo San Lucas, but in La Paz, where the group had been heading to just after the robbery of the restaurant.

Earlier String of Robberies in La Paz

Four to five cell phone stores in the town of La Paz had been the victim of a gang of armed robbers.

 

Within the course of a few weeks, armed men robbed the following stores:

 

1. Phone Center, located on the upper floor of Plaza Nautica

 

2. Bifrost Electronic, on Francisco J. Mújica Street

 

3. Alfacell, on 5 de Febrero Street

 

4. Accemovil, on Forjadores Boulevard

 

Every robbery shared certain characteristics. During daytime hours, seven to eight men would enter a store while wearing masks, fanny pack type bags, and carrying firearms. If any security cameras were in the store, the men would turn them to face the wall.

After completing this, the men would announce that they were “miembros de la mana” or “members of the mafia/cartel” which controlled this territory and they intended to start charging a fee from the store. The men would then grab the store’s merchandise – sometimes demanding that employees open locked cabinets to grab especially valuable items.

 

These items were often pretty pricey. At Phone Center, 40 cellphones were taken. At Accemovil. 12 iPhones, 4 Alexa speakers, 50 screen covers, and 30 cell phones power banks were taken. The state Attorney General’s office estimates that a total of 270,000 pesos worth of merchandise was stolen from the stores.

 

The men would inform the employees that they were going to hold the merchandise for ransom, demanding the store pay them 30,000 pesos to have it returned.

After paying for the merchandise, the stores would then have to start paying the cartel group 5,000 pesos every week in exchange for their “protection” because they were “que son de la mana” or “those of the mafia/cartel” .

The men would leave a phone number for the store owners to call so they could “reach an arrangement.”

 

How exactly investigators tied the gang behind the restaurant robbery to the series of cell phone store robberies is unclear. But it's worth noting that the robbery of Accemovil (July 7, 2023) was just one day before the attack on the restaurant (July 8, 2023).

 

As investigators looked further into the owner of the Civic, Omar Alejandro, they discovered that he and the other gang members both owned and worked at a barbershop in La Paz called Baja Cuts Barber Shop. Zeta Tijuana writes that the barbershop was being used as a front to launder the money they were making through criminal activities.

The Arrest in Jalisco and Their Criminal History

Video of the restaurant robbery was released by authorities and multiple major news outlets wrote stories about the attack. 

On July 12, a restaurant association (CANIRAC) requested further government security for places like Infusion Art Caffe. The governor responded by stating that investigators were working hard to find those responsible.

Sensing the law enforcement “heat” on them, the CJNG kidnapping gang fled the state of Baja California Sur, where they’d been operating since 2019, and traveled back to their state of origin: Jalisco.

For more than a month the group managed to lay low and stay undetected in the area of Tlaquepaque, which is located within the greater Guadalajara area.

But eventually investigators were able to track the group to Jalisco and once they found them, they applied for a warrant.

 

Once granted, local Jalisco police carried out the arrest warrant and on August 27, 2023, the CJNG cartel member who led the gang involved in the restaurant robbery – a man named Carlos Alejandro Cervera Mireles, known by the aliases “El Apache” and “El Chore”.

 

Very few details about how the arrest occurred are available. All that is really known is that Apache was arrested alongside three other men: Omar Alejandro Nava Cantero, Luis Antonio Moreno Frías and Christian Hugo Estrada Serratos.

On September 12, 2023, the weekly magazine Zeta Tijuana published an article which revealed the full (real) name of El Apache and his cohorts. They also revealed that El Apache had previously been arrested in 2012 for leading a gang involved in grand theft auto.

It included one of the men that Apache was arrested alongside in 2023: Cristian Hugo Estrada Serratos, as well as Cristian’s father Hugo Estrada Juarez, who was 40 at the time – back in 2012.  

In May 2012, four members of the gang (Apache, Cristian Hugo, Cristian's father and Jose Luis Vital Gonzalez) were caught by police after attempting to steal a car in Tonalá, Jalisco, which led to a car chase that ended with their vehicle being flipped on a road. All four were brought in by police as detainees. Investigators were able to tie the men to seven previous vehicle robberies and in August 2012, all four were charged with armed robbery.

Before Apache’s case went to trial, however, he reportedly provided investigators with valuable information which implicated co-defendant Jose Luis Vital Gonzalez in a homicide that occurred months earlier. As a result of this information, Apache was - as Zeta Tijuana puts it - “released shortly after” and charges against him were presumably dropped. 

Sometime around 2019, Apache and Cristian Hugo relocated from Jalisco to La Paz, Baja California Sur.

It's worth noting that the string of robberies in La Paz garnered barely very little attention in the press at the time. It was only once the armed robberies escalated from incidents which affected Mexican business owners to attacks which affected rich tourists, like the patrons at Infusions Art Caffe, that major news outlets took notice and began billing every story under headlines about the “Cafe Robbers”.

Sources: Zeta Article 1, Article 2, Informador, Tribuna de Mexico Article 1, Article 2, Milenio, Metropoli MX, Colectivo Pericu,  CaboMil, BCS Noticias, El Informante BCs, Diario el Independiente