The U.S. Wants $500 Million in Drug Money from a Mexican Drug Lord Betrayed by El Chapo Keegan Hamilton - VICE News
go to original April 6, 2017

Everybody knows Mexican drug lords are filthy rich, but the recent sentencing of a leader of the notorious Beltrán-Leyva cartel suggests the illicit business is even more lucrative than imagined — and the U.S. government wants a piece of the action.

Alfredo “El Mochomo” Beltrán-Leyva, the youngest of five brothers behind the Beltrán-Leyva Organization (BLO), was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C. Prosecutors claim the 48-year-old Beltrán-Leyva, a former ally of Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, was “responsible for moving hundreds of thousands of kilograms of drugs” across the border from his homebase in Culiacán, Mexico.

Not content with just putting Beltrán-Leyva behind bars for the rest of his days, federal authorities are also trying to recoup some of the money he made from his drug empire, a common part of the penalty in such cases. Prosecutors initially asked Judge Richard J. León to force Beltrán-Leyva to repay $10 billion in asset forfeiture, a figure they said was a “a conservative estimate” of his earnings over the years. On Wednesday, Judge León ordered Beltrán-Leyva to fork over a slightly smaller but hardly insignificant sum: $529,200,000. (See pdf below.)

El Mochomo, whose nickname means “the desert ant,” has already appealed his sentence, and his attorneys claim the $10 billion figure was “pulled from thin air and bears no relation to reality.” Prosecutors in the case have conceded that the “calculation of forfeiture amounts is not an exact science” but also said they don’t need to be precise “because criminals, especially drug traffickers, rarely keep detailed receipts of their ill-gotten gains.”

The feds have said the asset forfeiture figures in the case were “based upon extensive debriefs of cooperating members” of the BLO cartel, “including high-ranking members of the organization with detailed, firsthand knowledge” of the group’s “financial dealings.”

...Chapo himself is now in U.S. custody and awaiting trial in a Brooklyn federal court. Federal prosecutors are seeking an even larger chunk of change from him than the amount they sought from Alfredo Beltrán-Leyva — a whopping $14 billion worth of asset forfeiture. But with both drug lords locked up and their respective cartels in disarray, it’s highly unlikely they’ll ever pay up.



Read the rest at VICE News

Related: Mexican Special Unit Cop Acted as Mole for Drug Lords for Seven Years (Associated Press)

Related: Corruption Case Dampens Diplomatic Victory of Mexico Kingpin's Sentencing in US (Insight Crime)

Related: No-Frills Lockup: El Chapo's Attorneys Say Jail Is Worse for Him Than Anybody Else in the U.S. (VICE News)



Top photo: Getty Images

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