Major Drug Traffickers
Background: For decades, the trafficking of drugs within the United States was principally controlled by traditional organized crime groups that lived and operated inside the country. According to the 1986 President's Commission on Law Enforcement, from the 1950s to the 1970s, La Cosa Nostra "controlled an estimated 95 percent of all the heroin entering New York City, as well as most of the heroin distributed throughout the United States."



In a drug trafficking network that became known as the French Connection, New York City-based crime families purchased heroin from Corsican sources, who worked with French sailors operating from Marseilles, to transship the drug directly to the United States. Ultimately, the heroin was distributed throughout the United States by domestic organized crime families to street-level dealers working in low-income, minority communities. However, in 1972, the French Connection was effectively dismantled by French and U.S. drug agents, ending the domestic mafia's monopoly on heroin distribution in the United States.



The demise of the French Connection, coupled with the subsequent emergence of criminal syndicates based in Colombia, marked significant evolution in the international drug trade. These new traffickers introduced cocaine into the United States on a massive scale, launching unparalleled waves of drug crimes and violence. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the international crime syndicates continued to increase their wealth and dominance over the U.S. drug trade, overshadowing the domestic crime families.



Today, the traffic in illegal drugs, from manufacture to final street-level sale, is controlled by international organized crime syndicates from Colombia, Mexico, and other countries. From their headquarters overseas, foreign drug lords produce and distribute unprecedented volumes of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and marijuana throughout the United States.



These traffickers model their operations after international terrorist groups. They maintain tight control of their workers through highly compartmentalized cell structures that separate production, shipment, distribution, money laundering, communications, security, and recruitment. Traffickers have at their disposal the most technologically advanced airplanes, boats, vehicles, radar, communications equipment, and weapons that money can buy. They have also established vast counterintelligence capabilities and transportation networks.



Today's international criminal organizations pose a greater challenge to law enforcement than any pervious criminal group in our history. While there are numerous characteristics that these international groups have in common with traditional organized crime -- their penchant for violence and their reliance on corruption and intimidation as tools of their business -- their sheer power, influence, and sophistication put them in a category by themselves. Whereas traditional mafia families would corrupt officers and judges, today's international drug organizations corrupt entire institutions of government.



The DEA continually demonstrates its ability and willingness to fight corruption and terrorism by international drug traffickers. For example, the DEA worked openly with the Colombian National Police (CNP) to capture Pablo Escobar, a leader of the infamous Medellin cartel, who was responsible for waging a campaign of terror and bribery. These efforts ultimately led to the death of Escobar during a shoot-out with the CNP.



Despite significant law enforcement successes in dismantling several major international trafficking organizations, international criminal groups continue to pose a significant threat to the welfare of the American people. The DEA, in cooperation with foreign, state, local, and federal counterparts, is taking aggressive action, both internationally and domestically, to combat these organizations and repair the damage they have inflicted on citizens and communities in the United States.



TRAFFICKERS FROM COLOMBIA
Cocaine: Colombia-based drug traffickers are responsible for most of the world's cocaine production and wholesale cocaine distribution, although traffickers from Mexico have assumed a much larger role in the transportation and distribution of cocaine. Colombia's strategic location makes it a logical hub for cocaine trafficking. It shares borders with Peru and Bolivia, two countries that, in addition to Colombia, grow large amounts of coca, and it is reasonably close to the United States (Bogota, the capital city, is two-and-a-half hours by air from Miami.) Because Colombia is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, a wide variety of air and maritime drug smuggling routes are readily available to traffickers from Colombia.



Transporters hired by the traffickers carry the raw product, often through hidden jungle trails, to locations where cocaine paste is extracted from the leaves. The coca paste is then transported by land, sea, and air to large, concealed laboratories, far from the cocagrowing regions, where it is processed into cocaine hydrochloride, the white crystalline powder commonly sold to users.



Every available form of transportation is used to smuggle the cocaine abroad: airplanes, ships, trucks, and trains. The risk is greatest in the transportation and distribution areas, and the financial rewards are commensurate with the risks. Seizures of drugs being smuggled into the United States have netted shipments with street values in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In 1989, a record seizure in Sylmar, California, uncovered 47,554 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of $3.2 billion.



During the 1980s, the Colombian drug lords relied heavily on organized groups from Mexico to transport cocaine into the United States after it was delivered to Mexico from Colombia. Currently, the greatest proportion of cocaine available in the United States is still entering the United States through Mexico. Using their skills as seasoned drug traffickers with a long tradition of polydrug smuggling, crime lords from Mexico soon established cocaine trafficking routes and contacts. In the late 1980s, Colombia-based organizations who had paid transporters from Mexico cash for their services, began to give them cocaine--in many cases up to half of the shipment--as payment for their services. As a result, the organizations from Mexico evolved from mere transporters of cocaine to major cocaine traffickers in their own right, and today pose a grave threat to the United States.



Structure in the United States: Colombia-based cocaine trafficking groups in the United States continue to be organized around "cells" that operate within a given geographic area. Since these cells are based on family relationships or close friendships, outsiders attempting to penetrate the cell run a high risk of arousing suspicion. Some cells specialize in a particular facet of the drug trade, such as cocaine transport, storage, wholesale distribution, or money laundering. Each cell, which may be comprised of 10 or more employees, operates with little or no knowledge about the other cells. In this way, should one of the cells be compromised, the operations of the other cells would not be endangered.



A rigid topdown command and control structure is characteristic of these groups. The head of each cell reports to a regional director who is responsible for the overall management of several cells. The regional director, in turn, reports directly to one of the top drug lords, or his designate, based in Colombia. Trusted lieutenants of the organization in the United States have discretion in the daytoday operations, but ultimate authority rests with the leadership in Colombia.



Encryption: Traffickers from Colombia are increasingly employing state-of-the-art encryption devices to translate their communications into indecipherable code. This evolving technology presents a significant impediment to law enforcement investigations of criminal activities.



In the past, the necessity for frequent communication between drug lords in Colombia and their surrogates in the United States made the drug-trafficking organizations vulnerable to law enforcement wiretaps. Now, however, through the use of encryption technology, they can protect their electronic business communications from law enforcement interception and "hide" information that could be used to build criminal cases against them.



Heroin: In recent years, Colombia-based traffickers have used their existing cocaine marketing channels to expand into the heroin trade. Today, opium poppy cultivation and heroin trafficking are an integral part of their operations. The opium poppy is grown along the eastern slopes of the Central Andean Mountain ranges in the central part of Colombia. Some growers appear to work under contract to specific traffickers. Under this contract arrangement, the trafficker provides the farmer with the seeds and agricultural supplies needed to grow opium poppies.



Opium poppy farmers in Colombia collect raw opium gum from mature poppy capsules and transport it to opiate "brokers." The brokers, in turn, sell the opium to chemists who process it first into morphine base and later into heroin. The chemists often work on contract for the trafficking groups that smuggle the heroin into the United States.



Smuggling is accomplished in a variety of ways including wrapping small quantities of heroin in condoms and having couriers swallow them and concealing heroin inside hollowedout shoes, luggage, and in the lining of clothes. In 1998, a shipment of artificial flowers was discovered to contain heroin concealed inside the flowers' stems.



The Colombian heroin trade is currently dominated by independent trafficking groups that operate outside the control of the major cocaine crime syndicates. Because the major syndicates have already developed wellestablished transportation and wholesale cocaine distribution channels, they too can be expected to diversify their product line to include increasing amounts of heroin. Traffickers from Colombia have been able to solidify and expand their position in the U.S. heroin market by distributing high-quality heroin and by initially undercutting the price of their competitors. They also use marketing strategies, such as including free samples of heroin in cocaine shipments, in order to build a clientele. Trafficking groups operating in New York and Philadelphia even market their drug using brand names - like No Way Out and Death Wish - as a way to instill customer recognition and loyalty. These marketing techniques have allowed the traffickers from Colombia to expand and ultimately dominate the heroin market. In fact, the DEA's Heroin Signature Program, which determines the origin of the heroin sold on the street, found that 65 percent (356 kilograms) of the heroin seized in the United States in 1998 was produced in Colombia.



The Medellin Cartel
By the mid1970s, it became apparent to law enforcement that a wellorganized smuggling effort was being orchestrated from abroad. Trafficking networks in the United States, controlled from Colombia, were discovered to be running stash houses, moving money, and developing drug market networks for their suppliers back home. The first to dominate this trade were the organized criminal groups headquartered in Medellin, Colombia, led by violent criminals like the Ochoa brothers, Jose RodriguezGacha, Carlos Lehder, and Pablo Escobar. These individuals ruled the drug trade in Colombia and in major cities in the United States, such as Miami and New York, with an iron fist. As with most organized crime leaders throughout history, their climb to success was rooted in bribery, intimidation, and murder. However, one by one the leaders of the most violent organized criminal group in history were brought to justice by the Colombian National Police (CNP).



Carlos Lehder was drawn to drug trafficking for two reasons: profits and politics. Lehder was an admirer of such political figures as Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Adolf Hitler. He was also intensely antiAmerican. While in an American prison in the mid1970s, he conceived of the idea of smuggling cocaine into the United States the same way marijuana was smuggled. Rather than hiding small amounts of cocaine in luggage or on airline passengers, Lehder planned to transport it in large quantities on small, private aircraft. The huge profits he expected to realize from this plan would finance his political ambitions in his native Colombia. Out of prison in 1976, Lehder eventually bought a sizable portion of Norman's Cay, a Bahamian island about 225 miles southeast of Miami. On this small island he built an extended airstrip as a refueling stop for the light planes that transported his cocaine to secret airstrips in the United States. His inclination to use violence eventually tripped him up, when he was suspected of involvement in the 1984 assassination of Colombia's Justice Minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. Outraged by the terrorist tactics employed by the Medellin organization, the Colombian Government turned Lehder over to the DEA and extradited him to the United States in February 1987. Lehder was convicted and sentenced to 135 years in federal prison. He subsequently cooperated in the U.S. investigation of Panama dictator Manuel Noriega and received a reduced sentence in return for his testimony.



Pablo Escobar may well have been the most violent criminal in history. He was the mastermind behind the 1989 bombing of an Avianca commercial airliner that took the lives of 110 people. He was reported to have arranged the bombing to kill two people he suspected of being informants. Escobar also placed bounties ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 on the lives of police officers in Colombia; as many as 2,000 police officers and civilians were murdered each year in Medellin. In June 1991, Escobar surrendered to authorities, but escaped from prison in July 1992. For the next 17 months, Escobar was the target of the largest manhunt in Colombian history. Finally, in December 1993, the Colombian National Police killed Escobar in a fire fight at a private residence in downtown Medellin.



The Cali Mafia
With the gradual elimination of most of the major figures in the Medellin groups, ascendancy among traffickers in Colombia passed to groups based in Cali, Colombia, about 200 miles south of Medellin. Unlike their predecessors in the Medellin cartel, the members of the Cali mafia avoided blatant acts of violence and instead tried to pass themselves off as legitimate businessmen. The Cali mafia gained widespread notice when, on April 11, 1985, the largest clandestine cocaine lab ever seized in the United States was discovered in rural Minden, New York. This lab, later traced to Jose Santacruz-Londono, the number three leader in the Cali mafia, was discovered following a fire on a 10-acre farm. State Police and DEA agents found an elaborately equipped laboratory capable of producing over $700 million worth of cocaine.



During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the members of the Cali mafia generated billions of dollars in drug revenues per year. They operated a sophisticated drug trafficking enterprise that used the best strategies of major international businesses, while maintaining the secrecy and compartmentalization of terrorist organizations.



Operating a system of insulated cells in cities throughout the United States, the Cali mafia employed an army of surrogates who were responsible for every detail of the cocaine trafficking business, from car rental, to pager and cell phone purchase, to the storage of cocaine in safe houses, to the keeping of inventory and accounts. Cali mafia leaders coerced cooperation from employees by demanding information about their close relatives that could be used later if the employee betrayed the organization or made errors that cost the mafia its profits. Members of the Cali mafia included the Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers, Jose Santacruz-Londono, Helmer "Pacho" Herrera-Buitrago, and Victor Julio Patino-Fomeque. However, despite the substantial evidence against these criminals, it was impossible to extradite them to the United States to face justice since extradition had been outlawed by Colombia's 1991 constitution. Therefore, the DEA worked with the CNP to provide information that eventually led to the arrest or surrender of the Cali drug lords in Colombia. The combined efforts of the DEA and the CNP paid off in June 1995, when the Cali mafia began to collapse. During the summer of 1995, five major leaders of the Cali mafia were arrested, and by September 1996, all of the remaining Cali "kingpins" sought by the CNP had been captured.



Today's Colombia-Based Trafficking Organizations
Until recently, the Colombia-based drug trafficking organizations, collectively known as the Cali mafia, dominated the international cocaine market. Although some elements of the Cali mafia continue to play an important role in the world's wholesale cocaine market, events in recent years have accelerated the decline of the Cali mafia's influence. These events include the capture of the Rodriguez-Orejuela brothers in 1995, the death of Jose Santacruz-Londono in March 1996, and the surrender of Pacho Herrera-Buitrago in September 1996.



In the absence of these powerful drug lords, the drug trade has become more decentralized. Power is swiftly passing to experienced traffickers who have moved out from under the shadow of the Cali traffickers and are now seizing opportunities to increase their own share of the drug trade.



These enterprising traffickers come primarily from two areas. One is the northern Valle del Cauca region, of which Cali is the capital city, located on Colombia's southeast coast. The second area is the Caribbean North Coast. While traffickers in these regions operate more independently than the Cali mafia, they nevertheless remain very powerful and by working with counterparts in Mexico, are still responsible for most of the world's cocaine production and wholesale distribution.



Arcangel de Jesus Henao-Montoya runs trafficking operations out of the Northern Valle del Cauca region. The Henao-Montoya organization is the most powerful of the various independent trafficking groups that comprise the North Valle drug mafia. Until Arcangel's brother, Jose Orlando, surrendered to Colombian authorities to face illicit enrichment and money laundering charges in September 1997, he led the organization. In November 1998, Jose Orlando was shot and killed in the maximum-security wing of Bogota's Modelo Prison. This organization has a well-deserved reputation for violence and is closely linked to the brutal paramilitary groups run by Carlos Castano.



Once a second tier lieutenant in the North Valle Cartel, Diego Montoya-Sanchez now heads one of the major trafficking groups in the area. DEA information indicates that Montoya-Sanchez orchestrates multi-ton shipments of cocaine to Mexico, and the United States and considers him to be one of the most significant cocaine traffickers in Colombia today. He was the principal supplier to Alejandro Bernal-Madrigal, aka Juvenal, and Mexican organizations. Montoya-Sanchez reportedly controls cocaine processing facilities in southern Colombia and also arranges shipments of cocaine base from Peru.




Jairo Ivan Urdinola-Grajales and his brother, Julio Fabio Urdinola-Grajales, head a major drug trafficking organization associated with the Northern Valle del Cauca drug organizations. The Urdinolas are related by marriage to the Henao-Montoya family. The CNP arrested Jairo Ivan in April 1992 and later sentenced him to four-and-a-half years in prison on drug trafficking charges. Julio Fabio surrendered to Colombian authorities in March 1994. In October 1997, a Colombian judge dismissed murder charges against Jairo Ivan Urdinola. However, the Prosecutor General's Office has filed additional drug trafficking charges against him. DEA reporting indicates that the Urdinola-Grajales brothers continue to run their drug organization from prison.



Victor Patino-Fomeque, who surrendered to Colombian authorities in June 1995, had managed the Cali drug mafia's maritime drug smuggling operations in Buenaventura, Colombia. In May 1996, Patino-Fomeque received a 12-year prison sentence. Due to Colombia's lenient penal codes, however, Patino-Fomeque probably will not be required to serve out his full sentence. Furthermore, Patino-Fomeque continues to direct his drug trafficking organization from prison.



The Ochoa Brothers (Fabio, Juan David, and Jorge Luis) ran the most powerful of the Medellin drug trafficking organizations in the late 1980s. The Ochoa brothers voluntarily surrendered to the Colombian Government in late 1990 and early 1991. In July 1996, Juan David and Jorge Luis were released from prison after serving about five-and-a-half years. Fabio was released in September 1996, but was arrested by Colombian authorities in October 1999.



In March 1996, Juan Carlos Ramirez-Abadia (aka "Chupeta") surrendered to Colombian authorities. Chupeta is believed to have surrendered, in part, for fear of his personal safety and to be eligible for a more lenient prison sentence. In December 1996, Chupeta was sentenced to 24 years in prison, but may actually serve as few as seven-and-a-half years. In March 1998, a reliable DEA source reported that Jorge Orlando Rodriguez, aka "El Mono," has assumed control of the day-to-day operations of the Chupeta organization. However, Ramirez-Abadia continues to be involved in the major decisions involving the organization's activities. This reliable DEA source also reported that Chupeta's net worth was approximately $2.6 billion.



Alejandro Bernal-Madrigal (aka "Juvenal") was a Bogota-based transportation coordinator for top Mexico- and Colombia-based traffickers. He was responsible for multi-ton shipments of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico for onward transport to the United States. Juvenal also transported large amounts of drug money to Mexico. He was arrested in October 1999 by Colombian authorities.



Hugo Herrera-Vasquez heads a Cali-based trafficking organization that moves large quantities of cocaine from Colombia to the United States via Central America and Mexico. The Herrera organization also launders drug money destined for Colombia. Cash, wire transfers, and monetary instruments are used to move drug proceeds from the U.S. Southwest Border area to Colombia through Mexico and Panama.



The DEA anticipates that Colombia-based cocaine trafficking organizations will remain the dominant players in the international cocaine trade into the 21st Century. Traffickers from Colombia continue to control the supply of cocaine at its source, have a firm grip on Caribbean smuggling routes, and dominate the wholesale cocaine markets in the eastern United States and in Europe. They are also aggressively increasing their share of the U.S. heroin market.



TRAFFICKERS FROM MEXICO
Criminals from Mexico have been engaged in drug trafficking, as well as many other forms of smuggling, for many years. Until relatively recently, their drug trafficking consisted mainly of marijuana and heroin. During the 1980s, intense law enforcement pressure in the Caribbean and South Florida forced Colombia-based cocaine traffickers to transport more and more of their shipments through Mexico.



Several factors make Mexico an attractive location for drug trafficking: its 2,000-mile border with the United States is filled with difficult terrain, making it hard to patrol; its extensive rural countryside, with many mountainous areas, making it ideal for cultivating, processing, and manufacturing illegal drugs; and powerful organized criminal groups that exploit weaknesses in that nation's law enforcement and judicial systems.



At first, the groups in Mexico merely provided crossborder transportation for the drugs. During the late 1980s, cocaine transporters received a fee ranging from $1,500 to $2,000 for each kilogram of cocaine they smuggled into the United States. Once over the border, the traffickers from Mexico would store the drugs in warehouses. The drugs would then be recovered by traffickers from Colombia and distributed through their networks in the U.S. market.



In the late 1980s, this fee arrangement changed. Traffickers from Mexico became more powerful; they could deliver drugs not just across the border, but had developed the ability to deliver anywhere in the United States. Negotiating from a position of strength, they demanded a larger share of the proceeds from the cocaine trade. The traffickers from Colombia and Mexico gradually worked out a paymentinkind arrangement, under which traffickers from Mexico would be paid with as much as 50 percent of the product they transported across the border. This arrangement also had a certain logic for the Colombia-based traffickers who, in 1989, had been stunned by four costly cocaine seizures. Under the new payment plan, if a shipment was seized in a U.S. warehouse, the losses to the Colombia-based traffickers would be cut by half.



The markups for drug sales were so great that the new arrangement offered the traffickers from Mexico an opportunity to make far greater sums of money than they could have made being mere transporters for the traffickers from Colombia. More revenues meant more profits to invest in new distribution strategies. Eventually, the United States became divided into two marketing areas, the Mexico-based traffickers controlling the Midwest and West and the Colombia-based traffickers controlling the East. As a result, organized crime figures from Mexico began using their long-established contacts to emerge as major cocaine traffickers in their own right, especially after the arrest of the Cali mafia leaders in 1995.



Currently, groups from Colombia and the Dominican Republic still control most of the cocaine trafficking along the East Coast of the United States. But in many areas of the East, like New York State, they are being displaced by aggressive traffickers from Mexico.



How do the Mexico-based traffickers operate? On any given day, business transactions are arranged between the major drug lords headquartered in Mexico and their surrogates who are placed in strategic locations throughout the United States in order to manage the daytoday operations of the illicit business. The surrogates wait for instructions from the drug lords, often provided over encrypted communications devices such as phones, faxes, pagers, or computers. The instructions are highly detailed, telling them such things as where to warehouse smaller loads, who to contact for transportation services, and where to send the profits.



Although drug operations are conducted in secret and therefore difficult to quantify, the available statistics portray a very aggressive growth in Mexicobased drug operations in the United States. In 1994, U.S. authorities stopped 594 Mexican citizens trying to cross the Southwest Border with drugs. In 1998, more than 4,795 were encountered, eight times as many in just four years.



The DEA also keeps track of another statistic, the number of Mexican nationals that it arrests anywhere in the United States. Between 1993 and 1997, the number grew by 65 percent. One might expect that these arrests would have taken place along the Southwest Border or in major cities in the Southwestern United States. Yet, the majority of these arrests took place in cities like Des Moines, Iowa; Greensboro, North Carolina; Yakima, Washington; and New Rochelle, New York.



The enormous amount of money that traffickers from Mexico now make from the drug trade has given them a geographical reach and influence that few would have predicted just five years ago. They are building their power in the United States not only by distributing cocaine, but also by producing, transporting, and distributing heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine.



Cocaine: Approximately two-thirds of the cocaine available in the United States comes over the U.S.Mexico border. Typically, large cocaine shipments are transported from Colombia via commercial shipping and "go-fast" boats and offloaded in Mexican port cities. The cocaine is transported through Mexico, usually by trucks, and is warehoused in cities like Guadalajara or Juarez, which are operating bases for the major organizations. Cocaine loads are then driven across the U.S.Mexico border and taken to major distribution centers within the United States, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, or Phoenix.



Individuals sent to the United States from Mexico, often illegally, contract with U.S. trucking establishments to move loads across the country to the smaller warehouses. Workers in these "stash houses" watch over the cocaine supplies and arrange for it to be distributed by wholesale dealers in the area. These dealers have traditionally been Colombian nationals or individuals from the Dominican Republic. However, that situation has recently changed. In New York City, for example, Mexican nationals are becoming increasingly involved in the wholesale distribution of cocaine.



Evidence of such trafficking activities was further proven by two DEA-sponsored operations. Operations Reciprocity and Limelight, which were part of the Southwest Border Initiative, targeted U.S.-based cells of the Amado Carrillo-Fuentes organization and resulted in the seizure of 11.5 metric tons of cocaine, over $18 million in U.S. currency, almost 14,000 pounds of marijuana and the arrest of 101 defendants. The operations, which began with seizures in the United States, took apart drug trafficking organizations that were expanding their reach from Mexico across the border into the United States, as far into the country as the New York City region. These operations also demonstrated the importance of law enforcement's ability to successfully target the communications of the upper echelon of international criminal organizations.



Methamphetamine: In addition to gaining a prominent role in cocaine trafficking during the early 1990s, traffickers from Mexico, who had always been skilled in the production and trafficking of numerous drugs, have recently committed themselves to largescale methamphetamine production and trafficking.



Methamphetamine, which had appealed to a relatively small number of American users, reemerged as a major drug of choice during the mid-1990s. Traditionally controlled by outlaw motorcycle gangs, major-scale methamphetamine production and trafficking are now controlled primarily by traffickers from Mexico, operating in that country and in California.



Unlike cocaine and heroin, methamphetamine is not originally dependent upon an agricultural product but is manufactured directly from chemicals, called precursors. Major organized crime groups in Mexico obtain the precursor chemicals from sources in other countries, such as China and India, as well as from "rogue" chemical suppliers in the United States.



"Super" meth labs, capable of producing up to hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine on a weekly basis, are operated clandestinely in Mexico or in California. From these labs, the methamphetamine is provided to traffickers who distribute it across the United States. It is now not uncommon to find hundreds of major methamphetamine traffickers from Mexico, most of them illegal aliens, established in Boise, Des Moines, and Omaha, and other cities in America's heartland, where there has been an explosion of methamphetamine use.



Heroin derived from opium poppies grown in Mexico has been consumed in varying amounts by Americans since the 1930s. Mexico became the number one supplier of heroin to the United States in the early 1970s, when the flow of heroin from Turkish opium fields dried up. Imports from Mexico declined drastically in the late 1970s, only to rise in the late 1980s. Today, 14 percent of the heroin seized in the United States comes from Mexico and a recent independent study indicates that Mexico is the source of 29 percent of the heroin used in the United States today. It is estimated that organized crime figures in Mexico produced 6 metric tons of heroin in 1998.



At one time, it was commonplace for individual couriers to carry about two pounds of heroin into the United States. However, couriers in the late 1990s have been given much larger quantities to transport. For example, in January 1998, officers from the California Highway Patrol stopped a speeding car near Sacramento driven by a 16-year old. He and a passenger were from Michoacan, Mexico. A search of the car yielded packages containing 13 pounds of Mexican black tar heroin intended for distribution in Yakima, Washington.



Mexican "black tar" heroin (black because of the crude processing methods used to manufacture it and sticky like roofing tar) is produced in Mexico and transported over the border in cars and trucks. Like cocaine and methamphetamine, it is trafficked in the United States by associates of organized criminal groups in Mexico and provided to dealers and users in the Southwest, Northwest, and Midwest. This heroin is extremely potent, and its use has resulted in a significant number of deaths, including 25 people in Plano, Texas.



Marijuana from Mexico dominates the U.S. import market. At one time, from the 1930s to the 1960s, Mexico supplied as much as 95 percent of the marijuana consumed in the U.S. market. During the 1970s, when the Mexican Government sprayed its marijuana fields with paraquat, a herbicide, Colombia became the dominant producer for the U.S. market. With the end of the paraquat program, Mexico eventually regained its dominance in the U.S. market because Colombia-based smugglers faced exorbitant transportation costs for the bulky product and could not compete with the Mexicobased smugglers on price.



Seizures of Mexican marijuana provide a rough illustration of the growing importation of the product. Such seizures have increased from 102 metric tons in 1991 to 742 metric tons in 1998. Importation is not the only method the traffickers employ. In some cases, traffickers from Mexico have established growing operations within the United States. In 1997, a group of illegal aliens from Zacatecas, Mexico, were arrested in Idaho. About 100,000 marijuana plants, weighing almost 20 tons, were seized.



In this case, the marijuana was grown on U.S. soil, but the operation was managed from Mexico. In fact, although many of the transactions relating to the drug trade take place on U.S. soil, the major international organized crime bosses headquartered in Mexico direct the details of their multibillion dollar business step-by-step.



Violence: Like the criminal drug trafficking groups from the United States and Colombia that preceded them, organized crime syndicates from Mexico are extremely violent and routinely employ intimidation and the corruption of public officials to achieve their objectives. There have been numerous incidents that illustrate the ruthlessness of these organizations, including the 1998 ganglandstyle massacre of 22 people in Baja California Norte carried out by rival drug traffickers. In Tijuana, Mexico, more than 300 people were murdered in 1998, with 75 percent of the killings believed to be linked to drugs. In early 1999, a doctor who was a respected civic activist was shot pointblank just outside of his medical office prompting city-wide protests against drug-related violence.



Much of the drug-related violence that has become commonplace in Mexico has spilled over to communities within the United States. Traffickers have not hesitated to direct much of their violence at U.S. law enforcement personnel, many of them along the Southwest Border. From September 1996 to January 1999, the DEA recorded 141 threats or violent incidents against U.S. law enforcement personnel, their Mexican counterparts, public officials, or informants in Mexico or on the Southwest Border.



For example, the international border separating Cochise County, Arizona, and the State of Sonora, Mexico, has developed into an extremely hazardous area for law enforcement officers operating on the Arizona border. The traffickers in this area are bold and confident and less hesitant to confront law enforcement officers. Since 1992, there have been 23 documented assaults and threats against law enforcement officers in the border area of Cochise County.



Today's Mexico-Based Trafficking Organizations
Organized criminal groups from Mexico have not yet evolved into a monolithic entity like Colombia's Medellin group or the Cali mafias. Instead, several powerful and violent organizations exist and operate today from headquarters in a number of Mexican cities.



The organizations based in Mexico work much the same way that their predecessors and mentors from Cali worked over the years. By maintaining their headquarters in foreign countries and conducting all the details of their business in a protected environment, the heads of organized criminal drug trafficking organizations in Mexico have been able so far to avoid arrest in the United States.



Based in Tijuana, the Arellano-Felix Brothers organization (AFO) is one of the most powerful, violent, and aggressive trafficking groups in Mexico. The AFO is responsible for the transportation, importation, and distribution of multiton quantities of cocaine and marijuana, as well as large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine. Benjamin Arellano-Felix is the head of this organization. It operates in Tijuana, Baja California, and parts of the States of Sinaloa, Sonora, Jalisco, and most recently, Tamaulipas. Benjamin coordinates the activities of the organization through his brothers: Ramon, Eduardo, and Javier. Ramon Arellano-Felix, considered the most violent brother, organizes and coordinates security operations for the AFO. On September 11, 1997, he was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List.



The Caro-Quintero organization is based in Sonora, Mexico, and focuses on trafficking in cocaine and marijuana. Originally headed by Rafael Caro-Quintero, the organization was formerly part of the infamous Mexican Drug Trafficking Federation. Rafael has been incarcerated in Mexico since 1985 for his involvement in the murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena. Since then, the organization has been headed by Rafael's brother, Miguel. To date, four U.S. indictments have been issued against Miguel Caro-Quintero, three in Arizona and one in Colorado. Although Miguel was arrested in 1992, that effort was negated when a Mexican federal judge in Hermosillo dropped all criminal charges and ordered his release from custody. In June 1999, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that Miguel could be extradited to the United States to face money laundering and marijuana trafficking charges if he is arrested by Mexican police.



Until July 4, 1997, when Amado Carrillo-Fuentes died in Mexico City after undergoing plastic surgery, he was considered the most powerful trafficker in Mexico. The Juarez cartel, formerly known as the Amado Carrillo-Fuentes Organization, based in Juarez, is still involved in the trafficking of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Following Amado's death, gang warfare within Mexico and in U.S. border towns escalated, affecting traffickers and innocents alike. While the full impact of Amado Carrillo-Fuentes' death has not been totally assessed, it is clear that it caused a power struggle that resulted in approximately 60 drug-related murders in the Juarez area between August 1997 and September 1998. Nevertheless, the Juarez Cartel continues to function effectively under several members formerly under Amado's command. One such member, Vicente Carrillo-Fuentes, Amado's brother, is now considered the leader of the organization. Vicente is wanted in Mexico and is under indictment in the Western District of Texas for operating a Continuing Criminal Enterprise.



The Amezcua-Contreras organization, based in Guadalajara, Mexico, and run by brothers Luis, Jesus, and Adan Amezcua-Contreras, is one of the most prominent methamphetamine trafficking organizations operating today, as well as the leading supplier of chemicals to other meth-trafficking organizations. By exploiting the legitimate international chemical trade, they hold an important key to producing meth on a grand scale. In June 1998, Jesus and Luis were arrested by Mexican authorities on non-drug-related charges. By October 1998, all criminal charges were dropped by a Guadalajara judge. Nevertheless, the Government of Mexico re-arrested Jesus and Luis on Provisional Arrest Warrants issued in the United States. The warrants were based on a June 1998 indictment originating from Southern California. It charged the brothers with operating a Continuing Criminal Enterprise to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine, as well as conspiracy to possess ephedrine. On May 19, 1999, Adan, arrested in November 1997 on weapons charges and then re-arrested in March 1999 for money laundering violations, was released from prison. The money laundering charges against Adan were dismissed due to a lack of evidence.



TRAFFICKERS FROM THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
The Dominican Republic is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world. Ethnic Dominican trafficking gangs in America got their start in the mid1970s as street dealers in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan, in New York City. Washington Heights is home to a sizable community of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and is also nearby several major thoroughfares leading to suburbs in New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York's Westchester County.



In the early 1990s, drug lords from Colombia were eager to find an alternative to their trafficking arrangement with the Mexicobased groups. When traffickers from Mexico were demanding 50 percent of every load delivered and distributed in the United States, traffickers from the Dominican Republic were willing to settle for 25 percent. In addition, the Dominican Republic is close to the United States, and Dominican immigrants in New York City had already set up a wellrun drug distribution system. So for the traffickers from Colombia, the criminals from the Dominican Republic were ideally situated to market cocaine from Colombia to their fellow immigrants and to the white collar suburbanites who commuted in and out of the city.



As a result of the arrangement with the Colombia-based traffickers, there are now two major groups of traffickers from the Dominican Republic. One faction, operating out of the Dominican Republic itself, provides stash sites for cocaine shipments from Colombia. This cocaine is transported into the Dominican Republic in small boats or by air drops. Traffickers from the Dominican Republic take it from there, smuggling the drugs into Puerto Rico in "go-fast" boats, repackaging the drugs, and shipping them to the continental United States by way of containerized maritime cargo ships or routine commercial air flights.



Once in New York City, the drugs are distributed by ethnic Colombian wholesalers, or increasingly, by a second faction of ethnic Dominicans, which now operates up and down the East Coast. Traffickers from the Dominican Republic have not limited their operations to big cities, but operate in smaller cities, like Fall River, Massachusetts, and Lewiston, Maine. Many of these smaller East Coast cities have attracted recent immigrants from the Dominican Republic to work in their factories, also attracting a small number of ethnic Dominican drug traffickers in their wake. The smaller cities offer these traffickers an expanded base of consumers and a lack of competition from other traffickers, which allows them to set higher prices than they could in New York City.



Ethnic Dominican traffickers operating in the United States typically plan on short stays, returning after two or three years to the Dominican Republic, where their drug profits allow them to live like kings in their impoverished homeland. They also benefit from laws that make it difficult to extradite Dominican nationals to the United States. However, in 1997, the Dominican Republic seemed to step back from those laws when it extradited two Dominicans to face drug and murder charges in New York City. One suspect was reportedly an enforcer for a particularly vicious drug gang; the other was a leader of a gang that had been linked to seven murders, including the shooting of a New York City police officer who had been lured into range by a fake 911 call. In 1998, the Dominican Congress approved legislation that allows Dominican nationals to be extradited to the United States and other countries, although the new law may prove difficult to enforce.



The 1997 case involving the two Dominicans in New York City is a graphic example of the extremely violent tactics frequently employed by these traffickers. Events in the small city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, further illustrate these violent tendencies. In 1990, in a multiple murder that has been linked to ethnic Dominican gangs, six people were found hogtied and choked to death. Two years later, 146 houses in Lawrence were burned down in incidents linked to turf battles among ethnic Dominican gangs.



Cocaine continues to constitute the vast majority of the ethnic Dominican traffickers' distribution loads. This is mainly because their main sources of supply are the drug mafias from Colombia, which primarily produce cocaine. However, as the mafias from Colombia have expanded into heroin, the ethnic Dominicans have as well. The traffickers from Colombia view them as reliable business partners who have proven their ability to manage a complicated distribution system and to expand its reach through aggressive marketing practices. In fact, the ColombianDominican drug network will likely continue to remain a major trafficking force in the northeastern United States, while traffickers from Mexico seek a larger role in East Coast distribution.



TRAFFICKERS FROM JAMAICA
Jamaica-based gangs trace their roots back to the ghettoes of Jamaica. They began as street gangs, similar to many of the gangs in urban America, but also had ties to the two major political parties in Jamaica. They called themselves "posses," an affectation based on films about the old American West that were popular in Jamaica at the time.



In the mid to late 1970s, members of the posses started to emigrate to the United States, some to escape legal problems in Jamaica, others to avoid assassination at the hands of the opposing political party. On arrival in the United States, posse members began to muscle their way into the marijuana trade, pushing aside Rastafarian groups that had already established themselves. Posses have maintained ties to their counterparts in Jamaica, which is the source of the marijuana they distribute. Jamaica is the largest producer of marijuana in the Caribbean and the only significant Caribbean source for marijuana consumed in the United States.



In the mid-1980s, Jamaican posses were heavily involved in the exploding crack cocaine trade. Jamaica was a transshipment point for Colombian cocaine bound for the United States. This was the source of much of the cocaine hydrochloride that ethnic Jamaican groups have used to manufacture and distribute crack cocaine.



In 1986, a joint localfederal task force uncovered an ethnic Jamaican organization in Kansas City that operated more than 100 crack houses in the area. Officials of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have estimated that, by 1989, they controlled 40 percent of the crack cocaine sales in the United States. According to estimates of the time, there were as many as 40 distinct "posse" gangs having 10,000 to 20,000 members.



It was during the crack cocaine era that the Jamaican posses gained a reputation as one of the most violent, sadistic group of criminals that ever operated in the United States. One of the largest gangs, the Shower Posses, took its name from the use of automatic weapons it used to indiscriminately shower crowds of people with bullets. In one sixmonth period in the late 1980s, posse members were involved in 744 murders. Some of their victims have been boiled alive; others have been dismembered, with body parts shipped back to their families in Jamaica.



However, their indiscriminate use of violence and their flair for selfpromotion succeeded only in attracting the attention of law enforcement, which has closed many of the gangs down. In the mid-1990s, the remaining gangs apparently learned from the experience and abandoned much of the sadistic violence that became their calling card. However, grisly murders are still committed to discipline their members and eliminate competitors. They also changed their names from "posses" to "crews" and later dropped any designations that would attract undue attention.



Many of the gangs also dropped out of the crack cocaine trade and returned to the marijuana trade. They reasoned that a conviction for selling crack would mean time in prison, while a conviction for selling small amounts of marijuana could generally result only in the payment of a fine. The source of supply for some ethnic Jamaican gangs has shifted, as well. Instead of acquiring marijuana from their counterparts in Jamaica, some groups have begun to purchase marijuana from Mexico-based criminal organizations in the Southwest Border area and then transport it back to eastern U.S. cities.



TRAFFICKERS FROM NIGERIA
Since the mid-1980s, Nigeria-based drug trafficking organizations, which smuggle quantities of Southeast Asian heroin into the United States, have become an increasingly sophisticated threat to drug enforcement efforts. Nigerians first became involved in the drug trade in the early 1980s, when a group of Nigerian naval officers, undergoing training in India, began trafficking in Southwest Asian heroin.



Since then, the focus of Nigeria-based heroin trafficking has shifted from Southwest Asia to Southeast Asia, primarily Thailand. There, traffickers from Nigeria pay couriers, many of them fellow Nigerians, far more money than they could earn in years' worth of honest work to smuggle small amounts of heroin aboard commercial airliners.



The couriers conceal the heroin in such places as hollowedout shoes and falsebottom suitcases. Many couriers are "swallowers" who ingest as many as 150 eggsize condoms of heroin and expel them on their arrival. This is a particularly dangerous form of smuggling. If just one condom should burst, the courier is likely to die of a heroin overdose.



During the last two decades, thousands of couriers from Nigeria and other West African countries have been arrested. To avert suspicions, traffickers from Nigeria have begun to recruit couriers of virtually every nationality. American teenage girls have been used, as well as members of the U.S. military. Some Nigeria-based traffickers conduct "training schools" that teach couriers how to avoid the suspicions of customs officials.



Typically, one courier picks up a shipment in Bangkok, flies with it to a transit country, like Indonesia or Egypt, where the shipment is handed off to a second courier, who brings it to another transit country or directly to the United States. The use of multiple couriers is arranged to conceal any direct link to Thailand, the source country of much heroin.



Traffickers often place many couriers on the same flight. This tactic, known as "shotgunning," is done to overwhelm customs officials when the flight arrives. Even if most of the couriers on the flight are caught, a number will inevitably get through during the confusion. The markups on heroin trafficking are so high that if only a small percentage of the product gets through, the traffickers will still reap huge profits. But as a result of increasing law enforcement pressure, Nigeria-based traffickers are beginning to switch from courier shipments to the use of express mail packages.



Once in the United States, the product is sold by the ethnic Nigerian traffickers to inner-city gangs, like the Blackstone Rangers and the Vice Lords of Chicago, who, in turn, sell it on street corners and in school yards. Ethnic Nigerian traffickers are most active in U.S. cities with large concentrations of Nigerian nationals. For example, in Chicago, which is home to about 20,000 Nigerian nationals, traffickers from Nigeria control between 70 and 90 percent of the market for Southeast Asian heroin.



During the late 1980s and early 1990s, high-purity heroin from Southeast Asia dominated the American market. But the cost of transporting heroin from Thailand to the United States is high. Heroin from Colombia, much of it very high purity, can be sold for far less on America's streets. In fact, Colombia-based trafficking groups are competing on price to increase their market share. As a result, the Nigerian traffickers are beginning to cultivate heroin markets in other areas, including Europe.



DOMESTIC TRAFFICKING GANGS
Colombia- and Mexicobased traffickers in the United States are focused primarily on the wholesale drug market. They are significantly less involved in drug trafficking at the street, or "retail" level. The same is largely true of the traffickers from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Nigeria. This insulates them, to some degree, from detection by law enforcement.



Throughout the United States, lowerlevel dealing in drugs is being increasingly handled by violent and highly organized criminal gangs. There are three major types of gangs involved in street sales of drugs: prison gangs, traditional street gangs, and outlaw motorcycle gangs.



Prison Gangs
Since prison gangs operate in a detached environment, the DEA is limited in its ability to target them. But the DEA will often target associates who assist in the drug trafficking process and are not currently incarcerated.



Prison gangs are organized generally along racial lines. They were originally formed by prisoners to protect themselves from other inmates. For example, the Mexican Mafia was established in 1957 at the Deuel Vocational Center in Tracy, California, by Hispanic inmates to counter pressure from African-American inmates. Today, through an elaborate network of distributors and dealers, it controls part of the drug trade in Southern California.



The Black Guerilla Family had its origins in the black power movement of the 1960s. It was organized at California's San Quentin State Penitentiary in 1966. Today the Black Guerillas distribute heroin and cocaine to the California street gangs under its influence. Another San Quentin gang later became known as the Aryan Brotherhood and adopted an ideology of white supremacy. Currently, its primary interest is distributing drugs.



Two prison factions developed in the Illinois penal system: the People Nation and the Folks Nation. Two gangs under the rubric of the People Nation, the Vice Lords and the Latin Kings, are dedicated to the preservation of Latin heritage and distribute drugs in their respective neighborhoods. Prominent among the Folks Nation are the Black Gangster Disciples, a gang that has been a target of the DEA in recent years. Theories on what "Folks" is an acronym for vary. Some members interpret the name as "Follow and Obey all Laws of Kings," others call themselves "Followers of Lord King Satan."



Street Gangs
Many street gangs confine their drug trafficking activities to their own neighborhoods. However, several gangs have gone national. Such "supergangs" are hard to distinguish from major organized crime groups. For example, two supergangs, the Crips and the Bloods, have their origin in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. At first, their activities were limited to large urban areas. But these two gangs now have more than 1,000 affiliates in more than 100 cities. Many of the affiliates are "cultural" rather than "structural," meaning they take a gang's recognizable name but are not necessarily associated with other chapters. Almost half of these cities with Crips and Bloods associates are small to midsize, with populations of less than 100,000. Because drugs often yield much higher profits in small cities and in rural areas than they do in big cities, members of both gangs have moved to smaller cities and set up distribution networks that reach back to their counterparts in the large cities and sometimes to the major international trafficking groups. Street gangs frequently have ties to prison gangs. Leaders are often former prisoners and take their orders from fellow gang members still in prison.



Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs
Outlaw motorcycle gangs emerged following World War II. At first, they focused on riding motorcycles and throwing wild parties, but they increasingly turned to violence. In 1947, a group of outlaw bikers attending a motorcycle rally destroyed the town of Hollister, California, when one of its members was arrested. The biker gangs gradually moved into criminal pursuits, often working closely with the traditional mafia. Today the four major biker gangs are the Hells Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos, and the Pagans. A significant source of income for most biker gangs is drug trafficking, especially the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine.



Gang Activities
Although there is considerable debate over what constitutes a gang, there are several characteristics that seem to be common to the criminal gangs mentioned above. Many of these modern gangs are highly organized, they exhibit a willingness to use violence to accomplish their objectives, and they rely heavily on drug trafficking for their major source of income.



Gangs like the Gangster Disciples, the Latin Kings, and Hells Angels are far more organized than the term "gang" might suggest. Many gangs have a structured hierarchy, complete with presidents, vice presidents, and secretary treasurers. But they are not as dependent upon their leadership as traditional organized crime families. Quite often a gang will continue to function even after its leaders have been convicted and imprisoned. New members are carefully screened to determine whether they meet the personality traits needed for the violent, secretive world of gang life. Prospective Hells Angels often take polygraph tests and are required to commit a witnessed felony in order to prove their loyalty, thus making it extremely difficult for undercover law enforcement officers to infiltrate the organization.



The nature of their criminal enterprises forces them to create relationships with other criminal organizations, particularly those who distribute the illegal drugs. They frequently meet with other gangs to carve up markets, arrange for the sharing of drug shipments, pool money for buying large shipments of drugs, and negotiate disputes. Some of the larger street gangs have international connections with suppliers in Colombia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, and other countries. The secretive nature of their operations forces them to develop a tight "command and control" structure. The profits they make from the drug trade enable them to invest in highly sophisticated technology, such as encryption devices to conceal their communications and a variety of telecommunications equipment to keep them in constant contact with their suppliers and with each other.



Gangs also use weapons to protect their turf and their drug operations from one another. There was a time when gang members relied on switchblade knives and homemade zip guns. Today, the huge profits from drug trafficking have given gangs access to wellstocked arsenals of sophisticated arms, including semiautomatic military assault weapons, .50 caliber machine guns, and a variety of explosives. Along with the sophisticated weapons comes a willingness to use them. In fact, it is impossible to join or get ahead in many gangs without committing a certifiable crime, sometimes including homicide. La Nuestra Familia, a gang of MexicanAmerican convicts, even keeps their own "Ten Most Wanted List." One can become a "captain" or a "general" in the organization by murdering someone on the list.



Gangs who, in effect, take over towns and neighborhoods are often able to maintain their drug distribution networks by demonstrating their superior firepower and their commitment to use violence to achieve their ends. Gangs have been noted for using violence against witnesses, law enforcement officers, and prosecutors. A Hells Angels motto, for example, sums up that organization's cavalier attitude about violence: "Three people can keep a secret, if two are dead."



Many of the criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking have followed a similar pattern: what starts as a loosely organized outlet for school dropouts and social misfits becomes a tightly organized criminal enterprise. Among their many criminal activities are murderforhire, auto theft, extortion, prostitution, and insurance fraud.



But no activity is more profitable than drug trafficking. Because they have every incentive to spend most of their time and energies on the most profitable part of their business, modern street gangs have become, to a great extent, smaller versions of the large, international drug groups with whom they do business. The huge amounts of money that pour in from the drug trade corrupt the communities in which the gangs live. Ten-year olds have been known to make several hundred dollars a week just for being lookouts for crack cocaine houses. The enormous profits raise the stakes in the drug trade, leading to violent battles over turf. The profits also finance the purchase of sophisticated weaponry and communications technology, often overwhelming law enforcement agencies in smaller jurisdictions.