PM:
One of the most violent leaders of the Los Zetas cartel will spend the next three decades in an American prison after being brought down by US law enforcement.
Eleazar Medina-Rojas, 53, known as “El Chelelo,” was sentenced to more than 31 years in federal prison and ordered to forfeit $26.5 million for his role in smuggling staggering quantities of cocaine and marijuana into the United States.
According to the Justice Department, Medina-Rojas was a cartel warlord who climbed the ranks of Los Zetas through bloodshed, intimidation, and murder. As a plaza boss, he controlled key drug corridors into South Texas, including Brownsville, Laredo, and McAllen, and used violence to keep rivals and law enforcement at bay. more
31 years!!! He might be out in 20. Why not 100 years & no parole?
And the taxpayers are footing the bill why?
You can still run a cartel from prison.
He’ll be running the prison in 6 mos.
I just watched the film “Erin Brockovitch” last night. Then I looked up how much PG&E had to pay on award to those harmed by HexChrome. There were several pay-outs by PG&E over the course of 15+ years following the bench trial of the original suit, totalling about $400M. Added to the cost of PG&E’s negligence were the clean-up costs –which are still on-going today and borne mostly by CA taxpayers. If those figures are to be believed, just those two categories of cost come to over $1I (trillion, with a “T”)
(Bear with me. I am going to make a point that I think is worthy of consideration.)
The resulting harm caused by drug trafficking in these United States is untold. Aside from outright death from overdose, there is a vast constellation of harms radiating across the whole of society which, nonetheless, can be directly tied back to the act of drug manufacturing and trafficking. But, since the aggregate dollar amount of those harms — theft, murder, grievous injury, lost income, policing/judicial/parole/prison costs, medical costs, and so on — cannot be completely known, I just looked at the overdose death rates.
In the first PG&E HexChrome case the approximately 400 original plaintiffs were awarded about $333M (before lawyer fees). Just on its face, if one is comparing the rates of harm by HexChrome (not all plaintiffs died) to outright ODs caused by cartel-trafficked drugs, it is obvious that El Chelelo’s puny $23.5M barely pays-out for the death and destruction of his direct share of the over 81,000 cocaine/fentanyl OD deaths recorded by the CDC’s provisional data for 2024.
Further: El Chelelo is described at the boss, the head cheese, of his splintered part of the Los Zetas cartel, and yet he controlled the primary drug trades in south Texas. He is also alleged to have carried out his business through the use of murder-for-hire (direct murder?) and terrorism using military-grade weapons and tactics. He conducted business through and controlled a terrorist army inside the U.S. borders.
A show of hands: How many here thinks someone who is directly responsible for thousands of OD deaths, tens or hundreds of murders, and who-knows-how-many drug trafficking-related crimes, over a very long period of years, is brought to “justice” with a 30 year prison sentence? And how many of you think for a second that, while in prison, he will not be conducting his drug business from the safety and comfort of his prison cell until he is out on early release in 15 years?
It’s impossible to find data on the net worths of the major cartels, but there are estimates and some hard data about the street value of their products, based on volume. All told, it is in the hundreds of billions. The Jalisco New Generation cartel is said to have a net valuation, based on its traffic, of over $13B for its cocaine and crystal meth trade, alone (2024).
AI: “Sources have previously estimated Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a former leader of the (Sinaloa) cartel, had to forfeit over $12.6 billion in assets as part of his life sentence.”
The U.S. Attorneys in this case should be fired, and hire a lawyer clerk like Erin Brockovich.
That’s one way to get free gubmint healthcare…
….El Chelelo is unfortunate not to have been indicted under the oblowme/biden regime. He would have been pardoned by the autopen.