Thread: Mexican Soldiers Find $15 MILLION Linked to Sinaloa Cartel

Mexican Soldiers Find $15M Linked to Sinaloa Cartel

Published November 22, 2011
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican army has seized $15.3 million in cash believed to belong to members of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Army spokesman Gen. Ricardo Trevilla says soldiers found the money inside a car in a downtown neighborhood of the border city of Tijuana.

Trevilla said Tuesday no arrests were made and did not say what led troops to the cash.

Trevilla says it was the second largest cache of cash found by soldiers. The biggest was in September 2008, when troops seized $26.2 million at a house in Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa.

The country's biggest cash seizure was in March 2007, when federal police seized $207 million in Mexico City linked to a ring selling pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamine.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/11/22 ... z1eSI2ItmC

Have they ever returned that money? Technically and legally it is the property of the Federal Government.

Any money, drugs, guns, etc. found on this side of the border belongs to U.S.
Any money, drugs, guns, etc. found on that side of the border belongs to them.
People are the only thing you have to, or get to, give back.
(After time served.)

RELATED

Mexican troops find $15 mn cash in car

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-255957.html

Mexican Troops Seize $15 Million Drug Cartel Money

11/22/2011 7:29 PM ET

(RTTNews) - Mexican army announced Tuesday that its troops have seized $15.3 million in cash believed to belong to the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel led by Joaquin Guzman Loera.

The army in a statement said the cash was seized from a vehicle parked in the Cumbres de Juarez neighborhood of Tijuana, across the border from the US city of San Diego. Three packages containing cocaine, two rifles, two handguns and jewelry were also recovered from the vehicle. It is not clear whether any arrests were made.

According an Army statement, the cash was seized "without any shots being fired" during a "surprise land reconnaissance" operation conducted by the troops. The cash was confiscated when it was being taken to a "house used by members of the 'Guzman Loera' criminal organization as a financial operations center."

Tuesday's cash seizure was the result of "Operation Zorro," which was launched in July in Mexico's northern states. The seizure was second largest of its kind in Mexico, after the $26.2 million seized in Culiacan, the capital of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, in September 2008.

The Sinaloa cartel, based in Mexico's Pacific coast, is currently one of the most powerful organized criminal gangs in the Americas. Cartel leader Guzman is Mexico's most wanted drug lord and has been on the run since he escaped from a Mexican prison ten years ago. The United States had declared a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The Sinaloa cartel is presently engaged in a fierce turf battle with the Juarez cartel led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes for the control of lucrative smuggling routes to the United States. The two cartels are blamed for most of the recent drug-related violence in Chihuahua and other northern States.

The Mexican government says that more than 35,000 people have died in drug-related violence in the country since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug gangs after taking office in December 2006.

Besides fighting drug cartels, Calderon has deployed thousands of troops across the country to check drug-related violence and launched a massive anti-corruption drive named 'Operation Clean-up' to identify and punish public servants having links with drug cartels.

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