Katarina Szulc – Inside the Cartels’ Secret Smuggling Operation in Port of Vancouver | SRS #212

Katarina Szulc – Inside the Cartels’ Secret Smuggling Operation in Port of Vancouver | SRS #212

katarina Schulz
Sean Ryan
welcome to the show
thank you for having me
man you are getting some like amazing content down there with the cartels and and reporting on all that stuff so I can’t remember how I found you i think it was my producer Jeremy but
I’m curious to know what it was that sparked your guys’ interest
yeah I think I think my producer found you and so anyways we’ve been tracking you probably for 6 months maybe
wow
but uh love your work
thank you
how do you get before we get into the interview how do you get that much access everyone this is my most asked question and there are a few things that I can attribute it to first I I nerd out about this i’ve always been interested since a kid and we’ll get into that um in organized crime and international conflict and so I try to know about it as much as I can and I think people recognize that second I don’t judge so I have my own you know morals and ethics and and personal values but I never let that come across with the people I’m speaking to whether they’re the good guys the bad guys or somewhere in between or undecided and I just want to hear everyone’s story i just want to know what’s going on um I want to give people a voice
i feel like they don’t have one
and then also uh I’m a 24-year-old girl from Canada you’re only 24 oh my gosh i know I look a lot older but uh I’m 24y old girl from Canada who wants to talk about what was your reaction to Trump saying that you and your colleagues are terrorists
mhm
i’m just curious to know and a lot of these guys will open up keep in mind I’m typically always and only working with men so organized crime is dominated by men and so when I go in uh it’s very unarming i mean I I don’t give off the vibe that I’m going to kill you or rat on you or have some sort of hidden agenda i just like to hear the stories i’m genuinely interested and I like to tell them in the most unbiased way possible the most honest way and so that has allowed me to gain the trust of a lot of people who have a lot of highlevel information and are willing to share it with me and I’ve you know I’ve put my work in for that because I’ve spoken to quite a few people over the course of my career who took a risk in sharing information with me reaching out to me or speaking to me or meeting with me and I never have ever let their identities been known
or given that information to someone who could put their situation at risk so that’s how I think I I get access and I’m I’m a pusher i attack
i mean where did you start though why do you think they Why do you think they give you access there’s a lot of people that’ll go down there and listen to what they have to say and plus all those journalists are getting killed down there i don’t know if they’re still getting killed a couple years ago they were
they were murdering journalists left and right
mexico actually is like one of the top countries for the most murdered journalists and female journalists
there you go
just fit check the box um why me i mean I I push for it i’m like “Let me talk to you.” And if they say no I go and ask someone else or I ask differently i don’t really take no for an answer and I convince them why I’m the right person that they can share this information with or take me along whether that’s law enforcement or it’s organized crime people
why do you think they want to get any of the information out to begin with
it’s a way to flaunt their their power flex their muscles show people look I’m doing all of this crime i basically run Mexico i run the drug trade and I’m committing violent acts in broad daylight gruesomely and I’m giving this information to the press and catch me if you can
interesting that’s certainly what it is i think it’s an ego thing for sure
it’s a flex 100% uh for some people it’s also kind of like um media relations they put this message out there uh an adversary hears or sees it and they’re sending a message gotcha
gotcha well let’s get into the interview here we go so Katarina Schulz a fearless investigative journalist who’s gone where few dare diving head first into the heart of Mexico’s cartel strongholds like Sinaloa and Halisco to expose the brutality reality excuse me to expose the brutal reality of organized crime a bilingual boots on the ground reporter tracking the cartel empire and its influence on North America former traditional journalist who realized you needed to get out of the newsroom to find out what’s really happening and you’re the author of your popular Substack to keep people informed on all things cartel related so thank you for coming in here and um we got a whole slew of topics to cover but uh you had mentioned something you had mentioned you went down I don’t know if it was uh really happened but you said you went down to the cartels some of the cartel members and asked what they thought about Trump terrorist organizations what was their response to that yeah so I went uh to a border region where some members of organized crime spoke with me um and they’re responsible for a significant amount of of the trafficking and and human smuggling operations and this was right after Trump had officially declared them FTO’s because there was a lot of rhetoric around this previously and even Texas Governor uh Greg Abbott had previously declared them FTO’s but now this was real and this I had assumed was going to invoke a lot of fear especially when it came to the financial pipelines because that’s what this act really attacks is the cartel’s finances and that’s so much worse than than putting a bounty on their family members or uh stopping the flow of drugs like for them it’s the money freezing financial assets uh shutting down their shell companies whatever it is and so I wanted to know because we were seeing so many headlines of how crazy this is and politicians reacting okay but the guys who are really going to face the brunt of this what’s going on and so I asked them you know what do you think about Trump calling you and the people you work with and your networks terrorists and how is this going to impact you and it’s so funny because I had anticipated the this reaction but I didn’t think they’d actually do we don’t care we’re just going to wait four years it’s not that deep
wow wow we’re not going to fight them on it we’ll give them what they want to see and we are not terrorists because there is a demand for our product there are drug addicts all across the United States who want what we have to sell how are we terrorizing them we’re not literally they’re telling me like we’re not like ISIS or the Taliban bombing innocent people we just supply a product that there is a demand for and if this designation means that we have to hold off for a little while in order to protect our networks that’s exactly what we will do
interesting so what do you think what is the plan then are they just going to Are they going to stop that’s kind of what’s been happening across the border
i mean fentinel numbers have been going down but I don’t think that’s the plan the plan is to move operations and I’ve been reporting on this extensively it’s all happening in Canada now no one else is clocking it and it’s so obvious it started during Trump’s first administration when he first started cracking down on the southern border cartels knew they could go into Canada and they didn’t need a visa like they needed to get into the US it was just a regular tourist visa they didn’t need to apply for anything or pay for anything they could just go get their tourist like have a regular tourist visa the way I come to the United States set up shop negotiate and network with pre-existing organized crime groups in Canada whether that be the Hell’s Angels a big one or Brothers Keepers or Red Scorpion or the United Nations gang and say “Hey look you guys have incredible access okay over 5,000 m of practically unprotected border into the United States we can produce this product here and traffic it not to mention a lot of these pre-existing gangs were have have a large Asian populations and what do we have in Vancouver the port of Vancouver and where are the fentinel precursors coming in from China so you move these precursors the movement is now is come no longer coming into Mexico it’s coming into Canada you set up shop you increase profit you tell all these guys that are already there hey look if you let a Sinaloa or Halisco in to work with you guys we’re going to quadruple profits
so wait you’re saying that no more are you saying in addition to Mexico produced fentanyl or it’s all moved to Canada i think the majority has moved to Canada the majority of it’s moved to Canada yes I am 99% sure about that because you can never be 100% sure but I am so sure about that last summer I wanted to crack down on this story because I had an an individual reach out to me who was an operative for the Sinaloa cartel working in Canada running these labs
mhm
and he showed me the labs that the Sinaloa cartel is operating with
physically
yeah what are they where are they putting them
they’re putting them in suburban sort of so in in they’re particularly in the west coast in BC and in Alberta which is like a prairie province and so there’s a lot of farmland and it’s residential and prior to them it prior to this it was meth labs that they had running out there and there would always be like a random meth lab explosion in Abbottzford or you know this is like a a smaller city And then these turned into fentinel labs that were completely under the radar because we also didn’t have Canadian law enforcement like patrolling these areas to an extent that they would patrol like a large city like Vancouver or Toronto so you’re bringing in precursors from the Port of Vancouver easily because le less than 1% of cargo that comes into the port of Vancouver is actually inspected by authorities or
less than how much less than 1%
less than 1%
that is an official number yes so the majority of the cargo that’s coming into the port of Vancouver is unmonitored and you have long shoremen that are on organized crime payroll or turning a blind eye these precursors are being brought to labs throughout the lower mainland and they are producing fentinel there and it started off as distributing this product throughout Canada because just like the United States there has been this insatiable appetite for fentinel in Canada
um during the pandemic more people at one point were dying of fentinel overdose deaths than from COVID so that was a major health crisis
mhm and then there’s this major crackdown at the southern border you already have cartel operatives established in the north you have 5 thou over 5,000 miles of practically unprotected border you know it’s Greenland and uh you can fly across you can drive your boat across you can drive your dirt bike across and that just left it as open field for these members of organized crime to start to bring their operations to the next level by trafficking everything into the United States and it’s important to keep in mind that Canadian law enforcement knows this is happening very aware has been aware since around 2017
oh this has been happening since 2017
it’s been happening yeah since Trump’s first So 2016
wow it’s This has been I would say for the past 10 years exactly is when cartel operatives from Mexico started to move operations into Canada and law enforcement knows this is happening but Canadian law enforcement does not have the resources to crack down on this how many precursors are there do you know
no I don’t I don’t know how to make fentinel but it’s fairly simple
how big are these labs i mean when you’re when you say when you say a you know a meth lab that’s usually what like a trailer out in the middle of a field
a lot of these are just small like single occupancy homes okay so a farmhouse
yes exactly some of them are
buying the farmland
yeah or they’re renting it from So a lot of the farmland is owned by certain families
mhm
and they will rent out these these plots of land or whatever little house is already on this land um a way that the Canadian authorities crack down on members of organized crime is not through directly charging them with producing or conspiracy to traffic they will crack down on their their ownership of a home and then they they no longer have a place to run operations so that home gets taken away uh it’s that particular real estate is under investigation along with the people but it it operates a little bit differently and it it hinders the way that they’re able to work um but mentioning the the law enforcement is even though they know that this is going on the resources just are not there and I have a really good source who is with the RCMP that’s Canada’s National Police Force and he specializes in organized crime and we talk about that 1% of fentinel number very frequently because he says “Neither my colleagues nor myself believe that number because we have seen so many operations going under the radar especially when they’re working undercover and I said well why isn’t there a crackdown then why aren’t they stopping it and why is the Canadian government only implementing a fentinelar when Trump is telling them to crack down not when thousands of people are dying on a monthly basis from fentinel use and he explicitly tells me it’s because they just don’t have the means to do it they haven’t even been able to crack down on local gang land how are they now supposed to focus on transnational crime organizations the head of RCMP was asked just recently “How many organized crime groups individual organized crime groups do you think are operating in Canada right now?” And he responds “It’s on video i I don’t have a number off the top of my head i think 4,000.” And so the question is clarified there are 4,000 organized crime groups operating in Canada with their own individual leadership and networks and the head of the RCMP said “Yes I I would say so around 4,000.” who do you think the key players are putting these putting these labs in up there sinaloa cartel which
it’s CJNG but let me just finish that point about the 4,000 because this goes to show the disconnect between uh Canadian law enforcement in Canada because it’s actually 668 individual organized crime groups that’s according to CEUS Canadian version of CIA so imagine if you have this disconnect where our national police force does is is just pulling out a random number how are you even supposed to crack down on these people and these groups but yes it’s mostly Sinaloa and CJNG that are in Canada i would say now it’s likely probably just CJNG simply due to the fact that Sinaloa does not have the power or the numbers to maintain their stronghold and they’ve entered into an alliance with New Generation Cartel
interesting they made an alliance with them
i think it’s a proxy alliance um see or the Japitos were pretty obviously losing the fight in this faction war that’s been going on in the Sinaloa cartel since Elmo was brought to the United States and so I think CJNG saw this as an opportunity to say we will back you up but we gain control over everything and they are the first cartel in history to have control over every single Mexican state
interesting interesting you know back to My head’s jumping around a lot so
I Sorry I do that too
back to the back to declaring them terrorist organizations and they’re saying I totally understand what they’re saying you know well we’ll just wait 4 years and everything will be finished but I mean there’s another aspect too there’s you know there’s always a potential that we send in SOCOM and JC units i mean do they have any fear of that
i asked them about that and they said that if American special forces lay their feet on Mexican soil they will fight till the death because they will have nothing to lose
they will put up a fight
will they win that fight no but they won’t go down without a fight because that’s really that’s all they have and so if if their entire livelihood and their entire business is being attacked especially by US uniform operators who have every means to just completely squash it
mhm they won’t go down like a [ __ ]
i mean who down to what level though you know what I mean i mean
to the very bottom
to the very bottom oh even even the local drug dealer yes the guy who’s a lookout who’s making pennies when I was in Sinaloa covering this fighting in the fall um there was the money flow was interrupted for you know all all levels of people working in with for the cartels and so main people who you know it’s like that that necessary job that makes no money are the punteros the lookouts the guys on their dirt bikes who watch if if Mexican forces are coming you know they they keep the eyes out for whatever’s going on those guys make the least amount of money they’re making around $500 a month and when the infighting began and all of this money and resources had to go to we need to maintain our stronghold and we need to buy arms and and stockpile these punteros were the ones losing out and so when I was there once it got dark I couldn’t order uh Uber Eats to my hotel because these guys were stealing the food from the delivery men because they didn’t even have enough money to eat but they were still working for the cartels they wouldn’t say “Okay you know what [ __ ] this i’m going to go and work in a Walmart where I’m at least going to make a steady income it’s not great but I have something to pay for my basic needs.”
Because at that point it’s not just about the money it’s indoctrination it’s about being a part of something feeling powerful feeling like you’ve been validated and accepted by the very people who are responsible for thousands of deaths and the war on drugs they’re on the FBI’s most wanted posters and I work for that guy
h I guess it makes sense i mean
it makes sense to them we don’t have to understand it
yeah wow i thought there would be at least a little fear but doesn’t sound like they care at all
i don’t think they do and based on what I’ve been told whether that’s what I was told at the border whether I go and ask inoa or Halisco or Mitraan or Guerrero the consensus remains the same and the people in charge are treated like gods they are absolutely praised as if they are the one and only i mean that’s why we see all the songs about
El Meno El Chapo El Mayo and you can literally go to Sinoa and buy um Narco merch you know you got the hat with whoever’s face on it you can even buy like religious regalia that that is paying homage to narco leaders
jeez
and so the people who work for them praise them people who don’t work for them praise them and want to work for them so if you’re telling this 17-year-old kid who has always wanted to be in this lifestyle you’re going to die for me and American forces are coming in he’ll stand up he’ll probably [ __ ] his pants but he’ll do it he’ll put on
Wow face
how many of these labs do you think have been set up in Canada do you have any estimation on that i think I don’t know exactly how many labs are operating in Canada but the majority of the labs that are in Canada which is significant because there is certainly a supply there is no lack of drugs in Canada or the United States right and especially in northern states too where a lot of these drugs are coming into um I think the majority of them are being run by the cartels and the interesting thing is you don’t really see it in the numbers or in uh in police investigations or press releases because they don’t keep track of which criminal organizations are operating what uh like which labs
so for example you will uh someone will be arrested three three men will be arrested for trafficking arms and drugs they were arrested in a Suri home in British Columbia and we found X amount of drugs X amount of arms with this amount of street value they won’t say oh you know they were operating on behalf of of the Sinaloa cartel they will say “We found messages in our investigation that they were operating with Mexican associates and some people will then subsequently be charged and they’ll be Mexican nationals living in Canada those guys are working for the cartels.” Mhm
but Canadian authority doesn’t keep track or at least not publicly of who is working with exactly which criminal organization and I think that that also does play a role in allowing the cartels to flourish over there because they can operate so entirely under the radar i mean here in in the US for the first time a few weeks ago a woman in El Paso was arrested for particularly working as a straw buyer for CJNG and this was the first case of someone in the US uh with material to be charged as an FTO in Canada that wouldn’t be the case you wouldn’t hear that oh she was directly working as an associate with the new generation cartel but when you bring light to that especially in a border place like El Paso then everyone who’s doing it is kind of on edge and then they say “Okay look hey we’re under a spotlight.” But if that’s not happening you continue to operate like there’s there’s no spotlight on us we don’t need to worry because there isn’t do Canadians know this is happening
well if they read my reporting they know now i mean Cash Patel director of the FBI is now saying it publicly he just said that um they’re coming in through the port of Vancouver they’re producing fentinol the fentinol is coming from Canada because they haven’t secured the northern border and when I initially started reporting on this and I was reaching out to RCMP and reaching out to CEUS and and putting out my contact everyone was telling me “No you’re wrong this can’t be.” And RCMP was telling me “We have no evidence to show that local criminal organizations are working directly with cartels.” But I met with cartel associates in Canada showing me the production telling me how they’re doing it and it goes back to what you asked me why are they telling me this because they want to show you exactly how they’re operating under the radar they’re so tough and oh yeah you secured our southern border [ __ ] you we moved to Canada
how much is one of these labs producing did you do you know that
yeah like Okay so one batch will be like $150,000 worth of fentinel pills
and how many producing pills is that
any
It depends because it depends on the size of the pills it depends on on on the the strength of of what they’re the strength of fentinel in each pill i’m just trying to get an estimation of how much shed is coming through you know the northern US Canadian border but and then how fast do you think this is spreading i mean it sounds like right now it’s pretty localized in Vancouver but when’s it going to go you know more towards the other coast
it is in the east coast it’s not at the same level but it certainly is at the in the East Coast um what I know what’s happening for sure in the East Coast is a lot of people are being contracted by the cartels to and not Mexican people canadian nationals are being contracted by the cartels to operate as enforcers a lot of people in Quebec and Ontario what do you mean enforcer what does that mean
uh
it’s like a hockey player it’s like a
It protects the hockey team right they’re protecting the the operations there
oh so what are they doing
taking out hits threatening people um ensuring that the right individuals are being paid off whether that be enforcement at the border so that guns can get across into Canada from the US uh or fentinel can go the other way how are they getting their people up there are they are they coming up through the US yeah and just keep going north or are they flying them in
so prior to Canada re-implementing the visa requirement a lot of the Mexican nationals were flying directly into Canada they completely would bypass the US it was much easier that way because they wouldn’t need a visa
mhm
um now it’s a little bit different now some of the operatives who were already based in the US are moving into Canada
okay yeah and it’s interesting because when I was I gained access to a few group chats that were run by the cartels on WhatsApp Telegram WhatsApp is like the starting point just because of the way the encryption is set up they don’t want to talk about too much but because it is so accessible it’s a great way to hire people recruit people
and so I gained access to a group chat where they were basically recruiting people to work as enforcers for them um you know managing certain logistics of the business whether that’s paying off authority finding out who’s who getting the arms finding the dealers uh contracting straw buyers whatever it may be when I was in this group chat the first thing that stood out to me was two of the phone numbers were Canadian area codes one was Alberta and one was Toronto and one of the individuals was directly asked if he could take out a hit if need be he would be paid $55,000 Canadian he would have to buy a Glock with three three mags i think it was i have this screenshot and there could be no kids around and if he goes to the house make sure that no family is around of the individual that needs to be killed and so for a lot of these people money was put on the table right away you get into this group chat whether that means you’re going to be moving fentinyl pills into the US whether that means you may have to take out a hit um or pay someone off conduct any sort of logistics it was this is how much you’ll make take it or leave it and that was for a lot of people that first incentive now for a lot of other folks it was I’m going to be a part of the cartel i for a lot of these people they’re kind of um outcasts and they feel like power or they’re like an aggressive person and a lot of those type of guys who kind of had like a violent past boxers um were being hired as the way they would be recruited into these group chats was either through social media so a lot of fake postings or postings on Facebook or Tik Tok that would allude to what they could become a part of but also just through um knowing someone word of mouth
interesting hey my niece is dating this guy he’s been here from Mexico for around 6 years he’s making a ton of money i know you’re strapped for cash would you if you get a package and you just have to drive it across the border go to the Sears Walmart parking lot someone’s going to pick it up don’t look inside and you’re going to get paid $70,000 just go and come back people will do it damn and Canada’s not doing you you actually on the outline I saw that they are also recruiting from the Balkans
did I see that
yeah balkan states like uh Armenian guys too uh a lot of ex gang members from over there and in Australia too i mean at this point
they’re recruiting from Australia really
yeah australia England like it seems like there’s like this thing with the Commonwealth places is like
why are they going to the I mean why are it sounds like there’s no shortage of people that want to join the cartels there isn’t and that’s what
so why are they recruiting out of the Balkans because they need an international stronghold and so when you have people who don’t look like you don’t talk like you and come from different training backgrounds they can fly under the radar a lot better and they have access to different areas that certain Mexican operatives do not so say for example uh not that long ago there was a blatant daylight shooting in in uh Vancouver uh guy was killed and he was he was shot by a Canadian man from Quebec super French name this individual had spent years in Mexico and Colombia and was said to eventually work for the cartel go to Canada and take out this hit now how much better is it that you have a Canadian national taking out a hit he knows where to go he knows how law enforcement operates he’s from this place he has access the the chances that there’s going to be a [ __ ] are a lot less and also if you know that Canadian law enforcement is not directly attacking the cartels when when an associate who’s not Mexican is operating for them of course you’re going to have a a foreign person a Canadian or an Australian or someone from England take out the hit or commit the crime h Yeah are they are they trying to spread into Europe and Armenia and Australia as well i mean is could that be another reason yeah
they’re making connections
yeah and there are already interpol reports of particularly CGNG having activity having strongholds in Australia in Western Europe um in Kenya there was a People think I’m crazy when I talk about this but they found a CG&G linked in Kenya in Africa
wow what What the hell are they doing over there
producing and trafficking it it’s it’s a international operation and to me it makes sense that they are moving everywhere because it’s like what I said the catch me if you can
yeah i mean it makes sense to me with the I mean I guess it would in Kenya I mean I don’t know how many people would be able to afford fentanyl you know but
but it’s not about domestic distribution
mhm
it’s about that production there and and being so far removed from where the Hawkeye view is which is Canada US and Mexico and being able to move the product outwards from there you know the other thing is I mean I’m not saying you’re wrong by any means but you care to me it’s it it doesn’t make sense why they would pay a Canadian 55,000 u Canadian dollars to to put a hit out to assassinate somebody or or fly somebody in from the Balkans or Australia when we do know they don’t give a [ __ ] about their people dying you know I mean we’ve seen that for years that you know they give them five minutes of training and send them off to their ward but you know and and so it it’s just it’s not very cost effective for them to to have to pay that price when they can just send somebody you know from a little PBLO that has nothing into Mex into Canada US anywhere they want you know
it’s certainly not coste effective but I think logistically it works for them um you have a Canadian who’s willing to commit these crimes for you on their soil
mhm
you completely avoid detection of that down
it does
until those people get interrogated and I mean
and they say they’ve been working for the cartels and then in the in the RCMP information they’re saying “Well yeah this person had connections with Mexican criminals.”
Mhm
but Canadian authority isn’t going after those criminals who put out the hit man what do you Is there any anything that Canada has been doing to combat this at all or they’re just trying to sweep it under the rug
i think they’re sweeping it under the rug i think since Trump tried to say you know we got to crack down on the northern border and Cash Patel has been putting a lot of pressure um they’ve been doing these sort of public things like you know the appointing of fentinels are um amping up the amount of border patrol at the northern border but in terms of really getting to the root of the problem it’s being swept under the rug and a lot of folks that I’ve spoken to in Canadian law enforcement agree with that notion interesting and if I speak to any of my sources that are you know part of associates with the cartel operating in Canada they feel like it’s business as usual are they infiltrating i mean how big are they getting into Canada i mean like in the US we know they’re starting to get involved in politics local police departments uh a lot of them are joining the military to get the training and then get out
i don’t think that’s happening yet and because I don’t think it’s necessary I think that the way that they’ve set up shop is working for them and they’re not going to fix something that isn’t broken and and risk losing what they have
okay okay
and it’s also important to keep in mind that there is evidence and you know there’s all these reports that come out from CEUS about Chinese intervention in Canadian politics and elections and if the Mexican cartels are already directly working with the Chinese there’s no need for them to to go above them and try to get involved with Canadian politics that’s being done for them
interesting all right let’s take a quick break when we come back I know I want to talk about some of the other businesses that the cartels are starting to set up outside of fentanyl prices seem to be rising lately and all right we’re back from the break we’re getting ready to dive into you know the divers diversification of all of the different cartel businesses so I’ve talked about this a couple times before it’s been I think it’s been about 2 years though since I’ve covered this topic but um last I heard they were getting into the avocado trade
yes
what else are they diving into
okay crude oil avocado and agriculture is the big the biggest ones so after human smuggling and drug trafficking the second most profitable form of revenue for the cartels is what you call the crude oil theft this has been going on for forever and we have seen a lot of mass tragedies due to this even though it’s not you know a illicit substance like fentinel mhm the way they tap into these pipelines in a lot of unsecured areas in smaller towns where these pipelines run through uh if they tap into it wrong or if they do it time and time again it leads to a mass explosion and these headline in Mexico all the time and have been for decades now what’s happening now is actually just a few weeks ago three CGNG operatives were sanctioned by the US for trafficking stolen crude oil from Mexico into the US and certain smaller American oil companies were buying this oil and they were bringing it into the US labeled as waste oil so it was going completely undetected a lot of it was going into the port of Brownsville in Texas and this for them is a billion dollar business
waste oil what is What the hell is waste oil
they were calling it waste oil so the US is just letting people import waste oil to dump
gear apparently because they were bringing this in in trucks and it was being taken to smaller refineries where then it was known that it was not waste oil it was actually raw crude oil
and that was giving them around $3 billion a year at one point
how much money are they making off of this
like billions of dollars like three $3 billion a year three billion
there’s like 17,000 uh 17,000 like tankers worth of oil that are being stolen per day in Mexico
are you serious 17,000 tankers a day that’s what PEMX numbers show which is the which is the Mexican oil company it’s it has a monopoly pemx
wow do you think they’ll just try to take Do you think they’ll just try to take control of the pipeline itself
they do that’s exactly what they do and a lot of uh National Guard and local police are on the cartel payroll so that they can go and tap in these into these pipelines and no one’s going to say anything actually just
you’re talking about actually like tapping into the pipeline
or are you I’m talking about just taking control of the entire pipeline and piping it to
piping it to Oh okay probably not
okay
that’s that’s a whole I mean it could be happening but I haven’t done any reporting on that i mean from what I know and what I’ve seen is them physically going and tapping into the pipeline and stealing it and and putting it into the tanker and driving that across and just a few days ago 11 members of the National Guard were arrested because they were caught red-handed at a pipeline stealing the oil and they’re just getting this through the US border just,000 tankers a day are coming across the US border
i don’t know if 17,000 tankers are moving across the border a day but that’s how much is being stolen per day so it’s obviously going somewhere
mhm
at a certain point of time and this is major profits for the cartel especially with this crackdown at the southern border on fentinel and human smuggling which is you know a major financial pipeline for them let’s let’s go make money off a different pipeline
i mean do we import we don’t import any gas from Mexico do we
it’s
do we like legal legally
legally yeah so a lot of the a lot of the crude oil from Mexico goes to the US and is fined in the US and refined in the US and Mexico buys it back so this is relatively easy operation to bust into
Mexico doesn’t have the refinery doesn’t have the infrastructure to do it they buy the gas back
okay so they so we buy the gas or we refine the gas and then pipe it back into Mexico yeah and so
that’s that’s one that I talk about a lot because the problem with this is they can do it so under the radar and they’re experts at it at this point because it’s been going on for so long
and there’s so much impunity around incorruption
uh so many people the right people are paid off the right people whether that’s politicians National Guard police are being are profiting off of this trade and so the way to crack down on this is so murky because it’s not you know you don’t have this fentinyl pill that’s going to kill someone and that’s a controlled substance
mhm
it’s oil and it’s something that everybody needs and if the way to get this oil is by going into these uh undetected regions where it’s just a small town and law enforcement knows what’s going on it’s very easy to access for them
do you think that this will I mean oil and gas is a big business
exactly and some of the most powerful people in the world uh are in the most powerful people in the world are in you know oil and gas and so I guess what I’m asking is I mean do do they do do your sources believe that the oil and gas sector of their cartel business will overtake fentanyl and drug trafficking if push comes to shove and they really have to rely on something that isn’t drugs they could certainly move all of their operations to oil
why wouldn’t they just want to anyways why and it seems so much you think the the drug trade is more than the gas trade it’s more profitable for them
right now or 10 years down the road
i don’t know it’s very hard to say and it depends where and how they want to distribute their resources if they want to fully focus on that they could make it their number one earner
i mean because the only reason I’m asking is from an American aspect i mean that doesn’t really affect us that affects
oil and gas
industry in Mexico that only enhances US refining which is why I thought it was interesting when these three CGNG members were sanctioned for importing this stolen crude oil none of the US refineries faced any any sanctions or legal action and of course investigators certainly knew or know which refineries and companies were buying this stolen oil but nothing happened there on that front why because this is not killing Americans
mhm it’s I mean it’s legitimately just not our problem
no that’s the the the Mexican government could take care of that
exactly it’s not like the drugs
what else are they diving into
agriculture agriculture has been huge and more than ever before i mean the three major points of agriculture where all avocados that you guys eat here and limes that you guys use is coming from Mitraan Halisco Naarit and those are CG&G strongholds so what’s been happening for the longest time and and particularly now as they’re trying to diversify their revenue streams cartel operatives are going in to these ranches these orchards and telling the farmers who have had these orchards in their families for generations because I don’t know if you know but you know raising one avocado tree if it’s successful which is also just difficult within itself can take up to 15 years so this takes a lot of dedication to be an avocado farmer and it’s a very profitable fruit they call it green gold for something uh and cartels are going in armed men will show up and say “Listen you’re either going to pay me x percentage of whatever you’re profiting off of your avocado exports or this becomes ours.” And a lot of these farmers they’re doing well for themselves you know in in the in terms of earning potential in Mexico generally right they’re making an honest income they’re working their asses off the whole family is part of this business they’re employing people from their town and they’re making good money to support themselves so then you have our men come in and say either get out or pay me an amount that they typically cannot afford because it’s not that much money and you’re saying now give me 80% of your earnings how are you supposed to maintain your orchards if you’re losing more than half of your income to organized crime so a lot of these people have to abandon their farms
there are this is hundreds of avocado orchards particularly in Mitakan have been abandoned by their rightful owner and cartels are now working those orchards or the very people who own these places are now being employed by the cartel to go and and and farm the land work the land and there are certain uh produce companies in the US who are knowingly some not knowingly but others knowingly purchasing avocados from cartelrun avocado orchards in Mexico and I reached out to these uh I I actually had a really significant produce person someone who worked for the US government as an inspector before so the US sends inspectors uh to these regions to make sure you know for pesticide control pest control whatever the case may be and even for ethics so is organized crime operating here and I got in contact with someone who did this job and I got a list of produce company names uh that were knowingly are knowingly importing avocados and limes from farms that are now run by the cartels blatantly and when I reached out to them and said you know what is your guys’s due process to ensure that you aren’t supporting organized crime no comment we don’t talk about this of course you won’t but wouldn’t you want to clear your name wouldn’t you want to show to the American avocado consumer that those avocados aren’t blood fruit yeah i mean it sounds what you’re describing sounds really uh very similar to the diamond trade
of course
but I mean with that being said it it’s it’s I mean how many how many legitimate avocado farms are there left in Mexico i talked to the only reason I’m asking is Luis Japaro i’ve had him on several times here and he he talked about the avocado trade with the cartels and how Super Bowl seasoned and they’ll create a shortage to spike the prices and all that kind of stuff but I mean
so I mean do these comp do these US-based fruit companies do they have I mean do they even have anywhere else to buy this stuff from or is it just cartels at this point it’s likely just cartels and the cartels manipulated that because it got to a point when the US agricultural inspectors were going to Mexico to inspect these farms then they were being threatened and so then the US stopped sending inspectors to these regions which meant it was a free-for-all for the cartels to take over every single orchard that existed there
mhm well I mean an inspector isn’t going to stop no
but
no that’s not even his job that’s not their job
so is the Mexican government doing anything about this at all
okay they sent in when this uh a bunch of farmers banded together because they will do that you know they’re tough they’re hardworking and they banded together and said “We can’t take this anymore the cartels are taking over our livelihoods they’re taking over our businesses.” So Mexican government sent in a couple thousand troops to these regions to try and protect them that those very troops were getting paid off by the cartel too they were also being threatened there were shootouts at these farms
mhm
and typically when that happens in Mexico unfortunately government backs down how about the water trade
yeah that’s another thing especially in these same regions because it’s very important for farmers you know for the irrigation but also just for the people living in these regions they’ve monopolized water they monopolized Wi-Fi uh even uh Wi-Fi yeah they put up their own Wi-Fi wires in certain towns in these regions so you can only purchase from the cartel provider no [ __ ]
they cut the cords from there there’s other Wi-Fi providers in Mexico like Izzy and uh there’s other ones right of legitimate
mhm
and those wires are being cut the infrastructure is being destroyed cartel puts up their own infrastructure now you have to only get your Wi-Fi from us wow so they have communications they have agriculture they have oil and gas i mean it’s every single aspect of of basic life every necessity i mean what how is the relationship with what is their relationship like with with the Chinese that are piping in all of the precursors to make fentanyl you had mentioned a lot of them are going to Canada now but I mean seems just interviewed Tom Holman you know the borders are and he said that the I believe have to reference the interview but I believe he said that that the southern border is 96.8% secured do you do you agree with that it’s a very high number and I do believe that the southern border is a lot more secured than it was 6 months ago certainly uh the price of being smuggled across the border has gone up like if you want to pay for a coyote to take you across less coyotes are operating because of just the sheer amount of vigilance at the southern border
mhm and US and Mexico numbers both show that fentinyl trafficking has gone down at the southern border 96% is is very high to say it’s 96% secured i mean how do you even quantify how secure a border is but in terms of
you think you do it by the number of people coming across
the number of people coming across right but of course you don’t track every single person that’s coming across has it gone down certainly and numbers on both sides of the border show that and if you just go to that border it looks so different than it did 6 months ago i mean you have tons of CBP helicopter patrol constantly uh Mexico deployed an additional I think 12,000 National Guard to secure their side of the border and the threat of tariffs and US intervention in Mexico really did push Mexican President Glaudia Shienbomb to act on the southern border because she didn’t want to see a Mexico where there was American intervention she wanted to maintain autonomy fair enough why don’t you think she wants any interventure
because she wants Mexico to stay Mexico she doesn’t want to see American forces coming in she doesn’t want Mexican people to feel like their own government can’t deal with it by themselves and
don’t they already feel like that 100% but you can admit a loss another point to that is to protect people who are in her administration who have narco ties does she have narco ties 100%
100%
i believe she definitely has narco ties
what makes you believe that she’s with the Mora party so many political figures in this party have now just recently been sanctioned by the US had their visas revoked by the US have been tied to shell companies in the US that are cleaning money for the cartels this was the most violent Mexican election in the history of Mexican elections why were people dying at the polls why were armed men showing up to voting stations and destroying the ballots and the ballot boxes and then prior to her Andres Manuel Lopez Vador the previous Mex president of Mexico who basically took Shien Bomb and put her up and said “Everyone who voted for me vote for her and she won by a landslide no one has ever voted by that margin in a Mexi in a Mexican federal election ever before.” He had been reported to have received a significant multi-million dollar payout from the Sinaloa cartel wow
so if you have this party that just has so many rotten apples you’re telling me it’s not spoiling the bunch and that the main figurehead of this party the president of Mexico who could if she really wanted to say “Fuck the cartels we’re ending them everyone is suffering on both sides of the border and globally okay we are going to crack down and that’s not really happening it’s a soft stance it’s certainly not as soft as her predecessor his his moral his uh slogan was noasos hugs not bullets she didn’t take that on which I think was great because what do you mean you’re going to you know
it just didn’t it was it made no sense uh but do I think she has narotize and people come for me a lot when I say that because they say like you’re just [ __ ] on a president who’s cares about the Mexican people i think if she really cared about the Mexican people the cartel crackdown would be to the next level
i think if she really cared about the Mexican people it would it would be a positive to get the US in there to help solve this problem and then the US has this watch list of narco politicians uh I had I a source from your government actually gave me a few names i published that list and then exactly a month later one of the people that I had on that list which was the the governor of Baja California Marina Delpar her US tourist visa and her husband’s were revoked and there was no reason given as to why but there’s certainly an investigation going she’s also part of the Morena party uh and then the governor of Sinaloa Ruven Rochamoya who you know a lot of people have a lot of people who seek the truth have be with him because he has been a part of a lot of shady dealings and how is your state going to erupt into this war zone where the cartels basically control every aspect of politics law enforcement and daily life for the citizens and you’re you’re yet you’re sitting high and mighty as if nothing is happening everything is okay everything is okay and and the US names him and the president of Mexico goes up in public in her morning press conferences and and defends him says “No no no he’s doing his job.” And honestly
wow wow
and look people can say all they want well maybe she doesn’t directly have ties with with Narcos okay but if she’s defending the very people who do who are under her administration does that not make you just as guilty i mean tell me about your integrity and and your responsibility to protect the citizens of the country and ensure that they have a solid quality of life while protecting the very people who are ruining that have you heard of I’ve heard a lot of rumors that former SOCOM and JOC special operators are going down and training cartel have you veterans have you heard that
like not part of the Green Beret program because there is there is a program the US does train Mexican military and then they kind of form their own yeah no I’m talking about guys that have separated from the military that are going down there
and directly training cartels
yes
yes how how much of that is going on
if you go to Tamo Lipas right now it it borders Texas and Mexico there are cartel operatives who can expertly show you how to arm you know put together arm and and put a minigun on top of a vehicle and use it like an expert
mhm
and that isn’t common knowledge and that isn’t something that you know like guerilla warfare teaches you these people are directly being taught by USX military i’ve heard and we were talking about this on the way here uh Israelis people who know how how to use highlevel arms
mhm
and and know a fair bit about highlevel warfare tactics if the cartels weren’t trained by these very people they would not be able to function at the level that they are have you do you have any sources that have told you that former soft guys are heading down there to train
yeah particularly in in Mexican states at border Texas there there are uh cartel operatives in in Tamalipas who will will blatantly say the gringo taught us this or do it the way the gringoes do it well that’s terrifying and that has to do not only like with the miniguns but the IEDs that they have they they are their IEDs now are just next level um drone operations they’re using drones that now initially they were attaching bombs IDs to to the drones flying them in and then the whole contraption would blow up now they’re doing it in a way where the drone goes in it drops the ID and then the drone goes back out and they’re they’re saving a lot of technology by doing this right and it’s making it uh it’s fasttracking the operation they were taught by Americans
they were taught by Americans how to do that too yeah and with the anti- drone technology that came from overse Well that came from abroad
they have anti- drone technology what kind of anti drone
they have so I actually I wish I could show you the video of it uh they have like the the big uh drone blockers so if there is a drone flying in the area they can completely disable that drone and and make it have it seized to function wow what other kind of tech are that that’s where I wanted to lead into you know warfare is changing uh in a astronomical basis
they’re at a point in their warfare where it’s they’ve never had this level of access before and expertise they have technology that you would never have imagined cartels have i mean with the amount of money and access they have to certain people and expertise certainly they can do this they can learn how to operate anti- drone technology how to uh use drones uh multiple times and drop IEDs how to set up a minigun but they’re also you know they’re using technology that it it’s not typical warfare technology so even in certain regions uh they have like cell phone blockers but just set up throughout the town too so you walk in and all of a sudden either your phone doesn’t work or it’s immediately tapped even the way they’re putting Pegasus on people’s phones
they’re putting Pegasus on people’s phones
oh Mexico and particularly Mexican journalists it’s like uh you are the number one victim of having Pegasus on your phone
no kidding yeah they got Pegasus from Israel
you want to talk about Pegasus real quick yeah we can talk about Yeah Pegasus it’s It’s like the number one phone hacking technology and it it doesn’t take anything at all it’s literally I get a message on WhatsApp if I just press on that contact that sent me the message Pegasus is now in my phone and they have access to everything all of the data even the metadata that’s in my phone and can track me can listen in to me everything um and just recently actually the Mexican president’s phone was hacked it was a phone that she said she never used and it was just like a personal phone but if you’re able to hack the president’s phone anyone is at risk and Mexico is a a main consumer of or user of Pegasus technology
who who are they deploying all this stuff against is it cartel on cartel for the most part
no it’s anyone that threatens their operations so of course yes they’re cartel adversaries but politicians law enforcement journalists um even sometimes people who are working for them their own straw buyers people who they feel like they can’t fully trust stay frosty puts some Pegasus on his phone what about the drones what about the drones
who are they deploying that on
they’re deploying the drones against Mexican forces they they if there is an operation that’s going down uh they know Mexican forces are going to be in this area they will even uh trap them so lead Mexican forces this happened not so long ago an example of this lead Mexican forces to believe that a key figure is here or a key lab is here and they will arm that location with IEDs and have drones ready to go in there mexican forces will get there and they get exploded
okay so they hit them with IEDs and then do a drone swarm yeah
how big are the drone swarms any idea it really depends on like which cartel is operating this but for the most part they’re not that large they’re you’re they have just like even just like regular drones they’re using like even like the the DJI drones or they’re getting the drones from China that are like a knockoff version and attaching bombs to it and just dropping those in mhm mhm
and you’ll even see videos of when they’re flying they’re kind of weighed down a bit
so nothing like a hundred drones coming all at once like some of the stuff it’s not to that extent
at least not yet
how far out do you think we are before that starts happening it depends if if the US puts boots on the ground in Mexico because I don’t think Mexican forces will ever push it to a point where cartels feel like that’s how hard they need to hit them
you don’t
no
you don’t think so
no there’s too much at risk and there’s too much for them to lose i think you know something that really stood out to me what’s what’s the risk what do you mean there’s too much for them to lose uh for for Mexican special forces to be at risk of of danger um I was going to say when I was in Sinaloa uh they had just the day that I got there we went to the base and they had just brought in reinforcements for uh National Guard and a lot of the people were very young and they were literally coming into a place where they were ready to face the cartels head on i mean every night it was just like you would just see the fireworks the shootouts um in the morning there would be dead bodies lining major highways with notes sending messages and so these guys were coming in knowing that they had to take on a very desperate cartel head on and try to stop some extreme level of violence with very little experience they were very young and some of them looked so nervous and even fearful to be there and if there is that level of fear then when you ask me are these guys going to go in and and take them head on to a point where the cartels will completely amp up and you have a hundred drone storms going in there and just taking out uh Mexican forces no because I don’t think the Mexican forces would get to that level i mean hugs not bullets was a policy for so long that now to switch that up and go have the pendulum swing to the exact opposite where it’s like no we are going to take them on i don’t think the people who are in the forces you know I don’t want to undermine it and I I don’t mean it like this but I I I don’t think the training and the morale is even there to be like I’m going in to die for this we’re taking these guys out so no Mexican cartels won’t likely unless US forces come into Mexico get to a level where they believe they have to completely amp up operations where it’s like Ukraine Russia style simply due to the fact that Mexican forces aren’t going to push them to that level
so you don’t think that they’re proactive enough to start to stock up on drones start getting 3D printers and printing their own drones and all these things active yes
or if US forces do come in 100%
you don’t think they’ll deploy them though unless Unless
Unless US steps in interesting
because they won’t have a need to but are they proactively stocking up 100% yes and I’ve been told about this
from the very people in charge of ensuring that they are armed do they have strategic locations where they’re stocking up i mean and and I mean since you’re saying that they are proactive do they have strategic locations where they’re stocking up on on tech weapons all this kind of stuff do they do they know what do they think they might know what it might look like where the fight’s going to begin yes it’s okay first and foremost there are safe houses throughout all of Mexico where they’re stocking up on this and particularly surprisingly enough in a lot of tourist destinations because it’s easy access a lot of these place have water access um it goes under the radar so Porto Viarda Akapulkco these are cities that the cartel is using to their advantage to to stock up in because they already have a lot of operations going on there and because they know that that won’t those areas won’t be hit as a war zone because they’re tourist hotspots so Mexico will never want to scare away the tourism sector
mhm so if they have a safe house in a place like Porttoarda which is also the CG&G stronghold filled with arms filled with tech drones 3D printers you name it um they can get there they can get the access they can get someone to bring it out to them and it won’t be a problem now in terms of the places that would be hit like say US operators stepped into into Mexico again it won’t be those particular regions it will be Sino it will be Kulyakan it will be Mitakan it will be Guerrero it will be Tamo Lipas areas where Vera Cruz and there’s a port in Veraracruz you’re saying that’s where we would deploy
yes
I think that’s probably where we would deploy conventional guys if we did that
but as far as strategic strikes when you bring in tier one units I mean those guys are going to go everywhere they don’t It doesn’t matter i agree and I think that the cartels certainly know that
they’re bracing for it a lot of them are worried that that’s going to happen if it hasn’t already there’s some level of American intervention in Mexico i mean we’ve seen it with the CIA planes that are flying that they obviously have Mexican permission to do that but there’s CIA planes flying across the northern Mexican states the US is certainly gathering intel and they’re working bilaterally with Mexico how long will that last or or how far is that going not to the point that Mexico would like to see but the US knows that they have to withhold some information and and a lot of intelligence in order for their for their operations not to fail because the one wrong person finds out about it whether that’s in government whether that’s in Mexican intelligence and the whole operation goes to [ __ ] even with uh El Chapo’s family going into Tijuana or going across the border and receiving a sort of safe haven in the US Mexico didn’t know about that
mexico hasn’t received information on that and the and the the head of of national security for Mexico made a point to say we aren’t in the loop with this how do you think we defeat him i’m just curious have you thought about that all Yeah I think about that all the time and people ask me that all the time and people ask that because they want to see it happen but how does that happen it’s it would be a multifaceted approach like there’s no silver bullet we both know this and it’s very complicated because they’re so they have their claws so enthralled in every aspect you know whether it’s the ways that they’re diversifying their revenue in oil and gas and whatever it is but also in politics and internationally so to defeat this Fortune 500 corporation that’s armed to the max and is always a step ahead it would be a matter of cracking down on extreme intelligence gathering finding out where the main guys are dismantling them and their local networks dismantling their online propaganda projects tackling the people particularly who are under the radar and in charge of laundering a lot of the money setting up the shell companies the remittance uh the remittance sites that are allowing these cartels ways to to launder their money internationally the banks it goes so deep it wouldn’t just be a matter of go get the big guy like when they got El Mayo this summer mhm
you have to tackle the finances yeah i think a lot about this i mean I don’t think you you know we just did that for 20 years in in the war on terror you know taking out leaders i think the number two had like a two week life expectancy but every time you take one out it’s
you know new ones in and so I don’t think taking out just the leadership would work
what do you think needs to happen
you know I don’t know i mean if we infiltrated it would be extremely bloody just because of the amount of people that are involved in the cartel it wouldn’t work if you just took out the leadership you know I just from the years of covering this you know here and there and throughout with with the different uh people that I’ve had on I I I think that the way to do it would be and I don’t know I just like I said it’s been a minute since I’ve talked about this but I don’t know how um how combative the cartels are towards each other anymore but I think what I would do is I would probably create some type of a cycle psychological operation um that pits the cartels against each other and and basically create a false narrative so that this cartel and this cartel hate each other and they go to war with each other and then find ways to intervene and you know what I mean and
well that’s basically what’s happening in Siloa
is that what’s happening there
yeah I mean Elmo was brought to the US kidnapped allegedly and now we’re in real time watching watching the fall of the Sinaloa cartel
just from pulling him
yep well then maybe
El Chapo was gone now El Mayo is gone and the infighting began and just like a house of cards it’s falling in on itself but to the same point CJNG swoops in says “We will make an alliance Chapitos and US.” Which you know how real can that alliance be when they’ve been sworn enemies and what’s essentially going to happen is CGNG is going to take over that faction and take over Sinaloa so great what your suggestion was work to completely dismantle the Sinaloa cartel that has been operating for forever and was at one point one of the largest cartels in Mexican history but now we have CJ so what you do the same thing with them and it just keeps going on and on until they’re done well
but the supply and demand for drugs I mean how many cartel members were eliminated you know in that scuffle between those
oh at this point hundreds that were operating operating with the with the Sinaloa cartel
people of importance yeah
dead man doesn’t have to be people of importance i mean it all there’s also a psychological factor as well where maybe these weren’t as brutal as they are now i mean
or it could be
enough people were eliminated for this cartel to not be functioning basically at this point
mhm mhm
and for them to have to strike a deal with a an enemy cartel an adversary how many big ones are there
cartels in Mexico
how many big ones okay well
who are the three the top three
i would say the top three CGNG the Gulf Cartel Cartel de Norste and well Sinaloa i’ll keep it still there so
and there’s and they’re crumbling sinaloa
sinaloa is crumbling yeah that’s why I didn’t put it in top three but it would certainly be in top three um and I think the US designated eight of them if I’m not mistaken as foreign terrorist organizations which included all those I mentioned and a few more um but for example like there were certain factions of of cartels or fragmented versions of cartels that were not on that list and when you have fragmented groups of a previously stronghold cartel still existing those groups end up uh attaching on to a a larger cartel that’s operating and it just makes them stronger because they gain more territory they gain access to more people more guns what do you think happens if we go to China and we’re able to stop the precursors from being shipped it doesn’t matter because the Sinaloa cartel is now it just came out uh few months ago uh is taking chemistry students from universities in Sinaloa and having them try to figure out how to make the precursors from scratch
i don’t know we’ll have to wait and see i I have a feeling that there’s probably batches out on the streets or they’re preparing batches that have these homemade precursors now we’ll see if it works it’s just like what happened with fentinel you you have to see what happens with the streets but from what I can tell and the people in Sinaloa that I’ve spoken to they’re still yet to make those precursors uh tangible enough to actually make the fentinel from them but they’re already trying to cut out China they’re trying to cut China out
yeah by making the precursors that’s why they’re doing it they want to cut China out
cut China out increase your profits cut out that middleman not even a middleman because they’re supplying the necessary goods to produce this deadly drug but once once the cartels figure out how to make the precursors fentinel will become more accessible than ever before more deadly than ever before and I think the US certainly knows that the cartels are trying to make the precursors which is definitely a big part of the reason of the crackdown i mean it seems like they wouldn’t want to cut China out why not because just because I mean
even though they don’t have the same goals I think the cartel’s money and China is the reverse opium war
you know I mean it they serve each other well I guess is what I’m saying and so that’s that’s interesting that they want to cut them out i would think that they would want to align more but
I don’t think it would be a they would cut them out in a way where it ends on bad terms
mhm but rather it would just streamline the fentinel production would they still probably bring in some of the precursors yeah supplement the the supply but it won’t be to the same extent and it wouldn’t end with a bad taste in anyone’s mouth because certainly they leverage a good relationship with China mhm mhm interesting let’s take another quick break all right Katarina we’re back from the break i wanted to ask you one thing too um that’s just kind of kind of out there about the the Tik Tok influencer that got killed live streaming so Valeria was a famous influencer in Mexico she had that bhona look which is you know the the body small waist you know curves long blonde hair from Guadalara and Guadalara is a a hot spot it’s the CGNG you know birthplace Halisco and so a lot of people followed her because she was pretty but also because she was always on on live streaming uh keeping it pretty real she would just eat her favorite snacks on there and actually since she was murdered people in her memory have been like buying her favorite snacks and posting about it and to keep her alive now she’s on this live stream and she’s at her beauty salon that she owned and she tells the audience that she’s been told she’s receiving three gifts that day and the last one is going to be an expensive gift and so she’s kind of talking through she’s excited and a friend of hers is also at the salon with her and first she gets a Starbucks a delivery man comes by drops a Starbucks and I think at that same delivery she got a a plushie of a pig and it’s so interesting because in Mexico too uh like a pig or a pig’s head is really significant you know it’s like puco so you get uh a lot of the times too people will in Guadalara even when people take out hits they’ll leave a pig’s head on top of that person uh show that person was dirty or vile whatever the message it may be and she got that plushy and then she gets flowers and then she’s waiting for her third most expensive gift and she starts saying in the live stream she goes y like I’m I’m creeped out something’s wrong and you can tell she’s kind of on edge and she says you know what girls I think I’m going to go I’m kind of creeped out and her friend tells her behind the camera no you can’t go there’s is another gift coming for you and some context to this is that Valeria had received gifts from viewers before she really liked gifts and she would talk about how she would uh date men who would give her extravagant gifts and a lot of viewers would send her things and someone comments in the chat “You shouldn’t tell people where you are.” and she says “Well you know everyone knows that this is my salon.” Something along those lines and then a delivery man comes she’s looking out and she mutes the live and then you just see her take three bullets and the first bullet I’ve watched this video so many times at this point she’s wearing like a chain necklace and and the first bullet cuz people were saying it was fake and that it didn’t look like the bullet even hit her but the first bullet hits her necklace and her necklace goes flying off it hits the pendant the whole necklace goes flying off she gets shot again and then she gets shot in the head and she’s like slumped over and her hair is covering her whole face so the video is really jarring because you’re seeing a woman get murdered on live get being shot three times but it’s not like this cinematic boom boom boom and she’s all bludgeoned and she just kind of slumps in and she’s holding the pig plushy too dead and the friend comes over picks up the phone and turns off the live stream and people were saying you know you didn’t hear screaming but it’s important to keep in mind she muted the live why did she mute the live if she was so scared why didn’t she leave she already had that feeling and so people are saying that the friend set her up or that her ex-boyfriend who is allegedly part of organized crime uh I want to say like objectively just an unattractive guy especially for a girl who was she’s very beautiful she had a very striking look um they say he was responsible for it but the interesting thing is you know where is the forensics in Mexico and investigation she was murdered now like weeks ago at this point and nobody has come out to say who the main suspects are uh what the state of the investigation is and this became international news because there’s this beautiful girl being murdered on Tik Tok live stream
and people interacting with her as she’s talking about being scared people in the comments were even saying to her “If you feel weirded out or uncomfortable just go home.” I mean if this was a hit that was planned on her then it would have happened no matter where she was then you have a lot of conspiracy theorists or people conspiracies going around saying that she didn’t actually die she was probably being threatened and so she faked her death on live and that it was AI and um it doesn’t the way the blood splatters on the table and the way she falls over holding the plushy it just doesn’t look like someone who had been shot three times so this though the murder speaks volumes to the state of Mexico like the entire country because over the past couple of months a lot of YouTubers and social media influencers have fallen victim to being publicly murdered like this whether they have narco ties or not is one thing but this is certainly sending a message if you do not do what we say or follow our agenda especially with the large platform you have or you do us dirty you’re dead and you know the problem too with this being so publicized is there’s a lot of false information that’s coming out and a lot of false theories that people are taking and running with as if it’s fact so and then people are also editing fake videos of her um I saw one video of her and it’s very hard to tell if it’s real or not where she’s got a song in the background and she’s kind of like uh lip-syncing it and the caption on the video is like uh basically to the gist of you know use men for what they can give you enjoy the benefits of it but you know basically like have multiple guys who can give you nice things
and don’t get attached And people were saying you know she was a gold digger who messed with the wrong person and she got her karma which at the end of the day someone was murdered so it’s really [ __ ] up to say that even if this isn’t a perfect victim to you but it’s also hard to tell what is real and what isn’t about her because it’s such a publicized case she had such a large platform on social media and there doesn’t seem to be much transparency with her investigation why do you think she was murdered one of two reasons so I I have two theories i think the one that sticks out to me the most is she was probably dating the wrong guys she she didn’t grow up wealthy and she came from very humble beginnings and I think that you know she’s a beautiful girl and she used that to her advantage dated guys who were cartel associates part of organized crime and she pissed someone off she had already posted previously on her Instagram um screenshots of messages with a boyfriend where he was threatening to kill her and said “You’ve never seen me mad and you don’t want to see me mad but you’re going to force me to do something I don’t want to do.” And she posted and said “If something happens to me or or my family it’s this guy.” So that’s what I think happened is that she broke up with a guy who had a very fragile ego ego or she did him dirty in some way in the in terms of their relationship and he sought revenge and he did it publicly to send a message it makes sense to do it on live
this is what happens if you’re going to [ __ ] with me or make a fool of me you die and the way that the message was set up you know getting the pig plushy three gifts and then the last one is the most expensive and you get three bullets that’s it’s looks like a narco hit
mhm mhm
u but then there is that other part of me that maybe wonders you know maybe maybe that so-called friend wasn’t actually a friend because I talked to my best friend about it and I said “What would you do if we were just sitting there and I got shot?” Because you know especially with this job I run the risk and she said “I would freak out.” And she goes “I don’t think that I would even have the capacity to think about picking up your phone and turning off the live and and then attending to you the first thing would be to attend to the person but that’s purely speculation.”
Was the shooter on video
there is CCTV video of a of a guy coming up on a motorcycle outside
on the live stream though no so maybe maybe she shut it off before that I mean he was probably wearing a mask but maybe she shut it off before that reveal happened
well yeah because the phone is facing her and she’s she’s facing the window so you can see when she’s receiving these gifts or you can see when she sees someone comes up to give her a gift and her friend was on the other side in the salon
gotcha
and then some people are saying well if you look at where the bullets came from they didn’t come from in front it came from the side and the friend probably took that moment to shoot her but this also happens a lot in Mexico um I mean anywhere you know the pretty girl gets killed it It’s like the Gabby Patito case it becomes this huge debacle and there’s so many theories but in Mexico it’s particularly distinct because there is also that element of organized crime and corruption and lack of oversight in investigations and so something like this happens and people want justice are you going to get that justice it depends on who the perpetrator is
mhm mhm how about propaganda how are they recruiting what are they using propaganda i would say you know it’s funny because you asked me how do you tackle the cartels and this whole issue i think propaganda based on what I’ve seen is one of the major components that needs to be tackled first and we’re we’re nowhere near there because propaganda at this point cartel propaganda is deeply entrenched in every aspect of Mexican culture society and daily life
how so so first things first the music okay you have these narcoidos songs that are literally dedicated to certain capos or certain cartels and they are fully blatantly glamorizing this lifestyle um the singers are you know whether it’s uh Peso Pluma Junior Ache Natanel Cano there’s so many of them the list goes on but they’re super popular they top charts in Mexico in the United States too uh in their music videos they have the Rolex Presidential Gucci outfit and they’re singing about you know they’re being they’re strapped up with the scar and they drive the cars around that are fully armored they get their money they’re selling the merchandise and they make this life seem so enticing mhm
you have so much money you have all these hot girls you have all of everything that’s trendy and you have a great beat to accompany it because I I must say like sometimes I listen to these songs too and I’m like this is great this is a a great song but what it’s the narrative it’s pushing is absolutely horrible and so the Mexican government has tried to crack down on this i mean coridos have been banned in Sinaloa for a while and a lot of other states have banned this music genre in public places at establishments uh at concerts actually a lot of Mexican m musicians are now being sanctioned and having their visas revoked by the US uh for their lyrics what they’re singing because it so explicitly promotes uh cartel propaganda and the Mexican government plays their role and and the federal government actually just put out this initiative Mexico Mexico sings uh to encourage people to participate in like this basically a competition where you can play music you have a band or sing a song original singer songwriter whatever it is but that has nothing to do with cartels or narco propaganda and the interesting thing is when the Mexican government talks about this genre of music they particularly focus on violence against women violent acts and drug trafficking what they’re missing that is the key point is hey young people this is propaganda this life is actually not as cool as these songs are making them seem to be this is how you die this is how you end up like Valeria you want to be that pretty girl with a rich guy on your side yeah well guess what he might kill you afterwards and a lot of these young people in Mexico certainly fall for it and I don’t blame them you’re being inundated with this music these TV shows this culture that’s promoting a lifestyle that on the surface seems so luxurious wouldn’t you want to have the extra cash too you’re growing up in a place where both of your parents are working very hard and you know maybe you can’t even afford your schooling but buddy on the radio is telling you that you could pick up your parents in a Gwagon you just have to take part of this lifestyle and so the propaganda is deep in the pop culture on the other hand you have blatant forms of propaganda um through social media which now has exploded for them i mean it’s social media is a major tool for the cartels and Mexico has also tried to crack down on this they’re constantly banning Tik Tok accounts that are promoting cartel propaganda or trying to recruit people what does that propaganda look like what is it what
on Tik Tok yeah
it’s
is it the same stuff luxurious lifestyle lots of flashy [ __ ]
it’s the flashy flashy [ __ ] but it’s also the actual operations you’ll have like a a good song and they’re showing uh them loading up kilos into a a light aircraft and flying it across Pablo Escobar style
they kind of switch the aesthetic based on whichever platform they’re on and who they’re trying to appeal to
gotcha so you have those type of Tik Tok accounts and they’re showing the money they’re showing the guns but they’re also showing the actual warfare they’re they are showing some of the ugly side of it but they’re making it seem cool it’s like militarized
and then you’ll have a link in the bio of that Tik Tok account that you click it and it directly opens a WhatsApp group chat that’s the beginning step of cartel recruitment where you’re joining yeah you’re joining this group chat and you have certain higher level operatives for the cartel in there that will ask you certain questions or tell you what you’re getting into and then they vet you based on your answers to those questions or the personal information you give then you move into a different group chat and then another one and it and it kind of goes down the steps uh to the point where you’re then in direct contact with highle cartel operatives who are actively helping you get into the cartel and literally to the point where it’s like okay a car will come and pick you up from your address now now that you’ve shown us that you are willing to be a part of our our group and it’ll take you to a bus station you get on that bus you’re going to meet us here and you’re going to train for 6 months in the mountains of Puerto Vayarta so the social media is just the first step to this and it’s major for them because without numbers without this support the cortels can’t function and if you have vulnerable impressionable young people who are looking for a fatter paycheck who are enamored by this lifestyle and who want to be a part of something you have the perfect victim and you take them in and you absolutely abuse the [ __ ] out of them and dehumanize them and you you turn them into a machine and you give them some money and now this is the beginning part of of someone working for the cartel
how do they advance is this all like family members that stay at the top or how do you advance if you’re you know just a new guy
that’s yeah that’s just wanted to get recruited and get in there so it is mainly family members but then it’s about proving your loyalty how much are you going to do for us and especially if when you prove your loyalty it’s successful so a good example of this could be um you’re starting off you’re you know fresh in the cartel you just got out of the training and then you find out that one of the National Guard members that you guys are paying off is actually acting as an informant or also on the adversar’s payroll whatever the case may be right and then you go and you tell the boss “Hey I know this this and this i’ll go kill him or I’ll go torture him then you move your way up or hey I know a way that we can move this much of this amount of undetected fentinel from one American state to another no one’s going to figure it out and I have a good connect over there let’s do it okay they run the operation profits increase now you’re on your way up
yeah true it’s actionbased and really showing loyalty your willingness to die for the organization but this all starts off Yeah on social media it’s It’s ridiculous and the Mexican government has done like a crackdown they’ve removed multiple Tik Tok accounts but there can only be so much oversight with that social media is so vast and particularly when you have young people who are using a tool that didn’t exist before because cordial propaganda has always existed we’ve seen like in Huarez back in the early 2000s uh and even today but you know you have people hanging from bridges pants pulled down and a narcom on top of them a message to whoever is next or this is what will happen to you if you act like these rats that’s a form of propaganda but that is tangible blatant propaganda you bring social media into the mix it [ __ ] up the whole game because how do how do you apply any oversight to this how do you ensure that young people aren’t being targeted just through the phone that they always have in their hand and that’s why these social in the social influencers media influencers are main targets a major YouTuber in Mexico Marquito’s Toys he has millions of subscribers he shows this flashy lifestyle he’s from Sinoa his brother was murdered in Baja California and then it it’s constant it’s constant are you saying they’re murdering influencers as part of the propaganda machine
it’s certainly part of the propaganda because it sends a loud message and I think a lot of these influencers also have a role their role in organized crime uh whether it’s uh laundering money or pushing some sort of narrative in Mexico a lot of the time when you make a lot of money or you you gain a platform somehow the cartel will find a way to to use you
Mhm
to push their agenda forward
what kind of narrative would they be sending out through through an influencer exactly exactly this the propaganda that they’re not the bad guys mhm
that this is or that this is a luxury lifestyle and you should be part of it
okay so it’s it’s basically it’s essentially the same thing as the songs
yeah it’s it’s the recruitment and also to put pressure on their adversaries so the the music does it too the YouTubers do it too it’s very much like we’re with CJNG quatrolletas [ __ ] whoever else our adversary is and it it garers larger support throughout the population for that one cartel like even nowadays people will ask me “Who do you want to win in Sinaloa Chapo or Mayo?” And I’m like “What do you mean?” And and there were people have those conversations i will be at a at a regular uh dinner with people who have absolutely nothing to do with this they’re completely out of the realm and they’re talking about which side of the faction they support and that’s what the propaganda is doing do you think they’re using reporters like yourself as part of their propaganda machine
i think so and I think that’s why a lot of reporters die are murdered because a lot of reporters don’t want to be a part of that but for the most part they have no choice especially people who are working for small to medium-sized outlets in regions where there is such a cartel stronghold and they don’t want certain news stories to get out or they want certain news stories to get out with a narrative yeah and they’re not even getting paid for that it’s just a life ordeath scenario
oh wow
wow how much of this how much of the cartels money are they are they or how much money in general are they seeding into US politics a lot of the cartel money is in the US point blank
mhm
whether that is through uh the shell companies or certain operations that they’re conducting in the US in terms of politics there are a number of US politicians or US authorities in law enforcement that are on the cartel payroll for the most part this happens in border towns or in states that are major profit regions for the cartel so that’s California Texas Arizona
so are these local governments or all the all the way up to
It goes up high on the food chain how high how high are they getting
to the federal level
to the federal level
yeah i I’ve seen it firsthand what who in the federal level senators congressmen what are we talking about fbi agents what do you have any idea
on the federal level cartels have basically infiltrated any member of politics that they believe they can get to that is willing to work with them and that can push policy that directly benefits them mhm
so whether it’s senators congressmen uh DEA ICE even they have their clause in all of these departments
do you think these people know that it’s the cartel who’s influencing them
i think a lot of them do how would you know
how would I know that these people know or how would they know would the car would the cartel want these people to know that that’s who the I mean basically it’s lobbying right so does would the cartel want their their quote unquote lobbying firm being known as I would think they wouldn’t want them known as this is a cartel lobbying firm this is set up by you know the Sinaloa or whoever i think I think I think if I was them I would try to get my narrative or whatever I’m lobbying for to appear as something innocent or just money driven or you do you see what I’m saying i I I wouldn’t want the I wouldn’t want the individual to know that it’s coming from a cartel because that would be that would I think
less incentivizing and it’s blatantly illegal um it happens both ways so certainly they have these lobbying groups set up or they can push their agenda in a way where it doesn’t seem like it’s directly coming from them now at the end of the day I have an issue with this because I find that it’s hard not to know anyone with half a brain especially if you’re in a high ranking position of power you can dig deep enough to figure it out and they do have ways to use it to their advantage with certain companies they have and and and I mean what what would they I mean you wouldn’t have to like what’s an obvious one an obvious one they would be lobbying for would be border security right
so nobody would have to know that it’s the cartel that’s lobbying for that um specific you know for the border they could just they could do the you know they could just get a group of people that here in I mean the US is very divided they could just get somebody that that thinks that we should have open borders and create that group and fund it and then all it is is just a bunch of people that want to let illegal immigrants through you know what I mean and they and they and they lobby that so it doesn’t it doesn’t have to that’s how I would do it i mean but what other things would they be lobbying for other than open borders
it would be open borders it would be lack of oversight of agriculture coming from Mexico
um it would certainly be uh drug policies so like safe supply stuff um and also I think a major one would be the arms dealing too because the majority of of the guns that are used at Mexican crime scenes like 70% are Americanmade firearms so all of their guns are coming from most of their guns are coming from the US and so they’re not going to want that to shut down or to stop at any point in time because without those weapons they can’t commit the crimes and because it it you can’t really get a gun in Mexico the way you can get a gun here which is exactly why they use that to their advantage so that would be and not to mention a lot of the straw buyers too are moving guns from the US into Canada to arm these same people so that’s a big one that I I believe that they’re lobbying for i mean yeah the border one is a big one but without the guns they can’t run any of their operations but you asked you know why would they want people to know that they are cartel if they’re lobbying or or have certain they have money in certain re uh aspects of of the federal government i think in some ways sometimes them instilling that fear does work depending on what the initiative is and I think they do use that to their advantage sometimes and there are certain people that they can have in their pockets knowing that the fear and knowing that the cartel is on my ass is going to keep them doing exactly what they want and keep them from moving away or speaking out because once you have the cartel on your ass the only way to get out of that is is basically to die
mhm that’s certainly less of the circumstance but it it it is happening how are they using the migrant crisis as a tool like people crossing the border
as a tool for what
yeah cartels control over human crossings including children the use of distraction groups to tie up border patrol and the human cost rape enslavement and exploitation of migrants it sounds I have it as they’re using it as a tool for all these things can you elaborate on any of that or
I mean I have no idea
what is the use of distraction groups the use of distraction groups is so that they can get people and and drugs across the border there was actually just a video about this it was in um in Texas where you have these five guys in a pickup truck and they’re doing donuts around and um all the CBP pulls up on them and they’re trying to outrun them well at the same time that’s happening there’s people a coyote illegally crossing people or drugs across the border and that’s a really common tool that they use where they’ll you know they’re trying to distract them one way and do something else they they do these smoke screens and not just blatantly like that at the border but with a lot of other actions too um especially when
So they’re just creating a bunch of diversions
yes they’re creating a bunch of diversions uh they’ll do this too especially if there’s like a highlevel person who needs to get around and that can’t typically cross in into Mexico or the US vice versa their regular border crossing and they need to move this person
and in a stealth way so they’ve gotten very good at knowing what captures American authorities attention and how to use that so they can run these profitable or highlevel operations at the same time that something else is going on do you think they’re aware of all the tech that we’re implementing along the border of all and what exactly it does do you have any insight on that
i think that they Okay so with the people I’ve spoken to especially who are working in organized crime in border regions they know that the the border tech has been amped up in terms of to what extent not as much as they should they don’t know as much as they should know but they are very hopeful i sound like a spokesperson for the cartel that’s not the point here oh my god is this is just you know relaying the information but they’re very hopeful in their ability to adapt because they’ve always done it it’s it’s just a matter of what has changed how has the US ramped it up the same thing they do with the Mexican government actually okay you want to put these troops here oh you want to implement this uh I don’t know thermal technology that can tell you if someone’s even close to the border along the over 2,000 mi that it spans we’re going to find a way around that they typically do that and and and that’s why they’ve been so successful and profitable in every operation but I don’t want to sound like a spokesperson for the cartel and I sometimes you know talking about exactly how they’re reacting to certain things or but they do adapt that’s one thing there’s a crackdown and they find another way it I mean it just happened in Sinoa the US and Mexico were trying so hard had this this whole operation to get the main security enforcer for the Sinaloa cartel La Peris
they get him there’s a new guy in and he’s bigger and better than ever before i mean they’ll always find a way around it oh Trump in his first administration is cracking down on the southern border [ __ ] it let’s go to Canada and so you can put border technology across all 2,000 miles of the southern border and have it to the point where it is like Guantanamo Bay it’s it’s they find a way because if human smuggling and drug trafficking is just that profitable for them where they’re making billions tens of billions of dollars a year by doing it they will find a way around it i mean wouldn’t that be an incentive for you
yeah and would you find a way around it
i would try the thing is I don’t I mean I don’t know how much we’ve actually is still to this day I don’t know how much we’ve actually pushed them you know what I mean i I think you know if it if we get serious about this I don’t think they will find a way but
and I agree with you i I don’t think they will either because cartels against full-fledged US government
Mhm that’s just a complete power imbalance the issue stands with the US hasn’t pushed as hard as it could and so the cartels do feel somewhat untouchable i mean there are certain actions that you know you extradite the 29 gapos you get El Mayo into the states you crack down fentinel seizures at the border have gone down significantly okay but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg and they’re so used to operating in a country with so much corruption and impunity where money talks that if you had a government come in where none of that works the old tricks don’t work on this new dog
it would have to be a complete overhaul for them and like we talked about they’re certainly preparing for this have you heard any any rumors about cartels um aligning with traditional terrorist organizations what does that look like
especially with Iran that’s that’s a huge thing uh in terms of training what kind of weaponry they need um and intelligence is a big one particularly when targeting America so I know that there was an operation with Canadian authorities that were looking into organized crime groups operating with terrorist groups and particularly in Iran and the main objective of this was to find out how the efforts between the two were directly impacting Canadian intelligence efforts so they were trying to compromise all of the intelligence gathering and um covert operations that were going on through attacking their intelligence and the thing about the Mexican drug cartels is especially since Trump’s first administration they have had to amp up their efforts in knowing what the US’s next move is going to be because the US next move determines just how much money they’re going to make and how they have to adapt and so Iran and Mexican drug cartels do have a connection and this is with high ups of the drug cartels um to understand how the US is operating their intelligence what type of actions the US could potentially take or is taking silently against drug cartels and ensure that there’s they kind of build a firewall around themselves in terms of weaponry a lot of the techniques and certain arms that drug cartels are using particularly now have been learned from organized terrorist groups that have been around forever and on a side note it goes into their propaganda too because Mexican drug cartels post that typical press release video um admitting or denying a certain fatal tragedy that occurred or something that like a big news story they address it head-on they have the script they have the lighting they even have the logo the banner on it and the background music just like the same way ISIS was doing and the Taliban and those video videos now like when when ISIS and the Taliban was doing it it was on social media whatever but it was mainly being sent to news outlets or you know they were posting it on their page it was it was more um confined whereas now it’s it just you put it out there and it spreads like a virus and so a lot of their techniques which is why it’s interesting that it took so long to declare Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations because a lot of their techniques whether it comes to uh gathering intelligence or infiltrating uh the US or Canada and the way they are able to manage public perception of themselves it completely matches that of traditional terrorist groups wow the only difference I would say is the way a lot of these traditional terrorist groups would directly go and and attack Americans right like there was a bomb there was a shooting someone drove through a crowd for Mexican drug cartels it’s it’s chemical warfare it’s drugs they don’t need to go and plant a bomb in the name of of drug cartels do you think it’ll ever get kinetic with um down at the southern border if if American boots hit Mexican soil i’ve been saying this and I really do believe that if American especially tier one operators get into get into Mexico we’re going to see that traditional terrorism style happen in the US particularly along the border region because at that point it’s like what we said they have nothing to lose and they will go down with a fight and if they’re already working with traditional terrorist groups they know what the playbook says man that’s terrifying to hear what do you think the US and Canada should be doing that we’re not doing i think they there needs to be you know it’s gotten better especially at the southern border i I I really believe so and I’ve been covering that region since for a while now so you can kind of compare the differences but what needs to be done is to tackle the root of the problem the indoctrination and the financial pipelines because grabbing this you know picking up this big guy that runs a major faction and flaunting him around and parading him and saying “Look what we did we captured this guy.” that works for five minutes before it’s just as bad as again or worse
after they got Elmo Mayo the Siloa cartel just [ __ ] exploded it made hell like life was a living hell is is a living hell for a lot of people in that region and so I think tackling it at its root is what needs to happen but that’s a that’s a huge operation that goes beyond just going in and and doing this covert mission to grab someone you have to somehow put a stop to propaganda at its deepest form monitor the socials and target financial pipelines like I said remittance apps the banks the companies that are fronting for these groups and that’s a lot harder I think do you think that’s harder
yeah that would be tough it could be done but I you know what’s interesting is I just I just don’t think that we have really pushed on them at all and so it’ll be if that time comes I mean to me securing our border is not pushing back that’s just [ __ ] that we should have done a long time ago it’s a bad date
but if we actually go on the offensive then I mean I think this could be wrapped up
what would the offensive look like for you like I said I think I think what I would do is initially I would pit them against each other to weaken them
um to keep our people safe you know let’s weaken them as much as we possibly can in the meantime you know you could send in the intel reps uh the operatives to start tackling the financials you know you could out bid them on the gas you all there’s a lot of things you could do i’d start then I’d do that and then to to wrap it up I would send in the tier one units
and I think it is slowly happening to demoralize them also lot of strikes
because it is a psychological game too
yep there is you know aside from the CIA planes that are flying over the northern states there’s a vessel that’s docked a US vessel that’s docked at the port of Veraracruz um the border is militarized and then you have like ICE DEA working allegedly working with Mexican forces to conduct operations without having to step foot in Mexico but I it seems to be like these are all precursors to something bigger that could potentially happen especially if the US isn’t seeing the result that it wants which is what demoralized cartels less fentinel less human smuggling or for it to stop altogether which I just don’t see happening mhm
but at the end of the day you still have to deal with this big figurehead which is the Mexican government who has too much reason not to crack down on these guys
yeah yeah well I mean it is what it is with them it’s our people that are being affected you know they don’t want to help their people that’s on them
but but what the hell do I know i’m just a podcaster so anyways well I forgot to give you something here at the beginning
okay
so do it at the end
everybody gets a gift
thank you so much
vigilance Elite Gummy Bears
so excited for asking me about this
not smuggled across the border but um but before we wrap it up what are you getting ready to get into anything exciting yes I’m really excited so I just did um I’m doing my podcast with Ironclad Borderline Dispatches so I’m basically just going boots on the ground to show people exactly what’s happening without having you know you know I try to always do beyond the headline reporting where I go and I speak to the people who are affected right there and paint the picture of what’s going on so on Borderland dispatches I I went to the southern border and then I went up to the northern border i showed everyone just how open it is um and soon we’re going to be going in uh back to Mexico to just show some of the cartel ridden regions and how it varies from different areas and who’s running what does that mean you’re having a crew go with you i operate alone
good for you man
i’ve been doing that and actually it’s funny a lot of people don’t know that but I’ve always done this alone so it’s a lot of work but I think it’s worth it you know that’s a a trust thing too i don’t I feel like if I go in alone more people will talk to me yeah and share more information
it’s disarming
well where can we find you
you can find me on the the podcast Apple Spotify Borderland Dispatches i also have my Substack it’s my full name katarina Schultz everything is my full name with the most complicated spelling Szul C all right Katarina
thank you so much thank you i really appreciate you
i appreciate you having me here
and uh hope to see you again likewise

Katarina Szulc is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Mexico, renowned for her hard-hitting investigative reporting on cartel violence, political corruption, and social issues. A 2021 graduate of the BCIT Journalism program, she has covered breaking news, politics, and community stories for outlets like CBC, CityNews Vancouver, and Substack, where her newsletter dives into Mexico’s gritty underbelly, including U.S.-Mexico anti-cartel strategies and criminal indictments. Previously, Szulc reported on local issues in Edmonton and Vancouver, focusing on government policies, public safety, and affordable housing, often incorporating data-driven analysis. Szulc’s work spans television, radio, online platforms, and audio storytelling.

Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkoujZQZatbqy4KGcgjpVxQ/join

Shawn Ryan Show Links
SUBSCRIBE: http://www.youtube.com/@ShawnRyanShow
Sign up: https://shawnryanshow.com/pages/newsletter
Support the Show: https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite
Download Free Content: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lF-8_5jwRc5eAhzDkqqCOp-6yvd05vAw?usp=sharing

Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shawn-ryan-show/id1492492083
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5eodRZd3qR9VT1ip1wI7xQ?si=59f9d106e56a4509

Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shawnryanshow/
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shawnryanshow/
Follow on X: https://twitter.com/ShawnRyanShow

SRS Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4pqo9Uoh0WuUKxw0BmaK1yrg9Kd7E4lk

#vigilanceelite #shawnryanshow

Katarina Szulc Links:
X – https://x.com/KatarinaSzulc
IG – https://www.instagram.com/katarinaszulc
Substack – https://katarinaszulc.substack.com
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@katarinaszulc

Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors:
https://www.shawnlikesgold.com⁠⁠
https://patriotmobile.com/srs
https://www.rocketmoney.com/srs
https://www.drinkhoist.com⁠⁠ – USE CODE SRS
⁠⁠https://americanfinancing.net/srs
nmls 182334, ⁠⁠nmlsconsumeraccess.org
⁠⁠https://www.tryarmra.com/srs⁠⁠
⁠⁠
00:00 Introduction & Gaining Access to Cartels
08:30 Cartel Activity in Canada
15:33 Law Enforcement Challenges
32:09 Recruitment Strategies & Influence
45:05 Cartels Expanding into Oil & Agriculture
52:27 Impact on Mexican Farmers & Infrastructure
59:22 Border Security & Cartel Control
01:06:45 Cartel Warfare & Technology
01:25:56 Ties to China & Fentanyl Production
01:42:31 Propaganda & Social Media Recruitment
01:54:50 Cartel Influence in US Politics
02:07:19 Terror Links & Military Options
02:16:27 Final Thoughts & Conclusion