{"id":51462,"date":"2026-07-07T07:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/51462\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T07:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:24:10","slug":"a-cjng-kingpin-at-a-world-cup-semifinal-the-double-life-of-el-menchos-brother-in-law-before-his-us-arrest-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/51462\/","title":{"rendered":"A CJNG kingpin at a World Cup semifinal: The double life of El Mencho\u2019s brother-in-law before his US arrest | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBeautiful Juanita. The semifinal and final dates are coming up. So you can start looking for hotels and flights,\u201d wrote Gerardo Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, one of the leaders of Los Cuinis, the criminal clan that played a key role in turning the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)<\/a> into one of the world\u2019s largest drug-trafficking organizations.<\/p>\n

In the email, the Mexican kingpin asked his wife, Wendy Amaral, to organize a family trip from his hideout in Uruguay to two of the host cities for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.<\/a> Among the options he sent her were tickets costing as much as $21,300, according to a document attached to the message. \u201cAlso look for somewhere you\u2019d like to spend your birthday so you can make a reservation,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, who at the time was posing as a successful Mexican businessman running convenience stores across South America, attended one of the World Cup semifinals.<\/p>\n

On July 9, 2014, he was in S\u00e3o Paulo for the match between Argentina and the Netherlands. Five days earlier, he had driven from Uruguay into Brazil through the Chuy border crossing, according to records from Uruguay\u2019s National Migration Directorate that form part of his U.S. court file.<\/p>\n

Seated close to the pitch at the Arena de S\u00e3o Paulo, the drug trafficker watched the dramatic match, which was decided on penalties. Lionel Messi and Argentina advanced to the final after defeating the Dutch.<\/p>\n

Three days later, on July 12, Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia returned to Uruguay through the same border crossing. He would watch the final \u2014 in which Germany were crowned world champions \u2014 from home.<\/p>\n

\"\"Email from Gerardo Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia.Defensa de Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia<\/p>\n

By then, the capo \u2014 who used the aliases \u201cLalo,\u201d \u201cFlaco\u201d and \u201cSilverio\u201d \u2014 was already on the radar of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Since 2003, he had been trafficking cocaine on a large scale alongside his brothers and his brother-in-law, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes<\/a>, better known as \u201cEl Mencho.\u201d He was also wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service after escaping in 2001 from a halfway house in Oakland, California, where he was serving the final portion of a four-year sentence for possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute. He had been granted permission to leave in search of work, but never returned.<\/p>\n

Investigators have linked Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia to a 750-kilogram cocaine shipment concealed among frozen sharks<\/a> that was intercepted by Mexican authorities on the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula in 2009. He is also accused of involvement in the transport of 4,000 kilograms of cocaine aboard a narco-submarine detected by the U.S. Coast Guard in 2007. <\/p>\n

Authorities have further tied him to at least three killings and to arms trafficking operations that supplied associates of the CJNG.<\/p>\n

Living a double life<\/p>\n

South America became the refuge of Gerardo Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia, his wife and their three children beginning in 2009. They first settled in Argentina and, three years later, moved to Punta del Este, Uruguay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe chose to live on our own, far from everything we had known in Mexico, with the aim of giving our daughter and two sons a different life from the one we had,\u201d Wendy Amaral wrote in a letter to the U.S. federal judge overseeing her husband\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

Before traveling to Brazil for the FIFA World Cup, Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia and his family toured several countries in Europe and Africa. In Botswana, the cartel leader went hunting, one of his favorite pastimes. He also returned to Jalisco \u2014 the Mexican state where his criminal organization originated \u2014 on several occasions.<\/p>\n

In February 2013, he attended one of his son\u2019s birthday celebrations, according to photographs his lawyers submitted as evidence in the criminal case in an attempt to show that he led a family-oriented life and had distanced himself from drug trafficking.<\/p>\n

\"\"Gerardo Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia on his trips to Africa.
\nDefensa de Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia<\/p>\n

\u201cThe frequency of these routine family trips to and from Mexico, and around South America and the rest of the world, is plainly inconsistent with the conduct of someone whom the government claims was, at the time, a leader of a criminal organization,\u201d his lawyers argued in a court filing. \u201cHe started a new life when he moved to Argentina.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of his businesses in Mexico, Hotelito Desconocido, was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department for laundering money<\/a> for the CJNG. He also lost the chain of convenience stores in South America that helped explain his lavish lifestyle. Those stores drew about 1,000 customers a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday [September 2011], the stores set a sales record: 24,063 pesos. We hit our target ahead of schedule,\u201d his manager told him in an email.<\/p>\n

But the image of a wealthy businessman eventually came crashing down in April 2016, when he was arrested in Uruguay. Authorities seized fake identification documents and birth certificates, cellphones and jewelry.<\/p>\n

Four years later, he was extradited to the United States, where he pleaded guilty to drug-trafficking charges. Today, the only way Gonz\u00e1lez Valencia can follow a World Cup is on the television set at the medium-security federal prison in Victorville, California, where he is serving a life sentence.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBeautiful Juanita. The semifinal and final dates are coming up. So you can start looking for hotels and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1285,1287,247,1283,95],"class_list":["post-51462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-valencia","tag-dea","tag-jalisco","tag-mexico","tag-nemesio-el-mencho","tag-valencia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}