In late 2010, US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents readied a sting in McAllen, Texas, a bustling mid-size city that sits in front of Reynosa, Mexico. An undercover agent posing as part of a New York drug ring had invited the target of the sting to meet him in a parking lot in the city to finalize a drug deal the two had been discussing for a few months.
The target was Mauricio Soto Caballero, a Mexico City-based consultant with some shady connections, and he was seeking an entry point into the world of cocaine trafficking. But for the DEA, he represented something much bigger: the chance to crack a case investigators believed penetrated not only the upper reaches of the drug trade but also the upper reaches of Mexican politics.
During their conversations, Soto had agreed to take possession of a vehicle with 10 kilograms of cocaine in it. Soto crossed the border and arrived at the meeting in a car with two associates. The undercover agent got into his car and gave Soto the keys to the car with the cocaine. For taking possession of the car, the undercover agent promised Soto a reward of one kilogram of cocaine. The two parties went their separate ways.
A short time later, the DEA knocked on Soto’s hotel room door and told him he was under arrest.
The value of Soto had little to do with drug trafficking. He had, in the past, helped with political campaigns, among them those of current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Popularly known as AMLO for his sing-songy Spanish acronym, López Obrador had run for president numerous times.
The DEA agents believed that during the 2006 presidential election, Soto had worked as a political coordinator for AMLO and, among other tasks, had channeled millions of dollars from a Mexican drug trafficking organization to the AMLO campaign. Nab Soto, they thought, and they would take a step closer to finding out if AMLO knew his campaign had received drug money.
This story is based on more than a dozen interviews, including with several current and former law enforcement officials and diplomats with knowledge of the investigation and who wished to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly, or they were worried about their security.
It was a bold criminal case and not one that agents typically tackle, given the challenges and potential political pitfalls of going after a would-be president. Investigations like this illustrate how organized crime seeks to get its hooks into politicians at the highest levels, but they are incredibly complicated. Money is moved in cash, so there is typically no paper trail. Witnesses are often criminals, making juries and fellow law enforcement alike reluctant to rely on their word. Going after high-level political targets can undermine an agent’s career and upend diplomatic relations.
Issues like these would eventually derail this case as well, but at this stage of the process, the agents still had their sights set on AMLO, and Soto pushed them one step closer. They presented him with two options. He could stay in McAllen and go through a process that would include several public court appearances before being extradited to New York and tried. Or he could agree to cooperate and travel with the agents to New York right away, where prosecutors would discuss a possible deal in return for his cooperation.
Soto opted to travel to New York immediately.
The Meeting
When AMLO decided to run for president in 2006, Mexican politics was in a state of flux. In 2000, the country’s preeminent political organization, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional – PRI), had lost presidential elections for the first time in 71 years. In its place, the conservative National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional – PAN) took over the presidency. At the same time, AMLO, who headed the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de la Revolución Democrática – PRD), won elections to become mayor of Mexico City. He left office in 2005 with sky-high approval ratings, which made him a household name and got him the nod to be the PRD’s presidential candidate for 2006.
The PRI had combined traditional patronage, populism, and deep-seated corruption to create a remarkably durable political system. Even those on the outside knew the price of doing business, including the criminal organizations that managed Mexico’s lucrative drug-production areas and trafficking corridors.
The PRI’s defeat in 2000 upended this system. Instead of one party through which bribes could be channeled, suddenly there were three. Instead of one party controlling the country’s key judicial, intelligence, and security forces, now there were various competing interests and factions. Instead of one party controlling the banking laws, the procurement contracts, the immigration services, customs offices, regulatory agencies, and all the other government offices that help criminal groups move tons of illicit drugs through Mexico and then launder their proceeds, now there was an endless array of power- and cash-hungry bureaucrats and intermediaries.
As this new system took shape, criminal groups began to look for new interlocutors in the government to help them do business and keep them out of jail. Among those groups was the Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO). Run by several brothers of the Beltrán Leyva family, the BLO was among Mexico’s most feared criminal organizations. By 2005, the BLO had operations in a half-dozen Mexican states and was spreading into more.
At that time, the BLO, along with the Sinaloa Cartel, was part of the so-called Federation. The Federation, as its name suggested, was made up of several groups that had aligned in the early 2000s following the escape of Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán from prison. But these alliances were fragile, and Mexico’s underworld was also in the midst of an upheaval. Criminal groups, no matter their stated allegiances, were vying for control of many of the same marijuana and opium poppy-production areas, as well as the all-important US-border trafficking corridors, which gave them access to the most lucrative drug-consuming country in the world.
To secure their investments and expand into new areas, these criminal groups began to create their own mini-armies. The BLO’s was led by Édgar Valdez Villareal, a brash native of Laredo, Texas. “La Barbie,” as he was known, was a high school football player who had risen from selling marijuana in Laredo to becoming the BLO’s tip of the spear and a large drug trafficker in his own right.
SEE ALSO: Was Mexico Cartel Enforcer ‘La Barbie’ a US Informant?
But the battle for criminal supremacy was not just waged by armed wings. Mexico’s criminal groups sought any advantage they could get, and it was in this context that, around the end of 2005, the BLO sought a meeting with AMLO representatives in a hotel along the western seaboard. According to US authorities, who took the statements of three people who attended the meeting and two others who found out about it later, the meeting took place in Nuevo Vallarta, a small city along the Pacific coast in Mexico’s western state of Nayarit, just north of the more-famous resort city of Puerto Vallarta.
In attendance for the BLO, the witnesses said, were La Barbie and his father-in-law, Carlos Montemayor González; Sergio Villarreal Barragán, alias “El Grande,” a hitman-turned-top-operative who later told investigators that he was the one who had organized the meeting; and Roberto López Nájera, a lawyer for La Barbie.
According to US authorities with knowledge of the investigation, on AMLO’s side was Héctor Francisco “Pancho” León García, a businessman and candidate for senate in the state of Durango for the Coalition for the Good of Everyone (Coalición por el Bien de Todos), a leftist political alliance formed to support AMLO’s candidacy. It was León’s first foray into politics, but he embraced his presidential candidate: His slogan, according to El Siglo de Torreón, was “Yo AMLO a Pancho León,” substituting the word amo (love) for López Obrador’s famous initials.
The other attendee for the AMLO side was a businessman with interests in real estate and some limited connections to the AMLO campaign, who InSight Crime is not naming to protect his security.
Although one of the attendees eventually drew a map of the room and who was in it, details about what exactly was discussed were not precise, since the statements from those who were in the hotel room were years old by the time US authorities obtained them.
Still, from what they could gather, US investigators believed that BLO representatives made a deal with the AMLO campaign: The BLO would give millions of dollars to AMLO’s presidential campaign; in return, AMLO’s team promised to give the BLO first right of refusal on who would be attorney general, which, for the investigators, amounted to a free pass to traffic drugs.
Witnesses also told investigators that, to express his appreciation, Pancho León gave La Barbie a wristwatch they said was worth some $20,000. Later, witnesses said, the BLO returned the favor and helped León pay for one of the large AMLO rallies he would stage.
The Money
When the question of who could receive money on the AMLO side came up, the businessman suggested the name of a consultant that he knew in Mexico City. The consultant was Mauricio Soto Caballero. The businessman and Soto were “business associates,” one investigator with knowledge of the case would later tell InSight Crime. More importantly for the BLO’s purposes, Soto was also a campaign coordinator for AMLO and was close with one of AMLO’s key aides.
In the following weeks, the businessman and Pancho León organized the AMLO side, with the businessman speaking several times to Soto. On the BLO side, US investigators said, La Barbie designated López to handle the arrangements.
In early 2006, López traveled to the swanky, upscale Mexico City neighborhood of Polanco, where Soto had an office. There, he met with the businessman and Soto, the three of them would later tell US investigators. No money was exchanged, but López and Soto hit it off and agreed to meet again.
Over the next few weeks, according to the witnesses, López handed Soto between $2 million and $3 million, which Soto later said he passed to the AMLO campaign. Investigators said that some of the money was also channeled through another alleged BLO operative named Roberto Acosta Islas, alias “R,” who then moved that money through López to Soto, who said he passed it to the AMLO campaign. (US authorities said Acosta was later killed.)
The election did not go as planned. In July 2006, AMLO went on to lose by a razor-thin margin to Felipe Calderón of the PAN. In Durango, Pancho León did not fare any better, losing his senate race to the PAN candidate by around 100,000 votes.
AMLO, however, would not concede easily. After declaring himself the victor, AMLO’s followers hit the streets. Protests went on for months. And after the PRD lost a lawsuit for what it termed “cyber fraud” and Mexico’s top electoral court officially declared Calderón president, AMLO’s followers held a mock inauguration for their “legitimate” president.
The gambit, however, failed. Protests dissipated, and although many polls showed people thought there was some fraud, other polls blamed AMLO for the rising tensions, so he slowly backed down.
In the meantime, Calderón was sworn in, and on December 11, 2006, just 10 days after his inauguration, the new president sent 6,500 troops into his home state of Michoacán. His target was the criminal organization known as the Familia Michoacana. Months prior, the group had infamously tossed five severed heads into a strip club in Uruapan, Michaocán, marking the beginning of a series of gruesome spectacles orchestrated by the cartels to terrorize the Mexican population.
Following the onset of Calderón’s offensive, the violence worsened. In February 2007, Pancho León and two others who were with him disappeared while driving to a meeting on a highway near Torreón, Coahuila. The case was marked by a number of inconsistencies and irregularities, including the mysterious disappearance of evidence. None of the bodies were recovered.
Pancho León was one of thousands of people to disappear in Mexico as the security situation deteriorated rapidly during the Calderón administration. Kidnappings and murders were also on the rise.
Things got worse on January 21, 2008, when Mexico’s armed forces arrested BLO leader Alfredo Beltrán Leyva at his luxury home in Culiacán, the capital and largest city in the state of Sinaloa. Rumors swirled that the Sinaloa Cartel had used its corrupt connections to orchestrate the arrest to remove one of its budding adversaries. The so-called Federation of allied criminal groups dissolved.
War followed. By mid-2008, there would be more than 100 killings in Culiacán alone, including a spate of murders of police. As the BLO-Sinaloa Cartel feud raged, operatives on both sides became increasingly vulnerable. US and Mexican authorities used this as an opening to track another BLO leader, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, for several months in an unprecedented cooperation effort between the two governments.
On December 16, 2009, Mexico’s Marines used the information they gathered to move on a residential building in Cuernavaca, the capital of the state of Morelos. Arturo and four of his bodyguards were killed in the operation. In a classified cable sent out at the time, US officials called it “the highest-level takedown of a cartel figure under the Calderón administration.”
The Informant
The US investigation into the 2006 AMLO campaign began in 2010, just a few months after Arturo’s death, when an informant told an agent about the peculiar meeting in a Nuevo Vallarta hotel. The informant, according to an account by Proceso, which accessed internal government records on him, had taken the alias “Jennifer” when he began collaborating with Mexican authorities in 2007. (A later account by the same author would say he took on the name in 2008, at the behest of US authorities.)
Jennifer was, according to investigators, Roberto López Nájera, the same BLO operative who had attended the Nuevo Vallarta meeting where BLO leaders had proposed exchanging campaign funds for influence over the selection of the country’s attorney general if the AMLO campaign had won the 2006 election. He had also allegedly served as the BLO bag man for the money passed to Soto, the AMLO-campaign coordinator, during their meetings in Polanco in the weeks that followed.
US authorities said they flipped López after his cartel boss, La Barbie, had allegedly kidnapped and disappeared one of López’s relatives because of an internal dispute. La Barbie, in his sentencing hearing years later, would deny he killed anyone during his own storied criminal career. López later started collaborating with Mexican authorities as well.
In those early years as a cooperator – before the investigation into AMLO’s 2006 campaign began – López had proven himself useful. Shortly after becoming an informant, he told US authorities about a former Mexican special police investigator working with the Marshals Service who was leaking information to the BLO. The official would later plead guilty in a US court for accepting a bribe from a man known as “Mr. Nineteen” in exchange for information about an American fugitive who the US Embassy was tracking in Mexico. US investigators told InSight Crime that Mr. Nineteen was the BLO’s nickname for López.
López had also revealed that three members of the organized crime division of the Attorney General’s Office (Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada – SIEDO) were working with the BLO. The three pleaded guilty and started collaborating with Mexican authorities.
However, López’s collaboration with Mexican authorities in later years would prove far more problematic. It included working on Mexican government cases against a top Mexican general, Tomás Ángeles; the former drug czar, Noé Ramírez; and a high-level anti-drug police commander, Javier Herrera Valles. All three were jailed as part of what was called Operación Limpieza, or Operation Cleanup, the Calderón administration’s much-publicized crackdown on in-house, drug-fueled corruption.
Still, all three fought the charges, and by 2013, all three cases would fall apart, in part because of problems with López’s testimonies. In one of the more damning of several news articles about the informant, Proceso said López had a “lethal tongue” and detailed how López changed his stories or was called by prosecutors to fabricate testimony in cases that were crumbling. One former Mexican official who worked at the Attorney General’s Office at the time and spoke to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity said this practice of employing informants to shore up shaky investigations was, and remains, typical.
“In many cases, they would not, and still don’t, corroborate the information provided by the witnesses with other evidence and that is why these cases did and still do fall apart,” the former official said, referring to some prosecutors in the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.
But in 2010, López was still considered a valuable asset, and so the US investigators put him to work on the AMLO case. First, they debriefed him on the details of the hotel meeting in Nuevo Vallarta. López also told investigators about the alleged payments made to Soto, the AMLO campaign coordinator in Polanco.
Who’s who?
Mauricio Soto Caballero
Mauricio Soto Caballero is a Mexico City-based consultant who has held a variety of positions in both the public and private sectors and working with political campaigns. In the 2006 presidential election, he worked as a coordinator for the campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). US investigators say he coordinated the transfer of millions of dollars from the Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) to AMLO’s 2006 campaign for president. More recently, he has been active in political movements with close ties to AMLO and his allies, including co-founding an organization with AMLO aide Nicolás Mollinedo Bastar.
Edgar Valdez Villareal, alias ‘La Barbie’
Edgar Valdez Villareal, alias “La Barbie,” is a former high-ranking enforcer and leader for the BLO. Born in the United States, La Barbie was a low-level marijuana dealer in Laredo, Texas before fleeing to Mexico and joining the BLO. He rose through the ranks to lead one of the group’s principal armed wings before eventually splitting from the group after the death of BLO leader Arturo Beltrán Leyva. Witnesses say la Barbie represented the BLO in the first meeting with the 2006-AMLO campaign. He was eventually arrested in 2010 and is currently serving 49 years in a US prison for drug trafficking.
Nicolás Mollinedo Bastar
Nicolás Mollinedo Bastar, better known as Nico, was officially a chauffeur during AMLO’s time as mayor of Mexico City in the early 2000s, although his controversially high salary spoke to his central importance to AMLO’s political network. Since that time, he has continued to work in politics, working on several of AMLO’s election campaigns, holding public administration roles in local government, and helping launch the political movements Más por México, and the Environmentalist Movement for Mexico, which he co-founded with Mauricio Soto. At the same time, he has established himself as a businessman, attracting controversy because his family businesses have allegedly benefited from his political connections. US investigators claim he received the money paid to AMLO’s 2006-campaign by the BLO. He later became the principal target of the US investigation.
Sergio Villarreal Barragán, alias ‘El Grande’
Sergio Villarreal Barragán, alias “El Grande,” is a former Mexican federal police officer who went on to become a feared hitman and top lieutenant for the BLO. He first started working for the Juárez Cartel while posted in Chihuahua in the 1990s. But in the early 2000s, he began working for the BLO, leading a network of assassins. He attended the first meeting with the AMLO campaign and later told investigators it was him who had set the meeting up. El Grande was arrested in Mexico in 2010 and extradited to the United States in 2012. He was released from prison in 2019, after testifying in several high-profile cases in the United States.
Roberto López Nájera, alias ‘Jennifer’
Roberto López Nájera, alias “Jennifer,” is a Mexican lawyer who once represented the former Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) enforcer, La Barbie. In 2011, López was the star witness in more than 120 criminal cases, some of which allegedly saw public officials falsely charged and accused. López has also claimed to have worked at one time for the Sinaloa Cartel and accused several high-ranking security officials of being paid off by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera. He told US investigators that he played a leading role in funneling BLO money to AMLO’s 2006 election campaign. He is reportedly living in the US in the witness protection program.
What’s more, following the campaign, López and Soto had become unlikely friends. And Soto, investigators found in their debriefings with López, was interested in getting involved in the drug business.
It was in this context that investigators hatched a plan. The DEA had López invite Soto to a meeting at a hotel in Florida. There, López and Soto, along with an undercover DEA agent posing as a drug dealer, discussed getting involved in the drug business together.
No specific plans were made, but investigators said that discussions between López and Soto about drug trafficking continued, and the various parties arranged several other meetings, including the meeting in late 2010 in McAllen, Texas, where Soto received the keys to the car and was later captured.
After he flew to New York with the agents, it is not clear what happened next. InSight Crime could not find any judicial documents related to Soto in the federal judicial database, and Department of Justice officials did not comment, but within a few days, Soto was allowed to return to Mexico.
By all appearances, the case now had an AMLO insider, and it took on a name. They called it Operation Polanco, a reference to the swanky, upscale neighborhood where the money allegedly went from the BLO to the AMLO campaign.
The Committee
The investigation into AMLO’s campaign was both complex and sensitive, so early on, the DEA agents decided they needed approval from what is called the Sensitive Activity Review Committee (SARC). The SARC is consulted when the DEA is entering into tricky legal, ethical, or political territory. For example, undercover agents may want to pose as a priest or a psychiatrist, or are purposely letting drugs or money “walk” from a crime scene, so they can follow their trail.
But the SARC can also be consulted when agents are going after a politician or a top member of law enforcement, which can cause a stir in the media or upend diplomatic relations. According to US investigators, this is why the DEA called the SARC for the AMLO investigation. In 2010, when they were starting the investigation, AMLO did not hold office, but as a former mayor of Mexico City and a candidate who had nearly won the presidential election, he was still a high-profile political figure, and the investigators figured it would cause a stir if he were ensnared in a drug trafficking investigation.
The committee is normally made up of top officials from the DEA, as well as high-level members of its parent agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ). In some instances, other departments may also have a presence on the committee, including officials from the State Department.
But SARCs vary in rigor and effectiveness, depending on the case, the political moment, the US government’s relationship with another country, and other factors. A 2015 DOJ Inspector General’s report described the committee’s review of one program on confidential informants as “inadequate and infrequent.”
When the agents went to the SARC to brief it on its investigation into drug trafficking funds going into AMLO’s 2006 presidential campaign, the committee did not push back. The agents would have to return with written updates every six months, but the investigation had official approval to proceed.
It was around this time the DEA got notified that the businessman who attended the Nuevo Vallarta hotel meeting between the BLO and AMLO campaign emissaries was going to travel to Las Vegas with his family. After the businessman landed, agents followed him and his family and watched as they checked into a sprawling hotel and casino. After getting his room number, they went up and knocked on the businessman’s door.
The businessman opened. The conversation, according to US investigators, was brief. In Spanish, an agent told the businessman who they were and flashed his badge. One of the businessman’s sons was in the room, so they kept their voices low and stood awkwardly at the door.
“I need a drink,” the businessman finally said.
The agents invited the businessman, who was visibly shaken, to speak more with them in the lobby.
The men went downstairs and sat at the bar. One of the agents asked if the businessman wanted a drink. The businessman mumbled that he did, so the agent ordered two, 12-year Macallan’s on the rocks.
The bartender poured the drinks and slid them in front of the men. As the agent began to explain to the businessman what they had heard about the meeting and payments to the campaign, the businessman raised his glass, then tipped it back as if he were doing a shot of tequila.
The Wire
The businessman helped the investigators corroborate the Nuevo Vallarta hotel meeting, as well as some of the other details regarding meetings with López and the movement of money to Soto in Polanco. But he was not charged with a crime and returned to Mexico, where he seemed to steer clear of further legal trouble, even if he was a reluctant cooperator.
Soto, on the other hand, became the central character in the investigation. Among the most important details he provided, US investigators said, was that he had given the money he had received from the BLO to Nicolás Mollinedo Bastar.
More commonly referred to as “Nico,” Mollinedo was AMLO’s driver and later his “logistics coordinator” during AMLO’s time as mayor of Mexico City in the early 2000s. Although he drove the then-mayor in the popular Nissan Tsuru, Nico made something close to $5,000 a month, a scandalous amount, according to news accounts from the time because it was similar to what high officials were earning in the administration.
For US investigators, Nico was the lynchpin in the case and would become the main target because he was one of AMLO’s principal assistants. Flip Nico, the investigators thought, and they could find out what AMLO knew about the BLO’s alleged campaign contribution.
So in 2011, the agents convinced Soto to wear a wire during a couple of meetings with Nico. Nico had become a successful businessman since his time working with AMLO, reportedly buying land, expensive cars, and sending his children to private schools in the United States. And the two men had remained close.
The first time Soto was wired, according to investigators, the recording failed. But the second time, it worked. On the recording, investigators later told InSight Crime, the two can be heard talking about potential problems their interactions with the BLO could cause for them.
They had reason to worry. By then, the Calderón administration had dismantled the upper echelon of the BLO. Most of the Beltrán Leyva siblings, as well as numerous other leaders, were either dead or in jail. This included those who had been in the 2005 meeting in the hotel: La Barbie, his father-in-law, and El Grande, who were all captured in 2010.
During their recorded conversation, Soto and Nico also discussed their legal exposure, in part because of Operación Limpieza, the one that had led to the arrests of former SIEDO officers and the BLO informant who had been working with the Marshals Service in the US embassy.
The recording was useful but did not prove that Nico had committed a crime. Still, it gave the investigators the sense that they were on the right track. Some other things were also falling into place. El Grande, who was in Mexican custody, corroborated some of the details of the Nuevo Vallarta meeting and would go on to corroborate more following his extradition to the United States. A fifth person, who was later identified by the DEA as an El Grande “associate,” also told the DEA that El Grande told him about the meeting in Nuevo Vallarta and that the BLO had given the “AMLO campaign over $2 million” in 2006.
For US investigators, El Grande’s testimony was especially important because, by the time of his arrest, he had an adversarial relationship with La Barbie and López, and thus no incentive to corroborate the account of López, whom El Grande considered a Barbie stooge. The BLO had indeed fractured. There was even a story that claimed La Barbie had helped authorities corral his one-time boss, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, in that Cuernavaca apartment where Arturo met his bloody end.
At this point, DEA investigators were mildly optimistic that the case was coming together, but they had to clear some hurdles before anyone could get indicted. They still could not link AMLO or even Nico to the conspiracy. They had no money trail, just a series of eyewitnesses and some corroborating information from a recorded conversation. What’s more, the statute of limitations on charging people, which is normally five years for these types of crimes, had already passed. Perhaps most damning of all, the politics of the case had changed.
SEE ALSO: Mexico’s 2024 Election Could Spark Violent Criminal Realignments
The Plan
In the years following his narrow election loss in 2006, AMLO had remained active politically, and by late 2011, it was clear he was running for president again, so investigators knew they would need to call a special, hybrid meeting with the SARC to get its approval with attendees in both Washington, DC and Mexico City. Now, the issue the committee had to consider was not just media attention for going after a political figure, it was political interference.
The investigators pressed forward anyway and devised a way to “freshen up the conspiracy,” as one agent put it. The plan was something they believed would deal with both the statute of limitations and the potential political pitfalls of the case. And in late 2011, a few months prior to AMLO’s official launch of his campaign, they presented it to the SARC. Their target, they told the committee, was Nico, who by then was back working with AMLO, helping his new presidential campaign.
The plan was to introduce Nico to an undercover operative at a meeting. At that meeting, the undercover agent would offer Nico $5 million in campaign funding. The contribution would be dressed up as coming from the BLO. Despite its setbacks, the criminal group remained a good cover. One of the brothers still operating outside of prison, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, carried the nickname “The Gentleman,” a nod to his high-class connections.
The quid pro quo, according to investigators, would be the same as the one the BLO had used in the 2006 election: The criminal group would get first right of refusal on the attorney general nominee — in other words, a ticket to traffic drugs.
The process would begin with a cash payment, which agents presumed one of Nico’s couriers would pick up. The mere act of agreeing and accepting the money, one of the investigators argued, would “freshen up the conspiracy” and extend the statute of limitations.
The goal of the sting was to continue pushing up the political ladder. The investigators thought the operation would provoke further telephone conversations between Nico, other associates, and the undercover operative implicating more people in the conspiracy. In an “ideal scenario,” as one agent put it, Nico eventually would travel to the United States where they could arrest him, charge him, then try to flip him, so he would turn on others involved.
But as the investigators finished the presentation, the connection from Mexico City dropped. Others on the call tried to fill in the gaps and then fend off a series of questions centered on the politics of the case. Alternatives were offered, such as doing the sting, then sitting on the investigation until they knew the results of the elections. That way, they argued, they would be able to keep it going and act, should the committee reconsider once AMLO was not a candidate anymore. But the SARC did not appear convinced.
A few days passed before the investigators heard from their bosses. The message was clear: Shut the investigation down.
The Aftermath
The investigators understood the committee’s decision. The SARC was worried about appearances, especially with the elections ramping up in Mexico and AMLO preparing to be on the ballot.
There were other concerns as well. After a period of unprecedented cooperation in counternarcotics matters, which included a large US assistance package and a renewal of extraditions from Mexico to the United States, US-Mexico relations were going through some turmoil. For years, as part of an ambitious counternarcotics operation, the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had let guns purchased under suspicious circumstances in US gun stores “walk” into Mexico, so they could track the weapons in the hopes of arresting high-level cartel members.
But when one of the weapons was found at the scene of the slaying of a US border patrol agent in December 2010, the practice erupted in scandal. Subsequent whistleblower testimony, internal emails, congressional hearings, and media reports on the “Fast and Furious” case showed that hundreds of guns had been allowed to enter Mexico, dozens of which were later found at crime scenes and seized from cartel caches.
The Mexican government was livid. Longtime judicial and law enforcement allies felt betrayed, in part because they were never properly briefed about the longstanding ATF practice. The scandal would hover over bilateral relations for years, and weapons trafficking from the United States to Mexico remains one of several points of contention between the two nations.
Still, the investigators were worried about the implications of letting the case slide. One of them responded to the order to shut down the investigation into the campaign financing with a question to his bosses: “What happens if AMLO wins, and we know this about him?”
AMLO lost the election in 2012, and did not contest the result as he had in 2006. But by the end of the elections, the investigators had moved on to other cases. What’s more, they knew their bosses and the SARC would not have allowed them to reopen the case. Following the elections, the United States was trying to build bridges with a new administration, which was less open to working with the DEA than the previous one and was still smarting over the Fast and Furious scandal.
“Thirteen years ago, the [US Justice] Department followed its internal protocols for handling sensitive, international investigations,” a person familiar with the DOJ investigation’s into the AMLO investigation said. “As a result, the investigative activity was limited in time, constrained in scope to only drug-related criminal activity, noticed in-country, and concluded.”
Everyone else involved in the case moved on as well. Soto, among other endeavors, started an environmental organization with Nico, who continues to trump it on his personal webpage. Nico, for his part, has remained a fixture in the news, in part for how his family has allegedly parlayed his contacts into lucrative land deals and high-level political posts.
Neither responded to InSight Crime’s efforts to speak with them.
The businessman who attended the Nuevo Vallarta meeting and was ambushed by investigators in Las Vegas also remained in Mexico. Efforts to contact him were unsuccessful.
La Barbie was deported to the United States, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking-related crimes, and was sentenced to 49 years in jail. His lawyers did not respond to InSight Crime.
His father-in-law, Montemayor, also pleaded guilty to money laundering and drug trafficking and was sentenced to 34 years in federal prison in the United States. His lawyers did not respond to InSight Crime’s questions.
Sergio Villarreal, alias El Grande, was released from federal prison in 2019, according to US prison records. His lawyers declined to comment.
La Barbie’s lawyer, López, alias Jennifer or Mr. Nineteen, disappeared, and, according to a report in Proceso, went into a witness protection program in the United States.
In 2018, six years after the SARC shut down the investigation, AMLO won the presidency. Relations between the US and Mexico under AMLO have been tense. While Mexico has complained about the weapons trafficking from the US, the US has had its own concerns.
Fentanyl, much of which is illegally manufactured in Mexico, has flooded US streets in recent years, leading to record numbers of overdose deaths. And in 2020, the DOJ captured and charged a former Mexican defense minister with colluding with drug traffickers; the charges were dropped after the AMLO administration’s outcries.
After InSight Crime requested comment on the investigation into AMLO’s 2006 campaign, the DOJ responded: “The Justice Department fully respects Mexico’s sovereignty, and we are committed to working shoulder to shoulder with our Mexican partners to combat the drug cartels responsible for so much death and destruction in both our countries. It is our standard practice not to comment on the existence of any particular investigative activity. We consistently follow strict internal protocols and oversight for handling all sensitive, international investigations.”
AMLO’s term ends in December 2024. His office did not respond to InSight Crime’s efforts to seek comment.
Parker Asmann contributed to this report.