Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Sinembargo article
[ Subject Matter: Prison escapes, Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required]
There exists basically three ways to escape from prison, with money, with violence and with ingenuity. If El Chapo Guzman escaped from Puente Grande only hidden inside a laundry basket or from Altiplano through an underground tunnel, his is the master of cunning. But that is not the reality, the man partly responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Mexicans in the last decade, escaped down a highway paved with dollars.
A contrary case is that of Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi, once considered of the three most important fraudster and forgers in the world.
That of Traconi is pure ingenuity and this is his story:
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I have come to notify you of the immediate liberation of the prisoner Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi, recited the judicial functionary while pushing a paper across the desk to the Director, a letter with the heading filled with judicial seals signature and quotes from the law. The Director, Jesus Javier Rodriguez Robles eyed the document hastily.
His face illuminates and he cannot or doesn't want to conceal his joy.
"Bring Traconi here", ordered the Director who assumed as most do, that his nickname was his surname.
Inside, Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi has his original accusation of automobile theft return to his mind, and it made him sick to his stomach. Morelos Jail, almost a shed on half a field, was something easy to deal with for a high school criminal.
"Where are you going Traconi"? asked a guard as he walked through the yard, the smile returning to the forger, slim, lean, light brown hair, long face, a mixture of David Bowie and Roberto Cobo.
[ Subject Matter: Prison escapes, Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required]
There exists basically three ways to escape from prison, with money, with violence and with ingenuity. If El Chapo Guzman escaped from Puente Grande only hidden inside a laundry basket or from Altiplano through an underground tunnel, his is the master of cunning. But that is not the reality, the man partly responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Mexicans in the last decade, escaped down a highway paved with dollars.
A contrary case is that of Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi, once considered of the three most important fraudster and forgers in the world.
That of Traconi is pure ingenuity and this is his story:
Reporter: Humberto Padgett
With his new computer, Mario Alberto scans and reproduces an office of freedom and ballot of compurgation. He forges the corresponding stamps and the necessary signatures of the Director of Execution of Penal Judgements in Morelos and the General Directorate of prevention and social rehabilitation.
From prison he hires an actuary, who hands over the sealed documents to the prison and the next day, then is notified he will be freed.
The plan worked with no corrections, said a confidential report.
Dressed rigorously, his face without expression, the Actuary goes through security check at the prison of Jonacatepec, Morelos, and followed the routine for entry into the prison. Arriving at the prison directors door, he greeted him and then clarified the purpose of his trip.
Dressed rigorously, his face without expression, the Actuary goes through security check at the prison of Jonacatepec, Morelos, and followed the routine for entry into the prison. Arriving at the prison directors door, he greeted him and then clarified the purpose of his trip.
I have come to notify you of the immediate liberation of the prisoner Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi, recited the judicial functionary while pushing a paper across the desk to the Director, a letter with the heading filled with judicial seals signature and quotes from the law. The Director, Jesus Javier Rodriguez Robles eyed the document hastily.
His face illuminates and he cannot or doesn't want to conceal his joy.
"Bring Traconi here", ordered the Director who assumed as most do, that his nickname was his surname.
Inside, Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi has his original accusation of automobile theft return to his mind, and it made him sick to his stomach. Morelos Jail, almost a shed on half a field, was something easy to deal with for a high school criminal.
"Where are you going Traconi"? asked a guard as he walked through the yard, the smile returning to the forger, slim, lean, light brown hair, long face, a mixture of David Bowie and Roberto Cobo.
Traconi shared hugs with the other prisoners, warning them to act as God intended. He walked the path well known to him, he had worked there for the past few months, he had convinced the Warden to buy a computer and scanner to make his office a more efficient place. He proposed that he should work with the new equipment.
And in addition he and Jesus Javier would be together longer. This had been the case, but now Traconi was free, congratulations, the Director of the prison looks at Traconi and hugs him. The Director orders that everything is carried out quickly, he thinks that Traconi should not be in prison one second more than strictly justified by the law.
Chavez Traconi and Rodriguez Robles are based in the house of the public servant, they celebrate day and night and drink their fill.
But, he understood well that happiness doesn't last forever. Rodriguez Robles opened the door of his car for Traconi to enter. The left Cuernavaca and took the highway to Mexico City, they only stopped when they reached the airport. Mario Alberto bought a ticket to Tijuana, hugged his friend and walked off until he disappeared from sight.
Jesus Javier returned to the prison. One week after the farewell he phoned Jonacatepec.
"Can you report on the situation of the prisoner Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi?" asked the voice on the other end of the line.
"He must be well", responded Rodriguez Robles, possibly melancholic.
"How is it that he must be well?" the doubt lit up on the other side of the phone.
"Because he is free, we were notified of his release a few days ago".
The Director detailed all the steps from the arrival of the Actuary and a little further back.
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These days of the life of Mario Alberto, November 2001, are detailed in the official document drafter by the Federal District Prison Authorities, where Traconi was imprisoned called " criminal networks" and of which Sinembargo has a copy:
Rodriguez Robles remains a prisoner in the same detention centre which officially housed Traconi while Traconi is free from prison.
Mario Alberto travelled another time to Tijuana, and immersed himself in the tide of dealers, prostitutes, junkies and gringo kids.
Again the outside world, the sad outside world.
But he could not stay in Jonacatlan any longer. Not because of the charge of theft of an automobile. Because the "King of Fraud", and Police and reporters agreed to call him, one of the three major scammers in the world according to the classification of Interpol, would never defile his hand with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver to force the lock of a car. He was also known by the nicknames "Captain Fantasma" or "Captain Ghost", and "The Count of Monte Cristo".
This charge was fabricated against him by an old acquaintance, Jesus Miyazawa, ex-member of the white brigade, ex Chief of Judicial Police of Federal District and Morelos, and concerning El Traconi, ex-director of the prison in the North of Mexico City.
To stay in Jonacatlan, would allow the Commander to win the game, he would say years later
"I escaped because they accused me of stealing a car, if I wanted, I could go and take 10 from the fucking agency! Miyazawa put this on me because he wanted me to give him all my work, he was an asshole".
Childhood and destiny
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Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi was born on the 27th of November 1950 in Monterrey. He was the fourth of five children, the first two children being born of another mother. The references to his childhood, would return to the forger many years later while he was in prison.
The first instances of his encounters with the Police in his later, thick criminal antecedents, with his talent for copying, at the beginning of 1980, he was a young man living a pretentious lifestyle, by giving out forged cheques, then using them in Hotels and Restaurants in Mexico City and Commercial Airlines.
"How did you realise that you were good at counterfeiting and fraud?", asked Alfredo Ornelas, Chief of Psychology and then Deputy Director of the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the middle of the first decade of this century.
"Well Father, as is his style when referring to a respected authority, when I was a kid and went to school, I had to go to classes I didn't like. It bored me so much and I didn't pay attention, so I did badly in an exam".
I went to a school that sent the reports out by mail, and when I knew that it had gone out, I ran home to get the letter before my Mother returned home from work. I opened the envelope. I saw the signature on it and copied it. I forged the letter in a good light, and my father was happy with me when he read the report.
He realised that being a forger could bring many benefits, millions of pesos, falsifying documents, cheques, commented Ornelas in an interview. He had an extraordinary ability to copy signatures, for the handwriting experts, it was a problem to determine if a signature had been forged or was authentic. He enjoyed deceiving people, knowing that the following day they would realise that all they had in front of them were lies.
Traconi told his story to all of the prison specialists in the prisons, in which he was housed.
He was a convict myth, and an obligatory reference in modern prison studies in Mexico. He was neither a thief or a brutal drug trafficker. He lived among them, but was never assumed to be one of them. He had the clarity of his intellectual superiority and of his physical inferiority, but compensated for this with his ability to convince the Chiefs, Officials and Actuaries of the Jails that he went through, to manipulate them so he could achieve his goals.
In the social scale of the prisons, there was a higher class, and within that "the intellectuals".
Traconi understood the emotions which made up his personality. It contributed in the construction of his myth. He told those who wanted to listen that he had falsified the signatures of actors and actresses, television personalities and politicians, including the Presidnt Jose Lopez Portillo. In part due to his Italian mother he was a prodigious polyglot, and spoke Italian, French, German and for some reason hard to fathom, Thaiwanese.
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Traconi was married at age 16 with a girl who got pregnant, with her and two other women he would have a total of 7 children, all were distant from him except for one particularly enigmatic child of his that would become his accomplice and main link with the outside world.
Also at aged 16 he found he first job, as a messenger. Later he would work as a sales agent, bank cashier, an employee at the Office of Social Communication of the President of the Republicand of the Secretary of the Government, and finally a litigant.
In dozens of interview by diagnostic psychologists they reiterated that he had completed a law degree and acquired speciality in communication sciences.
An information file by the Penetentiary Administration of the Federal District reads:
"Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi, David Garcia Guzman or Alberto Tello Bustalacci ( he used all these names and others later on) he is considered one of the most important forgers internationally. He posses an intellectual coefficient in the superior range of Average II. He claims to be a law graduate but we have not seen documents to support this", they said.
"It is certain that he has accumulated sentences of 55 years, 1 month and 15 days. However his is a scholar of the law and from his prison cell he has escaped justice in at least 60 charges brought against him by defending himself and has been acquitted".
He posses a photographic memory, which gives him the ability to memorise in the smallest detail, any document or signature which he can reproduce with frightening accuracy.
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Journeys to the stars
The life, work and death of Traconi are contained in a thick file of copies on carbon paper or printed on modern computers. With those documents and the interviews with people who knew him best, i.e. his colleagues in prison, it is possible to reconstruct his history.
His first prison sentence was in 1982, when he was 31 years of age and had been experimenting with fraud and forgery. His antecedents date back to 1976 when the Federal Government of Jose Lopez Portillo started, in Mexico City when Carlos Hank Gonzalez and his Chief of Police, Arturo El Negro Durazo Moreno, were the authentic crime heads in the Mexican Capital.
How did Traconi get caught? That answer lies in the record 75/82, and the judgement of 21st of September 1982.
Days before, Mario Alberto was ready to start a travel agency in Calle Monterrey in the Roma Colonia, in Mexico City.
Everything was ready: new furniture, five copiers, typewriters, a dozen calculators and a huge colour television to entertain clientele: He had two vehicles, a Datsun and a Volkswagen Combi purchased at the car sales on University Avenue. He had twelve thousand dollars in travellers cheques and had got a computer, which was a novelty at that time.
But more importantly he possessed around 2580 airline tickets for Aeromexico, Mexicana and a half a dozen international airlines, together with 33 validation plates necessary in those times.
He bought the travellers cheques with American Express cheques that bounced, his business had also applied for an unlimited credit limit card whilst posing as an Executive Journalist with a degree.
These were his most ingenious days. The combi van and the Datsun and part of the premises he bought in the same manner. The aviation tickets and the validation plates were obtained by robberies on real travel agencies.
The journey of Mario Alberto to the fantasy isle stopped on the 24th of June 1982, when the director for research and crime, Sahagun Vaca, a police officer who tortured and murdered, raided his place of business and confiscated many things but not all.
the incipient "King of Fraud" started a business of buying, in the North prison, he bought stolen cheques, so that prisoners leaving were lined up to come and see him, and he sold nine cheques for 200,000 pesos.
The cheques were certified and filed with a typewriter and seals that the prison authorities allowed him to have in his cell.
One of these ex-convicts wanted to amplify his association with Mario Alberto and he bought him at a bargain price a "legal" round ticket Acapulco - Mexico City, and he was detained for using a document stolen from the Agency called "Trips to the Stars", from which Mario Alberto had also stolen their television.
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Caro Quintero
In April of 1985 the North prison received the most important event in its history. Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, the Sinaloan drug traffickers who had made the mistake of killing Enrique Kiki Camarena, and under cover agent of the DEA, the main anti drug agency in the United States.
The narco traffickers were housed in a unit closer to the idea of Maximum Security than existed in prior times.
As related by a functionary of those days:
"We made dormitory 10 a VIP zone. You could find seafood and the best alcoholic drinks and TV actresses inside the prison for the entire two weeks of Caro Quinteros party. He and Don Neto soon discovered the talent of Chavez Traconi and made him administrator".
"Mario Alberto negotiated directly with the Director of the Prison, who was Jesus Miyazawa and the Chief of Security, Alberto Pliego Fuentes. Later Mario Alberto extended his business he was committing fraud and forging documents again. They let him work with the condition that he return their share and Mario Alberto complied with the rules".
"This was when he impersonated an Arab Sheikh, with the support of the authorities, they rented several rooms in the Sheraton Hotel, with an appointment with some Jewish Jewellers, who do not carry printed catalogues of their Jewels to important appointments, but the real thing. They let him out and he returned with samples, he divided the Jewels with his bosses and went on vacation in Tijuana, he always loved Tijuana".
Caro and Fonesco were transferred to a Federal Maximum Security Centre. Miyazawa, ex member of the White Brigade, the guard who persecuted and "disappeared" dissident communists in the 1970's, he became head of Judicial Police of Morelos, where he was accused of kidnapping and murdering kidnappers who were not working under agreement with him. He was working with Governor Jorge Carrillo Olea, who was related to Amado Carrillo "El Senor de los Cielos", successor or Caro and Don Neto and predecessor of the drug trafficker El Chapo Guzman.
Pliego Fuentes was in the Judicial Police in Mexico State, where he sold protection to various kidnappers, among them Daniel Arizmendi, El Mochaorejas, who used it to stop the plagiarist, the Government of the State of Mexico, then the responsibility of Cesar Camacho Quiroz, now National President of the PRI, he was considered the "Super Police", he lived out his last days under the nickname "super-kidnapper" and in prison, because he was in fact part of the Juarez Cartel. He died of cancer in the prison that is today called "Altiplano", the same one from which El Chapo Guzman escaped.
A good card player, Mario Alberto was not only playing with the hand that was touching him to seek protection, he resolved a commutation of sentence for treatment in liberty or to win a case for prescription of crimes that he was charged with. Traconi was also returning to the streets thanks to the pardon from his victims, and so it was he left the North prison.
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The Coca Cola event
Mario Alberto crossed the threshold of the Santa Martha Acatitla prison on 13th of September of 1993. He was immediately interested in the print studio adjacent to the auditorium, and he managed to obtain a prison job there. A few weeks later on a Friday, Traconi smiled at what was arriving in the direction of the prison on the morning of that day.
Minutes later, a trailer complete with refreshments had stationed itself at the entrance of the oldest prison in Mexico City, one of the hardest in the world too.
Outside, the trailer was from Coca Cola, they had come to make a delivery and passed their paperwork to a guard.
"And this coke, who bought it? asked the prison director Carlos Tornero Diaz, and the sub director of the prison, Jaime Alvarez Ramo
"Nobody? The spoke with the Chief of Administration.
"I didn't order anything", said the prison Administrator.
Outside the office was Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi.
"Bring Traconi in here", ordered the director.
"He came in laughing, as always. He radiated a certain kind of bonhomie" said an ex functionary.
"Look Mario Alberto, how is it this trailer is here?"
"Hey Father, its a present for all the gang, man. Don't worry, all is ready", he said smiling in his effeminate tone.
"You bought it?"
"Yes, I will buy it, well you know".
"And how will you pay for it"?
"Well, you know how I pay for things".
"And you are not scared asshole?", the functionary was beginning to enjoy this.
"Fear of what? that they will send me to prison!", he laughed, don't worry. You know that I have always been suspicious, give the gang a chance they are poor".
"And you are assuring me that there will be no problems for the institution?".
"Señor there will be no problems", said Traconi.
Mario Alberto had advised the other inmates there would be refreshments for all and started organising the unloading of the cargo. The lowest of the inmates lived outside, they earned a little washing clothes, and stealing anything they could get their hands on. They had skin toasted by the sun, tattoos covered in a film of sweat that had accumulated over who know how many years, now they were alive because someone was going to toss them a soda.
That Friday afternoon they dissolved into an orgy of black market soda, the packagings rolling down the "kilometre", as they called a large corridor in Santa Marta prison.
Even the window boxes and trashcans were full of sodas, and like they were formula one champions there spayed it like champagne, even with the Mostros stealing what they could.
The Judicial Police appeared at the prison the following Monday to investigate the fraud. Already Traconi was not laughing. He left them with various cheques he had printed in the prison shop, and as always they would be sent, would bounce, and be returned.
Traconi left the prison, absolved of the fraud for which he was imprisoned, and as an aside he was never charged over the coca cola.
He returned to the streets in an epoch when he had a bad crack addiction that had made his teeth fall out. He bought some crack with empty credit cards, with bad cheques. He hid in a hotel in the middle of Mexico City, but he had to leave to buy more drugs.
On the 3rd of April 2000 Mario Alberto was detained again, dirty and badly dressed, between the Mariachis and tequilas in Plaza Garibaldi, with a portable computer bag, 800 pesos, a packet of red Malboro, a credential with his photo but with the name Alfredo Tello Bustalacci, "member of the National Commission for Human Rights, and a bag with some small yellow crack rocks in it.
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For another time Traconi returned to the North prison. With passing time, Chavez Traconi described the two methods he used to control the prison authorities. The first was to work as a legal adviser for the entire prison population in exchange for nothing.
Any matter that inconvenienced an inmate or simply caused him annoyance, with the loss of any legally earned priveledge or a transfer or stay of imprisonment, was subject to a claim of amparo perfectly written and supported by Chavez Traconi.
A cascade of Judicial Orders fell about the penitentiary functionaries that they would be suspended for the most minimal act of authority. The inmates loved Traconi, who was held in the highest regard by his fellow prisoners.
The second method was his constant declaration of hunger strikes, followed by a telephone call to the National Commission for Human Rights and the media.
Why did Traconi make himself into the role of victim and Fakir? Because he wanted a better stay, the best food, he had a weakness for mushrooms and fungi and Christmas cakes from the United States. Why would a fraudster of his characteristics like to obtain money that way?
"Ill give you an example", said a former guard of the North prison. As Mario Alberto was addicted to crack, he had lost his teeth, so he was using dentures. When he was drug free I noticed he had started to neglect his hygene, stopped eating and his dentures broke.
Then he threatened to make a complaint, so the authorities said "ok Mario Alberto how can we resolve this situation"? knowing that he had broken his own teeth to get this negotiation.
"Give me 10,15,20 pesos to buy some glue and stick my teeth back together and its done", he replied.
"If you had bad luck he would get you for 50 pesos, and Traconi was going with that ticket, that would give him one or two days crack smoking".
He was insufferable and was transferred again to Santa Martha.
The whisper of his arrival started mumurs.
The psychologist Alfredo Ornelas, was the boss of his area, and he received him.
Traconi was dressed in a khaki uniform he was issued at the North prison.
The uniform in Santa Martha for the convicted is dark blue, along with a forced physical inspection and search, so the prisoner had to strip completely.
He stripped his shirt, his shoes and pants were removed, suddenly he was covered only by a tiny electric pink thong. He slid it down his legs and pulled the cloth between the toes of his right foot.
"And what is that you have here?"
"Please Patron, let me keep it. Traconi just wants to behave here, he spoke of himself in the third person, dont worry that he wants to start trouble, no hunger strikes, he just wants to be well".
And there were no more amparos or hunger strikes. Again he was at peace, again he was in dormitory 10, with no drug traffickers, but aimed at those who were old or dying of aids.
In the last two weeks of January in 2003, when Traconi was 53 years old, he resolved, one more time, to a battery of psychological tests carried out on prisoners to determine how dangerous they were, and to propose an effective prognostic for reinsertion into society.
During those days, Chavez Traconi was submitted to 6 different tests, the inventory of the multi phase Minnesota personality test designed to identify pathologies.
In short, the technician concluded that his character traits are defined by being markedly complainant, possessing low levels of frustration tolerance, and ability to delay his impulse control.
"He is a person who comes from a disfunctional and disintegrated family nucleus, where the paternal figure is perceived as absent due to his constant marital infidelities: and an ambivalent, evasive maternal figure, demanding and unable to introject normally with positive values".
"Family life was characterized by competition amongst its members, they were utilitarian and lacked a relationship as an affective approach. His school life was exploited to the maximum, however since childhood he gave samples of control of his environment, leadership and a clear need for attention and emotional instability".
"He is a manipulator, uninhibited, with ideas of grandiosity and perfection. He is apprehensive because he always finds himself under a lot of emotional tension. Socially he is shown as kind, afectuous and generous. However this is an apparent form, that he uses as a mechanism of manipulation. Generally his relations are superficial, unstable and conflicting".
"There exist conflicting marks of psycho - sexual identification with a bi-sexual orientation. Emotionally affected, with unsatisfactory relationships, he was immature, negligent, resistant to change and incapable of learning from experience".
"He had the capacity to multi task, variable in his thoughts and actions, evading the normal, because of his capacity to improvise. The interpretation of the tests reinforces the dynamics of personality, exposed by highlighting the need to give a distorted and evasive idea of himself".
"It gives a clinical picture of a disorganized person, exhibitionist, acting conventional, while rebelling against the rules, inconstant, who escapes easily into a fantasy, with higher intellectual elements, creative, but he channels these resources into evil".
Diagnosis or treatment?
"He is a personality with schizophrenic and psychopathic elements".
"Psychological treatment is not recommended to be the author or change because of his tendency to manipulate the psycho-therapist. By his character traits as previously exposed and his criminal history of evasion, falsification of documents and recidivism, he is considered a subject with a high institutional danger profile. It is suggested he is a candidate for a maximm security area".
The Barbie
The last stay of Traconi in a Mexico City prison was his old house and school. He went through the metal gate of the penitentiary on January 2003 to complete a four year sentence imposed for improper possession of securities for the payment of goods and services without the consent of those empowered to do so.
He left Santa Martha on the 6th of October 2004, where Judicial Police Officers were already waiting for him, to move him to the District prison at Jonacatepec, the same one from which he had escaped three years before.
It would be his last stay.
Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi looked relaxed. He promoted a regional candy factory to employ others ex convicts and soon became, once again the real authority.
On the 8th of August 2010, some say, somebody tried to kill Traconi inside prison.
Others assure that he simply confirmed and Judicial Audience for the following day, and that they ordered his transfer. The fraudster got into a white pickup with armored sides, and uniquely two guards, the vehicle took the road to the courts of Xochitepec.
On the Federal highway San Miguel - Santa Rosa, in the town of Tlaltizapan, they encountered two pick up trucks full of men with AK47's, who left their vehicles and opened fire. There were no questions, only a flurry of at least 100 shots.
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Traconi was well dead, and his killers were vigilantes , said the Police in Morelos, the man who killed Traconi was in the service of Edgar Villarreal "La Barbie", the Chief of Sicarios for the Beltran Leyva Cartel, and now a prisoner in Altiplano.
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Mario Albertos address is indicated as a house in Residencial El Torito, Naucalpan, but he was an inhabitant of the prisons.
Alfredo Ornelas has no doubt that the fraudster would have lived in freedom if he would have liked it. He was loved and respected by all inmates, including the serial killers and members of the leading kidnappers in this country, members of the Arizmendi, Caletri, Marco Tinoco Gancedo, El Coronel or Los Montante, he intervened in conflicts and gave legal assisstance without charging a dime.
He had his idea of a prison, including Santa Martha, he composed a dictionary of prison terms, for example a "santamartheada" was a scar that ran down the entire abdomen of an inmate, using a pencil that had been lodged for weeks in a toilet, and there in prison was his real home, believed Mario.
"Alberto said it was like a caring mother, "The prison is beautiful and she lets you know you have to give to her".
Original article in Spanish at Sinembargo
Great Escapes: El Feyo another Public Enemy No. 1 see link
Great Escape: The Grey Automobile Gang see link
And in addition he and Jesus Javier would be together longer. This had been the case, but now Traconi was free, congratulations, the Director of the prison looks at Traconi and hugs him. The Director orders that everything is carried out quickly, he thinks that Traconi should not be in prison one second more than strictly justified by the law.
Chavez Traconi and Rodriguez Robles are based in the house of the public servant, they celebrate day and night and drink their fill.
But, he understood well that happiness doesn't last forever. Rodriguez Robles opened the door of his car for Traconi to enter. The left Cuernavaca and took the highway to Mexico City, they only stopped when they reached the airport. Mario Alberto bought a ticket to Tijuana, hugged his friend and walked off until he disappeared from sight.
Jesus Javier returned to the prison. One week after the farewell he phoned Jonacatepec.
"Can you report on the situation of the prisoner Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi?" asked the voice on the other end of the line.
"He must be well", responded Rodriguez Robles, possibly melancholic.
"How is it that he must be well?" the doubt lit up on the other side of the phone.
"Because he is free, we were notified of his release a few days ago".
The Director detailed all the steps from the arrival of the Actuary and a little further back.
These days of the life of Mario Alberto, November 2001, are detailed in the official document drafter by the Federal District Prison Authorities, where Traconi was imprisoned called " criminal networks" and of which Sinembargo has a copy:
Rodriguez Robles remains a prisoner in the same detention centre which officially housed Traconi while Traconi is free from prison.
Mario Alberto travelled another time to Tijuana, and immersed himself in the tide of dealers, prostitutes, junkies and gringo kids.
Again the outside world, the sad outside world.
But he could not stay in Jonacatlan any longer. Not because of the charge of theft of an automobile. Because the "King of Fraud", and Police and reporters agreed to call him, one of the three major scammers in the world according to the classification of Interpol, would never defile his hand with a pair of pliers and a screwdriver to force the lock of a car. He was also known by the nicknames "Captain Fantasma" or "Captain Ghost", and "The Count of Monte Cristo".
This charge was fabricated against him by an old acquaintance, Jesus Miyazawa, ex-member of the white brigade, ex Chief of Judicial Police of Federal District and Morelos, and concerning El Traconi, ex-director of the prison in the North of Mexico City.
To stay in Jonacatlan, would allow the Commander to win the game, he would say years later
"I escaped because they accused me of stealing a car, if I wanted, I could go and take 10 from the fucking agency! Miyazawa put this on me because he wanted me to give him all my work, he was an asshole".
Childhood and destiny
Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi was born on the 27th of November 1950 in Monterrey. He was the fourth of five children, the first two children being born of another mother. The references to his childhood, would return to the forger many years later while he was in prison.
The first instances of his encounters with the Police in his later, thick criminal antecedents, with his talent for copying, at the beginning of 1980, he was a young man living a pretentious lifestyle, by giving out forged cheques, then using them in Hotels and Restaurants in Mexico City and Commercial Airlines.
"How did you realise that you were good at counterfeiting and fraud?", asked Alfredo Ornelas, Chief of Psychology and then Deputy Director of the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the middle of the first decade of this century.
"Well Father, as is his style when referring to a respected authority, when I was a kid and went to school, I had to go to classes I didn't like. It bored me so much and I didn't pay attention, so I did badly in an exam".
I went to a school that sent the reports out by mail, and when I knew that it had gone out, I ran home to get the letter before my Mother returned home from work. I opened the envelope. I saw the signature on it and copied it. I forged the letter in a good light, and my father was happy with me when he read the report.
He realised that being a forger could bring many benefits, millions of pesos, falsifying documents, cheques, commented Ornelas in an interview. He had an extraordinary ability to copy signatures, for the handwriting experts, it was a problem to determine if a signature had been forged or was authentic. He enjoyed deceiving people, knowing that the following day they would realise that all they had in front of them were lies.
Traconi told his story to all of the prison specialists in the prisons, in which he was housed.
He was a convict myth, and an obligatory reference in modern prison studies in Mexico. He was neither a thief or a brutal drug trafficker. He lived among them, but was never assumed to be one of them. He had the clarity of his intellectual superiority and of his physical inferiority, but compensated for this with his ability to convince the Chiefs, Officials and Actuaries of the Jails that he went through, to manipulate them so he could achieve his goals.
In the social scale of the prisons, there was a higher class, and within that "the intellectuals".
Traconi understood the emotions which made up his personality. It contributed in the construction of his myth. He told those who wanted to listen that he had falsified the signatures of actors and actresses, television personalities and politicians, including the Presidnt Jose Lopez Portillo. In part due to his Italian mother he was a prodigious polyglot, and spoke Italian, French, German and for some reason hard to fathom, Thaiwanese.
Traconi was married at age 16 with a girl who got pregnant, with her and two other women he would have a total of 7 children, all were distant from him except for one particularly enigmatic child of his that would become his accomplice and main link with the outside world.
Also at aged 16 he found he first job, as a messenger. Later he would work as a sales agent, bank cashier, an employee at the Office of Social Communication of the President of the Republicand of the Secretary of the Government, and finally a litigant.
In dozens of interview by diagnostic psychologists they reiterated that he had completed a law degree and acquired speciality in communication sciences.
An information file by the Penetentiary Administration of the Federal District reads:
"Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi, David Garcia Guzman or Alberto Tello Bustalacci ( he used all these names and others later on) he is considered one of the most important forgers internationally. He posses an intellectual coefficient in the superior range of Average II. He claims to be a law graduate but we have not seen documents to support this", they said.
"It is certain that he has accumulated sentences of 55 years, 1 month and 15 days. However his is a scholar of the law and from his prison cell he has escaped justice in at least 60 charges brought against him by defending himself and has been acquitted".
He posses a photographic memory, which gives him the ability to memorise in the smallest detail, any document or signature which he can reproduce with frightening accuracy.
Journeys to the stars
The life, work and death of Traconi are contained in a thick file of copies on carbon paper or printed on modern computers. With those documents and the interviews with people who knew him best, i.e. his colleagues in prison, it is possible to reconstruct his history.
His first prison sentence was in 1982, when he was 31 years of age and had been experimenting with fraud and forgery. His antecedents date back to 1976 when the Federal Government of Jose Lopez Portillo started, in Mexico City when Carlos Hank Gonzalez and his Chief of Police, Arturo El Negro Durazo Moreno, were the authentic crime heads in the Mexican Capital.
How did Traconi get caught? That answer lies in the record 75/82, and the judgement of 21st of September 1982.
Days before, Mario Alberto was ready to start a travel agency in Calle Monterrey in the Roma Colonia, in Mexico City.
Everything was ready: new furniture, five copiers, typewriters, a dozen calculators and a huge colour television to entertain clientele: He had two vehicles, a Datsun and a Volkswagen Combi purchased at the car sales on University Avenue. He had twelve thousand dollars in travellers cheques and had got a computer, which was a novelty at that time.
But more importantly he possessed around 2580 airline tickets for Aeromexico, Mexicana and a half a dozen international airlines, together with 33 validation plates necessary in those times.
He bought the travellers cheques with American Express cheques that bounced, his business had also applied for an unlimited credit limit card whilst posing as an Executive Journalist with a degree.
These were his most ingenious days. The combi van and the Datsun and part of the premises he bought in the same manner. The aviation tickets and the validation plates were obtained by robberies on real travel agencies.
The journey of Mario Alberto to the fantasy isle stopped on the 24th of June 1982, when the director for research and crime, Sahagun Vaca, a police officer who tortured and murdered, raided his place of business and confiscated many things but not all.
the incipient "King of Fraud" started a business of buying, in the North prison, he bought stolen cheques, so that prisoners leaving were lined up to come and see him, and he sold nine cheques for 200,000 pesos.
The cheques were certified and filed with a typewriter and seals that the prison authorities allowed him to have in his cell.
One of these ex-convicts wanted to amplify his association with Mario Alberto and he bought him at a bargain price a "legal" round ticket Acapulco - Mexico City, and he was detained for using a document stolen from the Agency called "Trips to the Stars", from which Mario Alberto had also stolen their television.
Caro Quintero
In April of 1985 the North prison received the most important event in its history. Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, the Sinaloan drug traffickers who had made the mistake of killing Enrique Kiki Camarena, and under cover agent of the DEA, the main anti drug agency in the United States.
The narco traffickers were housed in a unit closer to the idea of Maximum Security than existed in prior times.
As related by a functionary of those days:
"We made dormitory 10 a VIP zone. You could find seafood and the best alcoholic drinks and TV actresses inside the prison for the entire two weeks of Caro Quinteros party. He and Don Neto soon discovered the talent of Chavez Traconi and made him administrator".
"Mario Alberto negotiated directly with the Director of the Prison, who was Jesus Miyazawa and the Chief of Security, Alberto Pliego Fuentes. Later Mario Alberto extended his business he was committing fraud and forging documents again. They let him work with the condition that he return their share and Mario Alberto complied with the rules".
"This was when he impersonated an Arab Sheikh, with the support of the authorities, they rented several rooms in the Sheraton Hotel, with an appointment with some Jewish Jewellers, who do not carry printed catalogues of their Jewels to important appointments, but the real thing. They let him out and he returned with samples, he divided the Jewels with his bosses and went on vacation in Tijuana, he always loved Tijuana".
Caro and Fonesco were transferred to a Federal Maximum Security Centre. Miyazawa, ex member of the White Brigade, the guard who persecuted and "disappeared" dissident communists in the 1970's, he became head of Judicial Police of Morelos, where he was accused of kidnapping and murdering kidnappers who were not working under agreement with him. He was working with Governor Jorge Carrillo Olea, who was related to Amado Carrillo "El Senor de los Cielos", successor or Caro and Don Neto and predecessor of the drug trafficker El Chapo Guzman.
Pliego Fuentes was in the Judicial Police in Mexico State, where he sold protection to various kidnappers, among them Daniel Arizmendi, El Mochaorejas, who used it to stop the plagiarist, the Government of the State of Mexico, then the responsibility of Cesar Camacho Quiroz, now National President of the PRI, he was considered the "Super Police", he lived out his last days under the nickname "super-kidnapper" and in prison, because he was in fact part of the Juarez Cartel. He died of cancer in the prison that is today called "Altiplano", the same one from which El Chapo Guzman escaped.
A good card player, Mario Alberto was not only playing with the hand that was touching him to seek protection, he resolved a commutation of sentence for treatment in liberty or to win a case for prescription of crimes that he was charged with. Traconi was also returning to the streets thanks to the pardon from his victims, and so it was he left the North prison.
The Coca Cola event
Mario Alberto crossed the threshold of the Santa Martha Acatitla prison on 13th of September of 1993. He was immediately interested in the print studio adjacent to the auditorium, and he managed to obtain a prison job there. A few weeks later on a Friday, Traconi smiled at what was arriving in the direction of the prison on the morning of that day.
Minutes later, a trailer complete with refreshments had stationed itself at the entrance of the oldest prison in Mexico City, one of the hardest in the world too.
Outside, the trailer was from Coca Cola, they had come to make a delivery and passed their paperwork to a guard.
"And this coke, who bought it? asked the prison director Carlos Tornero Diaz, and the sub director of the prison, Jaime Alvarez Ramo
"Nobody? The spoke with the Chief of Administration.
"I didn't order anything", said the prison Administrator.
Outside the office was Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi.
"Bring Traconi in here", ordered the director.
"He came in laughing, as always. He radiated a certain kind of bonhomie" said an ex functionary.
"Look Mario Alberto, how is it this trailer is here?"
"Hey Father, its a present for all the gang, man. Don't worry, all is ready", he said smiling in his effeminate tone.
"You bought it?"
"Yes, I will buy it, well you know".
"And how will you pay for it"?
"Well, you know how I pay for things".
"And you are not scared asshole?", the functionary was beginning to enjoy this.
"Fear of what? that they will send me to prison!", he laughed, don't worry. You know that I have always been suspicious, give the gang a chance they are poor".
"And you are assuring me that there will be no problems for the institution?".
"Señor there will be no problems", said Traconi.
Mario Alberto had advised the other inmates there would be refreshments for all and started organising the unloading of the cargo. The lowest of the inmates lived outside, they earned a little washing clothes, and stealing anything they could get their hands on. They had skin toasted by the sun, tattoos covered in a film of sweat that had accumulated over who know how many years, now they were alive because someone was going to toss them a soda.
That Friday afternoon they dissolved into an orgy of black market soda, the packagings rolling down the "kilometre", as they called a large corridor in Santa Marta prison.
Even the window boxes and trashcans were full of sodas, and like they were formula one champions there spayed it like champagne, even with the Mostros stealing what they could.
The Judicial Police appeared at the prison the following Monday to investigate the fraud. Already Traconi was not laughing. He left them with various cheques he had printed in the prison shop, and as always they would be sent, would bounce, and be returned.
Traconi left the prison, absolved of the fraud for which he was imprisoned, and as an aside he was never charged over the coca cola.
He returned to the streets in an epoch when he had a bad crack addiction that had made his teeth fall out. He bought some crack with empty credit cards, with bad cheques. He hid in a hotel in the middle of Mexico City, but he had to leave to buy more drugs.
On the 3rd of April 2000 Mario Alberto was detained again, dirty and badly dressed, between the Mariachis and tequilas in Plaza Garibaldi, with a portable computer bag, 800 pesos, a packet of red Malboro, a credential with his photo but with the name Alfredo Tello Bustalacci, "member of the National Commission for Human Rights, and a bag with some small yellow crack rocks in it.
For another time Traconi returned to the North prison. With passing time, Chavez Traconi described the two methods he used to control the prison authorities. The first was to work as a legal adviser for the entire prison population in exchange for nothing.
Any matter that inconvenienced an inmate or simply caused him annoyance, with the loss of any legally earned priveledge or a transfer or stay of imprisonment, was subject to a claim of amparo perfectly written and supported by Chavez Traconi.
A cascade of Judicial Orders fell about the penitentiary functionaries that they would be suspended for the most minimal act of authority. The inmates loved Traconi, who was held in the highest regard by his fellow prisoners.
The second method was his constant declaration of hunger strikes, followed by a telephone call to the National Commission for Human Rights and the media.
Why did Traconi make himself into the role of victim and Fakir? Because he wanted a better stay, the best food, he had a weakness for mushrooms and fungi and Christmas cakes from the United States. Why would a fraudster of his characteristics like to obtain money that way?
"Ill give you an example", said a former guard of the North prison. As Mario Alberto was addicted to crack, he had lost his teeth, so he was using dentures. When he was drug free I noticed he had started to neglect his hygene, stopped eating and his dentures broke.
Then he threatened to make a complaint, so the authorities said "ok Mario Alberto how can we resolve this situation"? knowing that he had broken his own teeth to get this negotiation.
"Give me 10,15,20 pesos to buy some glue and stick my teeth back together and its done", he replied.
"If you had bad luck he would get you for 50 pesos, and Traconi was going with that ticket, that would give him one or two days crack smoking".
He was insufferable and was transferred again to Santa Martha.
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| Santa Martha prison |
The whisper of his arrival started mumurs.
The psychologist Alfredo Ornelas, was the boss of his area, and he received him.
Traconi was dressed in a khaki uniform he was issued at the North prison.
The uniform in Santa Martha for the convicted is dark blue, along with a forced physical inspection and search, so the prisoner had to strip completely.
He stripped his shirt, his shoes and pants were removed, suddenly he was covered only by a tiny electric pink thong. He slid it down his legs and pulled the cloth between the toes of his right foot.
"And what is that you have here?"
"Please Patron, let me keep it. Traconi just wants to behave here, he spoke of himself in the third person, dont worry that he wants to start trouble, no hunger strikes, he just wants to be well".
And there were no more amparos or hunger strikes. Again he was at peace, again he was in dormitory 10, with no drug traffickers, but aimed at those who were old or dying of aids.
In the last two weeks of January in 2003, when Traconi was 53 years old, he resolved, one more time, to a battery of psychological tests carried out on prisoners to determine how dangerous they were, and to propose an effective prognostic for reinsertion into society.
During those days, Chavez Traconi was submitted to 6 different tests, the inventory of the multi phase Minnesota personality test designed to identify pathologies.
In short, the technician concluded that his character traits are defined by being markedly complainant, possessing low levels of frustration tolerance, and ability to delay his impulse control.
"He is a person who comes from a disfunctional and disintegrated family nucleus, where the paternal figure is perceived as absent due to his constant marital infidelities: and an ambivalent, evasive maternal figure, demanding and unable to introject normally with positive values".
"Family life was characterized by competition amongst its members, they were utilitarian and lacked a relationship as an affective approach. His school life was exploited to the maximum, however since childhood he gave samples of control of his environment, leadership and a clear need for attention and emotional instability".
"He is a manipulator, uninhibited, with ideas of grandiosity and perfection. He is apprehensive because he always finds himself under a lot of emotional tension. Socially he is shown as kind, afectuous and generous. However this is an apparent form, that he uses as a mechanism of manipulation. Generally his relations are superficial, unstable and conflicting".
"There exist conflicting marks of psycho - sexual identification with a bi-sexual orientation. Emotionally affected, with unsatisfactory relationships, he was immature, negligent, resistant to change and incapable of learning from experience".
"He had the capacity to multi task, variable in his thoughts and actions, evading the normal, because of his capacity to improvise. The interpretation of the tests reinforces the dynamics of personality, exposed by highlighting the need to give a distorted and evasive idea of himself".
"It gives a clinical picture of a disorganized person, exhibitionist, acting conventional, while rebelling against the rules, inconstant, who escapes easily into a fantasy, with higher intellectual elements, creative, but he channels these resources into evil".
Diagnosis or treatment?
"He is a personality with schizophrenic and psychopathic elements".
"Psychological treatment is not recommended to be the author or change because of his tendency to manipulate the psycho-therapist. By his character traits as previously exposed and his criminal history of evasion, falsification of documents and recidivism, he is considered a subject with a high institutional danger profile. It is suggested he is a candidate for a maximm security area".
The Barbie
The last stay of Traconi in a Mexico City prison was his old house and school. He went through the metal gate of the penitentiary on January 2003 to complete a four year sentence imposed for improper possession of securities for the payment of goods and services without the consent of those empowered to do so.
He left Santa Martha on the 6th of October 2004, where Judicial Police Officers were already waiting for him, to move him to the District prison at Jonacatepec, the same one from which he had escaped three years before.
It would be his last stay.
Mario Alberto Chavez Traconi looked relaxed. He promoted a regional candy factory to employ others ex convicts and soon became, once again the real authority.
On the 8th of August 2010, some say, somebody tried to kill Traconi inside prison.
Others assure that he simply confirmed and Judicial Audience for the following day, and that they ordered his transfer. The fraudster got into a white pickup with armored sides, and uniquely two guards, the vehicle took the road to the courts of Xochitepec.
On the Federal highway San Miguel - Santa Rosa, in the town of Tlaltizapan, they encountered two pick up trucks full of men with AK47's, who left their vehicles and opened fire. There were no questions, only a flurry of at least 100 shots.
Traconi was well dead, and his killers were vigilantes , said the Police in Morelos, the man who killed Traconi was in the service of Edgar Villarreal "La Barbie", the Chief of Sicarios for the Beltran Leyva Cartel, and now a prisoner in Altiplano.
Mario Albertos address is indicated as a house in Residencial El Torito, Naucalpan, but he was an inhabitant of the prisons.
Alfredo Ornelas has no doubt that the fraudster would have lived in freedom if he would have liked it. He was loved and respected by all inmates, including the serial killers and members of the leading kidnappers in this country, members of the Arizmendi, Caletri, Marco Tinoco Gancedo, El Coronel or Los Montante, he intervened in conflicts and gave legal assisstance without charging a dime.
He had his idea of a prison, including Santa Martha, he composed a dictionary of prison terms, for example a "santamartheada" was a scar that ran down the entire abdomen of an inmate, using a pencil that had been lodged for weeks in a toilet, and there in prison was his real home, believed Mario.
"Alberto said it was like a caring mother, "The prison is beautiful and she lets you know you have to give to her".
Original article in Spanish at Sinembargo
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