Borderland Beat
From the Borderland Beat forum posted by Bjeff
Credit sources at bottom
From the shootout that killed Tony Tormenta
A decade before he became one of the three leaders of the powerful Gulf Cartel in Mexico, Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen slipped away from U.S. investigators in Houston, according to an FBI file released through an open records request.
By the late 2000s, Cardenas, whose brother Osiel preceded him as the cartel’s leader and started the Zetas gang, was a member of a triumvirate that ran the cartel, according to an indictment filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court.
In November 2011, Antonio Cardenas, known as “Tony Tormenta” was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in the border city of Matamoros.
In 1998, FBI agents acting on a tip raided Cardenas’s home in Houston, according to the recently released records. They saw Cardenas leave the house, but, citing lack of resources, chose to execute a search warrant on the residence rather than follow him. The search yielded “cash, numerous vehicles, cocaine, marijuana, firearms and one 1996 Sea Doo Bombardier with expired Florida registration …”
According to the reports in the FBI files, investigators didn’t know much about Cardenas or the organization with which he was working. Agents circulated information about him and his vehicle, but by then he had escaped. In a memo filed in December 1999, an FBI agent said Harris County prosecutors had indicted Cardenas on drug charges and wrote that the bureau would be closing its file.
Only a month earlier, the Cardenas name began to ring out along the Texas-Mexico border when Osiel and his henchmen forced a pair of U.S. agents off the road in Matamoros and threatened to kill them. The agents talked their way out and rescued the informant who had been showing them around the Gulf Cartel stronghold.
Osiel Cardenas was eventually arrested in Mexico in 2004 and extradited to the U.S. in 2007. In 2010, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He was most famous for hiring as his personal muscle the band of former Mexican special forces soldiers who would become the Zetas.
After Cardenas’s extradition, leadership of the cartel fell to a committee of Tony Tormenta, Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla Sanchez, a capo under Osiel Cardenas, and Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano, who was killed last year.
Sources:
http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/tonytormentaevadioalfbiyladea-1752374.html
http://blog.mysanantonio.com/beyondtheborder/2013/05/texas-investigators-missed-cartel-boss-in-1998/
A decade before he became one of the three leaders of the powerful Gulf Cartel in Mexico, Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen slipped away from U.S. investigators in Houston, according to an FBI file released through an open records request.
By the late 2000s, Cardenas, whose brother Osiel preceded him as the cartel’s leader and started the Zetas gang, was a member of a triumvirate that ran the cartel, according to an indictment filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court.
In November 2011, Antonio Cardenas, known as “Tony Tormenta” was killed in a shootout with Mexican marines in the border city of Matamoros.
In 1998, FBI agents acting on a tip raided Cardenas’s home in Houston, according to the recently released records. They saw Cardenas leave the house, but, citing lack of resources, chose to execute a search warrant on the residence rather than follow him. The search yielded “cash, numerous vehicles, cocaine, marijuana, firearms and one 1996 Sea Doo Bombardier with expired Florida registration …”
According to the reports in the FBI files, investigators didn’t know much about Cardenas or the organization with which he was working. Agents circulated information about him and his vehicle, but by then he had escaped. In a memo filed in December 1999, an FBI agent said Harris County prosecutors had indicted Cardenas on drug charges and wrote that the bureau would be closing its file.
Only a month earlier, the Cardenas name began to ring out along the Texas-Mexico border when Osiel and his henchmen forced a pair of U.S. agents off the road in Matamoros and threatened to kill them. The agents talked their way out and rescued the informant who had been showing them around the Gulf Cartel stronghold.
Osiel Cardenas was eventually arrested in Mexico in 2004 and extradited to the U.S. in 2007. In 2010, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He was most famous for hiring as his personal muscle the band of former Mexican special forces soldiers who would become the Zetas.
After Cardenas’s extradition, leadership of the cartel fell to a committee of Tony Tormenta, Eduardo “El Coss” Costilla Sanchez, a capo under Osiel Cardenas, and Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano, who was killed last year.
Sources:
http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/tonytormentaevadioalfbiyladea-1752374.html
http://blog.mysanantonio.com/beyondtheborder/2013/05/texas-investigators-missed-cartel-boss-in-1998/