Three
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The Most Successful
Criminal in History

In a Pulitzer Prize-winning book written years after Chula’s death, A History of Modern Crime, the author dubbed him “The most successful criminal in history.” That assessment was true, though some would argue that the title belonged to his successor, Morales.

Several weeks after he reluctantly accepted Guzman’s “invitation” to become part of the Sinaloa Cartel, five men and one woman, identifying themselves as the “conversion team,” met with Chula to begin the process of establishing his ranch as the primary center of operations for the Cartel. Each member of the team had a specific skill set which he or she would use in the conversion process. Two of the men, an architect, and an engineer, held detailed images of the ranch from Google Maps and enhanced images taken by several of the Cartel’s drones. They set off by themselves in a jeep to inspect the property.

One man, a lawyer, had Chula sign over the ranch and the cattle to a shell company owned by the Cartel. Once Chula executed the transfer papers, the lawyer handed him several documents, which reflected that he now had a brokerage account at Merrill Lynch, Mexico, S.A. de C.V., and Casa de Bolsa, and that his cash position was two-million dollars. Handing Chula a business card, the lawyer said, “This is our stock broker. Don’t use anyone else.”

The other two team members, veterinarians, spent the day with Chula inspecting his cattle. Near the end of their tour, the woman said, “We’d like to operate on one of your steers.” She pointed to one steer and asked, “Would you say that one is about an average size?” Chula nodded. “Good. Can you get one of your men to bring him into the building you showed us earlier, the one where you take care of veterinary procedures?”

“Sure,” Chula replied, and instructed one of the hands to move the steer into the building. The woman put on a pair of rubber gloves and, using a large scalpel taken from her oversized purse, cut open the underside of the anesthetized steer. The man with her placed glassine envelopes containing a powder into the opening of the steer, after which she stitched the opening closed. She looked at the man and said: “Twenty kilos, just as Shorty said.” They waited an hour for the steer to regain consciousness and observed it for another four hours.

“No ill effects, excellent,” said the woman. She took a photo of the steer on her smartphone, walked off, and made a phone call. She returned and said, “They want to know how much time we have before your next cattle drive to the states.”

Chula replied, “Two months.”

The woman said, “Good. We’ll operate on about ١٠٠ of your steers to see how that works out. We’ll be in touch.” Then, as an afterthought, she said, “We want you to segregate about ١٠٠ steers and to start giving them growth hormones. Our lab, Aster SA, will send the hormones to you along with instructions on how to administer them.”

Chula’s shock registered on his face. He had dealings with Aster while at Monsanto. It was a highly regarded veterinary drug company in Lucerne, Switzerland. The woman continued without regard to his expression. “Aster makes both human and animal growth hormones. It’s one of many laboratories we control throughout the world. Our goal is to increase the size of your steers by about twenty percent. If we can up the kilos, we put into the steers by even two kilos per steer, our profits will increase significantly.”

The woman walked away, but then stopped, opened up her purse, and handed Chula a revolver. “A present from Shorty,” she said. The weapon had a short-handwritten note on it. “Welcome Aboard. Don’t leave home without it.” At that moment Chula thought, surprised once again, “He has a sense of humor?”

Over the next six months, the ranch had many visitors from the Cartel. When it appeared to all who reported back to the Directors of Sinaloa that Chula was highly capable of overseeing the conversion of the ranch, the Directors gained greater confidence in him, and the visits became infrequent. The first cattle drive was a great success. The second, with 500 steers, each loaded with over twenty kilos of heroin, went smoothly. Once this happened, Chula negotiated the purchase of the slaughterhouse and meat processing plant where he shipped his cattle. Within weeks, the plant’s existing employees were all fired and replaced by new employees tied to the Cartel, each holding a forged permanent resident card.

Working closely with several engineers, Chula reconfigured and modernized the plant. Within two months, he had found a bright young man who would function as the plant’s COO, and who would report directly to him. Within six months, the plant was operating profitably and functioning as the key depot in the United States for the Cartel’s illegal drugs. Daily, large trucks loaded with meat and kilos of illicit drugs would depart from the plant for various drop off places throughout the country, with the meat going to legitimate wholesalers and the drugs going to the Cartel’s distributors. Within a year, the logistical challenges posed by this arrangement became so formidable that the plant had a ten-man shipping department.

Transporting drugs inside of animals was not new. It was common for cartels to use humans, dogs, and other animals as “mules.” Once, a DEA agent sought to check the steers crossing the border. The odds, however, were against him because of the large number of steers transported every day. Daunted by the impossible task of finding any steers carrying drugs, and put-off by the foul odor of the steers, the DEA agent ultimately gave up and never returned. The DEA appointed no other agent to take his place.

As a precaution, however, Chula sought to increase the odds against detection in his favor by integrating the herds transported with steers from legitimate ranches. Each of his steers, however, had a chip implanted so that his men at the meat processing plant would know which steers had the drugs embedded in them. Increasingly, the directors of Sinaloa were taking notice of Chula’s capability and business acumen.

Before long, he became a frequent visitor to the meetings of the men who called themselves the “directors” of Sinaloa, even though there was no formal corporate structure. The five men who comprised the “Board of Directors” had such power that few questioned their leadership role. They usually killed those foolish enough to do so, along with their families, or sent them to some distant outpost in Mexico. In the third year of his tenure with the Cartel, Chula accepted an invitation to join the Cartel’s board of directors. This time there was not the same reticence he displayed with Guzman. Accepting the invitation, Chula replied, “I’m honored.” The misgivings about working for the Cartel had disappeared. Chula loved the work and the vast sums of money coming his way.

The modest ranch house where he first encountered Guzman remained as a reminder of his former life. Now, however, he occupied a ١٢,٠٠٠ square foot hacienda. He had already amassed a small fortune, which Morales’ father managed. He and Adriana invested in movies, and she frequently received on-screen credits as a producer. Her investments brought rewards of modest roles in the motion picture she had underwritten. There were occasional trips to Hollywood and some dinners with American and Mexican movie stars and even an invitation to Cannes. These benefits appeared to quell Adriana’s protests about the Cartel. Like most spouses of Cartel members, she looked the other way. The only thing that filled each of them with dread was the knowledge that someday they would have to reveal their involvement in the Cartel to their daughter.

In the sixth year of his tenure, the Cartel’s directors invited him to become the head of the Cartel, after a rival cartel assassinated its current leader in London while being fitted for a bespoke suit in Anderson & Sheppard on Savile Row. As a condition of his agreeing to become the head of the Cartel, Chula insisted that the Cartel transfer back the ranch, cattle business, and the meatpacking plant back to him. The directors agreed.

Chula knew a rival cartel was responsible for the Director’s murder. Within weeks, ten masked Sinaloa assassins killed the head of the cartel, his entire family, children included, and the twenty bodyguards assigned to protect them. The retaliation precipitated a war between the two cartels, which Chula correctly called a “lose-lose” situation. This was not the only inter-cartel war occurring in Mexico. Cartels all over the country were warring with each other with the resultant loss of revenue and personnel. Of significant consequence to the cartels, the disarray within them enabled law enforcement to place undercover agents within some of them, ultimately leading to the collapse of two smaller cartels. Chula realized that it was crucial to put an end to the violence and to unite the cartels into a single, cohesive, nationwide unit.

The first thing he did was call a temporary truce with the cartel that murdered the previous director of Sinaloa. Given the bloodbath and enormous expense precipitated by the war, the cartel accepted the ceasefire. He then set up a meeting with many of the rival cartel leaders. Because no one trusted any suggested location, the cartel leaders had a conference via Zoom. Using a PowerPoint presentation, Chula demonstrated how by having a formal working relationship, one where the cartels cooperated and pooled their resources and knowhow, their profits would double. He also proposed that the Cartels merge into a single cartel called the “Aztec Cartel,” a working name the merged group later adopted. It would be run much like a large corporation, with the heads of each of the Cartels becoming a member of Aztec’s Board of Directors. Chula would remain as the head of the merged Cartel, but elections for that position would occur in two years.

Within six months of the Zoom meeting, four out of eight of the cartels agreed in principle to merge into Sinaloa. Once the parties worked out the details of the merger plan, they signed a formal merger agreement. The agreement was not so much a binding contract, but the rules of the game. Under Chula’s supervision, and with a team of thirty accountants and management types working on the project, the four new cartels integrated seamlessly into Sinaloa. Going forward, the merged Cartel would be called the “Aztec Cartel.”

The integration was an outstanding achievement for Chula, but he was not satisfied. He wanted the inclusion of all the Cartels in Mexico. Chula would make war on the remaining cartels if they refused to join, but not until he was ready. He hired mercenaries, many former Navy Seals or Special Ops personnel, in favor of local Mexican toughs. This change was not an innovation on his part. For decades cartels had used mercenaries. The difference, however, was that Chula staffed up at the top with former high-level personnel types from Blackwater, a well-known military contractor company. The Blackwater team built the best staffed, best equipped, private army in the world. Money was no object.

Simultaneously, he formed various departments at the ranch, including an Intelligence and Security Department. When someone hacked the Cartel’s legitimate businesses with an entirely new form of a virus that made its way through layers of security and the most sophisticated anti-virus software, the hacker, an Iranian fugitive named Eshan, was hunted down and eventually caught. Rather than punish him, Chula offered Eshan a job. Within six months, Eshan became the head of a small army of hackers, used for identity theft, extortion through ransomware, and spying on key governmental officials, both in the United States and Mexico.

Within a year, the intelligence and security group had grown to 150 men and women. A year later, the group had grown so large that it split into two departments, one for intelligence gathering and one to providing security. Security had only one function, namely to assure that the identity of Chula, a/k/a “El Fantasma” and his fellow directors remained a deep secret. Eshan’s group, now fifty, reported to both departments.

Using all the Cartel’s impressive resources, Chula put the four cartels that did not wish to join Aztec under surveillance by tapping their phones and hacking their emails. The Cartel secretly placed listening devices within the homes of the rival cartels’ leaders and chief operatives. With information gleaned from these operations, Aztec took steps to undermine the reluctant cartels’ activities, including informing Mexican and American law enforcement agencies of drug shipments by the cartels and the identities of their chief operatives in the United States. Aztec’s actions, coupled with sanctioned murders, soon destroyed the leadership of all but one of these cartels. Leaders of three of the cartels realized that they had little choice and agreed to become part of the Aztec Cartel.

The only holdout was the head of the largest remaining independent cartel. A war with this Cartel would be extremely costly to both sides in lives and assets. The head of the hold-out cartel knew this, but his crushing ego prevented any rational dialogue. From the listening devices placed in the cartel’s second in command’s home, Chula learned that he was deeply dissatisfied with the head’s decision to turn down Chula’s proposal. With increasing frequency, he called his boss “an old fool” and began planting the seeds of a revolt within his organization. Chula reached out to the number two and soon after that sought an audience with the cartel’s leader. He said that he would come alone and unarmed to the leader’s hacienda to discuss a potential deal. When they met at the leader’s camp, and the man refused to agree to Chula’s proposal, his number two shot him between the eyes. While Chula brought no weapons, he had given the leader’s second in command $12,000,000 and an offer to make him a director of Aztec. Guile was Chula’s weapon.

The other significant change made by Chula was a prohibition against crimes committed against the general population. Cartel soldiers could no longer extort money from what he called “civilians,” Anyone who violated the edict faced severe punishment. Sexual assaults were punishable by death. Cartel members in towns and villages established civilian review boards to review and adjudicate transgressions against civilians. Their “jurisdiction” also included misdeeds by local police, who would sometimes commit crimes against civilians.

The Cartel periodically gave back to local communities by making donations to churches and some local charities. The contributions, always cash, would be delivered to the church or charity in a cardboard box bearing the notation, “From El Fantasma.” These steps did not arise out of a sense of benevolence. Building loyalty among civilians was a priority. It expanded the eyes and ears of the Cartel and its influence. When word spread that the Cartel favored a particular candidate, for example, he or she was invariably elected. In a way, the Cartel under Chula’s leadership acted as a second government, often more effective than elected officials.

Given his mystique, Chula, El Fantasma, became a folk hero to many, and his name soon became synonymous with major criminal events even though there was no actual proof of his connection to them. Through a collection of grainy photographs from street cameras and elsewhere, an image of El Fantasma evolved. He was average height, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned with a long dark handlebar mustache and dark, slightly wavy hair. The image bore no resemblance to Chula but bore a striking resemblance to Emiliano Zapata Salazar, the hero of the Mexican revolution. Since every woman and child knew of Zapata’s appearance, El Fantasma’s status increased further. In virtually every outdoor marketplace, there was a stall that sold El Fantasma tee shirts and caps bearing his grainy image. There was even a video game in which El Fantasma battled the Federales.

Equally as elusive as El Fantasma himself was his money. As good as the governments of Mexico and the United States were at tracing funds, no one could find accounts or investments that might be attributable to him or the Cartel. Nevertheless, by all estimates, if El Fantasma were legitimate, he would have been close to the top of Forbes’ list of the wealthiest people in the world. The Aztec Cartel as a business entity would have ranked fourth on the Fortune 100 List.

Despite his mystique, American and Mexican authorities knew him for what he was, a ruthless but brilliant criminal that would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. Under his leadership, the Cartel murdered thousands of people. He personally executed at least one hundred people. That Chula committed murder and ordered the killing of others reflected a drastic change in him. In his pre-cartel days, such acts would be unthinkable. Now, it was just business, and to Chula, business was everything. The Cartel life trumped any sense of morality. Adrianna continued to look the other way and forbid any talk of the Cartel in their daughter’s presence. Isabella, for the time being, was insulated from any knowledge of her father’s involvement with the Cartel. Like everyone else, she viewed El Fantasma as a mysterious folk hero.