RAMIRO VILLARREAL MOPPED THE SWEAT FROM HIS FOREHEAD. THE HOUSTON airport was teeming with screaming children and people racing back and forth with their carry-ons. His feet were killing him. And he needed to make the connecting flight to Oklahoma City, where the next big auction was held every year after the All American.
Technically, he still worked for Miguel. But he hadn’t been asked to go to the auction in Ruidoso. He’d be lucky if Miguel let him bid on one or two yearlings at Heritage Place. In the past three years, Villarreal had funneled more than $3.5 million into U.S. racetracks and auction houses for the cartel boss. With the help of a man who owned a peso exchange business in Monterrey, he’d created a front company called Basic Enterprises. Every month he’d arrived at the peso exchange house with briefcases full of American cash to wire to the United States. Initially he was told that it would be cheaper if he used Mexican pesos. Villarreal was paying twice as much in fees, the man at the peso exchange explained, because he would have to turn the dollars into pesos then back into dollars again to pump it legally through the international banking system. Villarreal said he’d pay whatever it cost. “My clients pay me in dollars. So that’s what we have to do.”
Now, as he approached his gate, lugging his laptop, he noticed two official-looking men approaching him. “Could we speak with you for a moment?” one of them asked, though it wasn’t really a question. They were already steering him toward a back room. They closed the door behind them. One of the men explained to Villarreal that they were with a DEA task force in Houston.
Much to his shock, they told Villarreal that his phone had been tapped by the DEA. They had his calls with Omar, Mamito, and others on tape. Once Miguel had employed Villarreal, he’d become an easy target since Miguel’s passion for horse racing was well known. For several hours, the two agents questioned Villarreal about his meetings with Miguel and other cartel members. One of them took Villarreal’s cell phone and downloaded all of his contact information. Finally, the disheveled horse agent was allowed to catch the last flight to Oklahoma City, but only on the provision that he report back to them in Houston after the auction. They confiscated his laptop, which held all of his important accounts and other information about his horse business, to make sure he followed through.
The day after the auction, Villarreal returned to Houston—as he had agreed—and this time he met with a DEA special agent named Rene Amarillas, who had flown in from the Monterrey, Mexico, office. Amarillas had been tasked with tracking Miguel Treviño in Mexico—no easy assignment, since the drug lord constantly changed his phones and safe houses. Miguel had been on the DEA’s radar since 2007, when they’d seized eight tons of Colombian cocaine in the northern Mexican port city of Altamira. The shipping container of coke, it turned out, had belonged to Miguel Treviño, and from the sheer size of the bust they knew he’d become a major player in the cartel. Amarillas explained to Villarreal that he already had hours of wiretaps of Villarreal discussing Tempting Dash, the futurities in Grand Prairie, and auctions with Miguel and Omar. There was plenty there to put him in jail. But Amarillas wasn’t really interested in Villarreal’s horse scam. What he wanted was Miguel.
And Villarreal was going to help him. Villarreal begged to be let go. He knew what Miguel did to informants. But Amarillas insisted. Villarreal could go to jail or lead him to Miguel. Those were his choices. Just like the Zetas, the DEA wouldn’t take no for an answer.