WHEN LAWSON RETURNED TO THE OFFICE HE WAS SURPRISED TO HEAR that Hodge’s transfer out of Laredo had been suspended until further notice. With the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel still at war in Nuevo Laredo, the bureau couldn’t risk being short-staffed. Hodge was sitting at his desk sorting through some paperwork, but he couldn’t hide his disappointment. He tried not to dump on Laredo in front of the task force officers and Perez because they were locals, but he had no problem telling Lawson about the unfairness of his still being stuck at the RA.
Lawson opened up the FedEx envelope with the subpoenaed financial statements for Francisco Colorado Cessa’s U.S. bank account—the one he’d used to write the $2.2 million check at the Ruidoso auction—and Lawson and Hodge got to work examining the documents. From what they could see, Colorado had only recently opened the account at Compass Bank in California. In the month of September 2010, he’d written two checks totaling $3 million. Besides the Ruidoso auction, he’d written another check for close to $1 million to someone named Arian Jaff. When Lawson looked Jaff up online he discovered that the twenty-five-year-old helped run a family business in San Diego that lent large sums of money at high interest to big business owners—a sort of payday lender for millionaires. He wrote down Jaff’s name and made a mental note to himself to look further into how he might fit into the conspiracy. The network of businessmen entangled in the horse-buying scheme was expanding week by week.
On his computer, Lawson searched through the federal intelligence databases, looking for any information he could find on Colorado’s background or business dealings. He found no links with the Zetas. But he did find a brief mention of a connection with Fidel Herrera, the governor of the state of Veracruz, as well as an article about Colorado’s brother, who had run for a seat in the Mexican Congress. There wasn’t much, but what he’d found was intriguing. It was clear Colorado was extremely wealthy and ran what appeared to be a legitimate and successful oil services business. He also had political connections that led all the way to the governor’s mansion in Veracruz.
As he gathered the financial data, Lawson also made a point of further educating himself about quarter horse racing. He had to be careful in his inquiries so that word wouldn’t get back to José. Graham gave him a couple of names of trusted and knowledgeable industry insiders and then made the discreet introductions. Once again, Lawson was reminded that a word from the Graham family could open a lot of doors.
He found out quickly, however, that just because they’d agreed to talk to the FBI didn’t mean they’d have much to say. They were extremely protective of the sport. They also didn’t think it was their job to police it. Lawson’s view of cowboys had been shaped mostly by movies and his boyhood love of rodeos and riding. He thought of them as the salt of the earth—plainspoken and honest men.
But he was soon disabused of any Hollywood fantasy he might have had about the nobility of the horsemen involved. Quarter horse racing, he was starting to discover, was full of handshake deals, cheating, and doping. He’d looked into Chevo Huitron, the trainer of Tempting Dash and a friend of Graham’s, and found a long list of violations and bans for doping horses. Lawson learned this wasn’t uncommon in quarter horse racing. Injecting racehorses with everything from cobra venom to cocaine to Viagra to give them an edge on the track wasn’t unusual. Neither was injecting them with cancer drugs or anti-inflammatories to mask the horses’ pain from injuries. The doped-up horses broke down on the track at an alarming rate and had to be put down, especially at the casino racetracks in New Mexico where it was like the Wild West of racing.
Because of these practices, quarter horses were 30 percent more likely to die on the track or be injured than Thoroughbreds, which ran under tighter doping restrictions. In New Mexico, racing promoters blamed the problems on the high altitude of Ruidoso. When pushed, they’d pledge to clean up the doping, but nothing changed. It was largely up to the industry to police itself, but the industry was more interested in money. And there was less and less of that.
Trainers like Huitron got a slap on the wrist or a small fine, while the owners of the horses feigned ignorance. Even legitimate owners had admitted to Lawson that they felt it was necessary to use the drugs to compete, because everyone else did. As long as they could plead ignorance of what their trainer was up to, their conscience was clear.
A big purse at a race like the All American Futurity could bring untold riches, but more often than not owners barely broke even in racing. The better bet, Lawson learned, was in breeding. A quarter horse had a crucial three-year window to prove its genetic worth as a champion racer. If it succeeded it became a valuable breeding commodity. One of the industry’s most famous studs, the bay stallion Corona Cartel, was bred at the Lazy E Ranch in Oklahoma for a $35,000 stud fee. Every year, Corona Cartel served close to ninety mares, netting more than $3 million annually. Every horse that contained the name “cartel”—and there were thousands of them—had been sired by the prolific stallion, which was owned by a flamboyant Mexican American actress and singer from Arizona.
Over the course of a stallion’s twenty-five-year life span it was like owning a golden goose. To continue reaping the rewards, some owners even continued selling the frozen semen of their champions after they had died.
A horse of Corona Cartel’s caliber was what every horseman like Graham dreamed of. With such a valuable breeding commodity everyone got rich, including the farm where the horse was kept, which could charge fees and expenses to the dozens of owners who brought their mares there to be bred. But there were only a handful of these exceptional sires to be had. Which was why Graham had done whatever he could to get Tempting Dash for the family business.
At the All American in Ruidoso, Lawson had been drawn in by the excitement and energy at the racetrack. But the more he learned about the business of racing, the more he understood why the Treviños saw it as such an easy mark for laundering. No one was going to ask any questions as long as the money kept flowing, and Miguel had more than enough of it to go around.