IT WAS LIKE THE DEA WAS TOYING WITH THEM. THE DALLAS OFFICE WOULD agree to a day and time they could meet with Poncho Cuellar, then they’d cancel the meeting at the last minute. Five months had passed and Lawson and Perez still hadn’t been allowed to interview the man who could be so vital to their case. Lawson was anxiously searching for a solution, but he knew he wouldn’t be getting any help from Jeff Hathaway, not after their blowup over Tyler Graham.
Doug Gardner finally appealed directly to his counterpart in Plano who was prosecuting the case against Cuellar and Moreno. It turned out this was the right move. Within days, the prosecutor put Gardner in touch with the men’s lawyer in Dallas and they set up a meeting.
Six months after Pennington had made his breakthrough discovery in San Antonio, they finally got their interview. The DEA made it a condition, however, that one of its agents from Dallas be present during the debriefing. They also wanted to see a list of the FBI’s targets in their investigation. Lawson hesitantly handed over his list, which included Carlos Nayen.
The team was eager to meet with Cuellar first, since he would possess the most knowledge about how Miguel’s business was run. In mid-November 2011, Cuellar and his lawyer filed into the federal prosecutor’s office in Plano and sat down at the conference table across from Lawson, Perez, Pennington, and Gardner. Cuellar who was out on bond, was dressed in an expensive dress shirt and clean-shaven, but looked pale and tired as his lawyer introduced them one by one. A DEA agent who remained silent sat behind them with a notebook, ready to write down anything that piqued his interest.
The move by the DEA annoyed Lawson, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Every detail of this meeting had been carefully negotiated between the two agencies beforehand. He was encouraged, however, when they learned they’d be able to speak with four more of Cuellar’s workers, in addition to Hector Moreno, who had also turned themselves in to the DEA. It seemed half of the Piedras Negras plaza had fled to Texas. Once they heard what Cuellar and the others had to say, they would understand why.
Perez found it difficult to look at Cuellar without feeling revulsion. She had something more personal she needed to ask him regarding a friend of the family who had gone missing in Piedras Negras. Veronica Cárdenas, in her mid-forties, was the mother of two small children, and had become good friends with Perez’s aunt. When she’d graduated from the FBI academy, Veronica had given her a painted statue of an angel. “This will guard over you, and keep you safe,” she’d told Perez. She had always liked her aunt’s friend and considered her a kind person, devoted to her family.
One afternoon in March, Veronica had driven across the bridge to Piedras Negras to pick up her young niece at the bus station. Neither one of them was ever seen again. In her own investigation, Perez had discovered Veronica had been a friend of Cuellar’s wife, who worked as a notary public in Piedras Negras. Through her sources Perez had learned about the massacres in the region after Cuellar and his men had fled Mexico in March. Miguel and Omar had unleashed their vengeance on anyone remotely related to the men, and Perez feared that Veronica and her niece had been swept up in the killing. She’d come up with few clues, and now Perez was anxious to learn what Cuellar knew about the two missing women, and if he could provide any closure to their families and her aunt, but she knew she’d have to wait until the end of their debriefing. She’d told Lawson and the others about Veronica before the meeting with Cuellar, and they’d agreed on a plan. The investigation would come first, and then Perez could ask him about Veronica.
Perez would translate for the team since Cuellar spoke only Spanish. She began the debriefing by asking him how he’d come to work for the Zetas. Cuellar explained that in 2007 the Zetas had begun picking up anyone involved in the drug business in his hometown of Piedras Negras. The cartel offered two choices: work for them or die.
Piedras Negras was a small city of about 150,000 residents. On the other side of the river was Eagle Pass, an even smaller Texas border town that was a convenient two-hour drive to San Antonio, a major stop on the cocaine corridor. When the Zetas picked up Cuellar, he was told that he would now work for one of their men, called Comandante Moy. One day, Cuellar called Moy for instructions, but someone else answered his phone. “Who is this?” the man barked. Cuellar gave him his name. And the man told Cuellar his name was Comandante 42.
Within a few hours, Comandante 42 pulled up to his front door in a Hummer, with another Zeta called Mamito. Let’s go for a ride, 42 said. Mamito got in the backseat behind Cuellar. As they drove around town, Cuellar knew it might be his last ride, especially when he discovered that 42 was Omar Treviño, the younger brother of Miguel Treviño. We have a shortfall of $750,000, Omar told him. But Cuellar was sure he didn’t owe the Zetas anything. They went to see a man called Cuno, an accountant who tracked finances for Miguel and Omar’s growing empire. Cuno told Cuellar he owed $18,000.
Cuellar quickly paid the $18,000. But Omar wasn’t ready to let him go just yet. They drove around town all night in a convoy, Cuellar now sandwiched between Mamito and another dead-eyed sicario in the backseat of 42’s Hummer. Omar’s convoy of sicarios circled the city making stops, bundling terrified men out of their homes. Stripped to their boxer shorts, they were blindfolded and handcuffed, some praying and trembling as they were shoved into the SUVs.
By morning, Cuellar said, Omar’s convoy had picked up twenty people, including two of his friends. Omar said they were contras, men who worked for other cartels or who had tried to remain independent. They would be taken to a ranch commandeered by the Zetas, where they’d be shot. Then their bodies would be burned in fifty-five-gallon drums filled with diesel. By the way, Omar said to Cuellar, Comandante Moy is dead. I killed him because he was stealing from me.
Lawson was taking notes as Perez translated. It still never failed to shock him when he heard stories like Cuellar’s—and he had heard others—about how the Zetas operated so brazenly. Cuellar told them it was the horses that had saved his life. During that long night, he had listened to Mamito talk about racing bloodlines to Omar—it was nearly all he talked about. Cuellar mentioned that he owned quarter horses and liked to race. Suddenly the taciturn sicario took an interest in him, quizzing him about various champions. Mamito threw out a couple of the top bloodlines—Royal Dutch, Corona Cartel—and Cuellar nodded his head in recognition. Mamito started to relax. Omar, he said, I think we’ve found someone for you.
After that, Cuellar said, the tension in the SUV seemed to dissipate. You’re safe here, Mamito told him. Nothing’s going to happen to you. They dropped him in front of his house as the sun was coming up. He was lucky to be alive, and glad not to be one of those men picked up by Omar’s sicarios, begging for their lives.
About six weeks later, Omar summoned him to a safe house. He said he wanted to race some of his horses against Cuellar’s. In the span of four months, they held two races, and Cuellar always made sure that Omar’s horses won, because he was Miguel’s brother, and because he was known to fly into a rage whenever his horse lost, often killing the owner of the winner. Omar seemed pleased with all of the money Cuellar was letting him win at the races. From now on, you’re going to work for me, he told him.
But Cuellar soon learned that Omar didn’t do small-time drug loads, like he’d worked with in the past. A Zeta at his level worked in kilos and tons. He would give Cuellar anywhere from 250 to 500 kilos of Colombian cocaine at a time to move across the border. But Cuellar had never dealt with that kind of volume. And there was no way he could say no to Omar.
So he recruited another local dealer, Hector Moreno, to help. And they started moving the kilos in semi trucks across the international bridge. Pretty soon they were moving a ton of cocaine every month to Dallas, with a street value of $30 million. In return, they received up to $5 million every week from Chicago, Dallas, and San Antonio, sent back in hidden compartments inside trucks and cars by their wholesale distributors in the United States. Once they had all the money inspected and wrapped, they’d stack it in ice chests and drive it over to Miguel’s accountant.
Cuellar told the agents that he didn’t know why he was designated by Miguel to handle the expenses for his racing business in the States. Maybe because he understood racing, or because his cell moved the most drugs and made the most money in the Piedras Negras plaza.
“So tell us how it works, break it down for us,” Pennington said, leaning forward in his chair with anticipation as Perez translated his question. Like Lawson, he was excited that their case was finally coming together. They now had the evidence from Mexico they’d been working so hard to obtain for so many months.
Cuellar listened closely to Perez’s translation, then nodded. Every month, he said, Carlos Nayen would present him with a spreadsheet of the monthly expenses, then Cuellar would take it to Omar, who would go over it with Miguel. After Miguel authorized the expenses, his accountant, Cuno, would withdraw the money from Miguel’s cocaine and marijuana accounts. Cuellar said he’d handled about $1.5 million in 2009 and an equivalent amount in 2010. Once Nayen got the cash he worked with Yo Yo, his accountant in Nuevo Laredo, who would use the U.S. dollars to buy pesos at money exchange houses, then convert the pesos back into U.S. dollars, giving the dirty money a clean rinse before they wired it to U.S. banks and businesses. Or they would direct Yo Yo’s cousin, Victor Lopez, to hire mules to smuggle the U.S. dollars back across the border or have one of their wholesalers in Texas send the funds.
Lawson could feel it all falling into place. Everything that Cuellar had told them jibed with what they’d already gathered from documents and surveillance. All those months they’d waited. If he had known how valuable Cuellar truly was, he’d have been even more angry about the DEA refusing them access.
There was still one question, though, that hadn’t been asked. “Why did you leave Piedras Negras?” Perez shot an annoyed look at Lawson. She had planned on asking Cuellar herself, since it would lead directly to questions about Veronica’s disappearance.
Cuellar’s face grew even paler as Perez translated the question. His problems, he said, had begun around the time of Ramiro Villarreal’s death in March, when Miguel got a tip from the Mexican military that someone in his organization was talking to the DEA. The previous year, Miguel had made a point of showing him what would happen to traitors. Cuellar remembered the men—some just teenagers—their faces so pale, even yellow with fear as they were forced to kneel before Miguel. He shot each one of them in the head point-blank. When Miguel had pulled out his pistol, Cuellar had instinctively turned away. And Miguel had yelled at Omar, “Tell him to turn around and look, to stop being a fag. He has to see it.”
Omar grabbed Cuellar and violently thrust him forward, so he’d be forced to watch the massacre. When Miguel was done, Omar shot the men and boys again for good measure. Cuellar felt ill and began to walk away from the horror show. So are you against us, then? Omar said, standing in front of him. The ones who had just been executed had deserted the Zetas, he said. Cuellar assured Omar he was a loyal employee. As he walked toward his car, two pickup trucks filled with the men’s bodies passed by.
As Miguel began interrogating his closest associates, Cuellar was tasked with buying several BlackBerrys for Miguel, Omar, Lazcano, and his own crew, so they could toss their other phones. Miguel preferred BlackBerrys because he could use encrypted messaging. Cuellar put Hector Moreno in charge of distributing the new phones.
But a couple of days later something strange happened. Cuellar was instructed to send all of his cocaine back to Miguel and Omar. There would be no more shipments, they said. Miguel also wanted a meeting with him. The signs were ominous. He was unsure of what to do. Finally, Hector Moreno came forward and confessed. He told Cuellar he’d given the phone numbers from the BlackBerrys to the DEA. Cuellar called an emergency meeting and advised his crew to leave the country at once and to take their families with them. Anyone remaining would be a target.
The repercussions from the Piedras Negras crew’s defection were swift and brutal. Miguel and Omar marshaled a massive convoy of hundreds of sicarios to lay waste to any people or property related to Cuellar and his workers. One worker, José Luis Garza, had fled with his extended family, as Cuellar had advised, but after a few days several of his relatives had decided to return. The Zetas killed every one of them and kidnapped his father. Miguel sent Garza a taunting text message: “Not the DEA, ICE, the army or the navy of Mexico will ever catch me. If you turn yourself in, your father will live.”
But somehow Garza’s father had gotten word to his son: “Don’t even think about coming, because they will kill you.”
For weeks, the Zetas terrorized the small towns of Allende and Nava in the Cinco Manantiales region of the state of Coahuila, where some of Cuellar’s workers and their families lived. They also attacked in Piedras Negras, kidnapping people, destroying homes and businesses with bulldozers and setting them on fire. Cuellar estimated that at least a hundred people had disappeared from Nava and Allende, and another two hundred from Piedras Negras. Miguel and Omar had killed their neighbors, even their gardeners and their pets. As Cuellar described the massacres to the agents he became angrier and angrier. They had killed Hector Moreno’s mother-in-law and many of Cuellar’s neighbors, who were only condemned because they lived next door to him. “They are monsters,” he said. “They killed innocent people.” Everything that Cuellar had built for himself—the coal mine he owned, the lucrative government contracts to build schools and sporting arenas in Coahuila—they were all gone. Miguel and Omar had burned down his mansions, stolen his ranches and horses. Miguel had even instructed Carlos Nayen to take Cuellar’s horses in Texas. “Everything I had, they took it away from me.”
Lawson had heard many stories about the Zetas’ brutality in briefings and from other informants, but hearing about the massacres from Cuellar and the scope of the Treviños’ brutality and thirst for revenge gave him pause. They will come after you too, Cuellar warned the agents.
As Perez translated for Cuellar, her mind kept playing over Veronica and her niece being picked up by a convoy of Miguel’s men, and the pain and terror they must have endured. “I need to ask you something,” Perez said to Cuellar suddenly. He nodded, waiting. “There was a woman, Veronica Cardenas, she knew your wife,” Perez said, a sick feeling growing in her stomach.
A puzzled expression played across Cuellar’s face, then he shook his head. “I don’t think I know her.”
“Maybe you don’t, but your wife did,” Perez pressed him. “She disappeared in Piedras last March with her niece. They were innocent.”
Cuellar looked down at the table. “There were many innocent people,” he said, softly. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about your friend.”
Perez sat back in her chair, feeling defeated. She had convinced herself that Cuellar would provide her with the missing answers. “I’ll be right back,” she said, quickly getting up from the table. She went out to the hallway and propped herself up against the wall and took a deep breath.
Lawson came out into the hallway. “You okay?” he said, looking concerned.
“Todo bien,” she said, not looking at him.
Lawson frowned as if he didn’t believe her. “Okay, we’re going to wrap it up,” he said. “You want to stay here?”
Perez nodded. “You think you can manage?”
“Sí se puede,” Lawson said, smiling.
“Thanks, Scotty,” she said. “I just need a moment.”
After the interview, Perez was exhausted and had a headache. She went back to her hotel room to try to rest. For her, the interview had cut deeply, not only because of Veronica, but also because Piedras Negras was her father’s hometown. He had always been proud of where he’d come from, and now she knew that everything he’d loved was gone. If he were still alive, it would have broken his heart. As she lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes, the horrific scenes from the massacres that Cuellar had so vividly described played over and over in her mind.
The next morning, the three agents and Gardner met at the prosecutor’s office again—this time with José Vasquez Jr., a wholesale coke dealer in Dallas, who’d also turned himself in. It would emerge that Vasquez had also passed along the BlackBerry numbers to the DEA.
Since Vasquez was based in Texas, Lawson hoped he’d have firsthand testimony about cocaine money being sent directly to José. Listening to Vasquez, who didn’t need a translator, tell his story was an eye-opening education about their multimillion-dollar business. Vasquez said his main point of contact in Piedras Negras was Hector Moreno, who had directed him at least eight times to send money for horse expenses, including a $150,000 delivery to José Treviño. Moreno had insisted that Vasquez send his most trusted courier and emphasized that “it needed to be nothing but hundreds because it would be 40’s brother.” To be extra cautious, Vasquez had sent his own father, who handed the shopping bag full of cash to José in a Wal-Mart parking lot near Dallas.
Lawson traded a knowing look with Perez, and wrote the details of the money drop down in his notebook. Perez was relieved not to have to translate. She was still recovering from the trauma of the day before. At least the information Vasquez had just shared with them was starting to improve her spirits. What Vasquez had to tell them next was even more enlightening, especially for Lawson, who had been at the All American when Mr. Piloto had won, despite the long odds.
Vasquez said he was directed to send $110,000 to New Mexico. In Dallas, he stuffed the bribe money inside a pressure cooker and had a courier drive it to Carlos Nayen in Ruidoso. Apparently Nayen had struck up an arrangement with the eleven gate starters, paying them $10,000 a piece on Miguel’s instructions. When the starting gate flew open, each man, with the exception of Mr. Piloto’s gate starter, had held back his horse just fractions of a second. The timing was so quick—just a blink of an eye—it was nearly undetectable, even to the racing stewards who would analyze the footage later. In a race that could be over in twenty seconds, every fraction of a second made a difference. Miguel had always been unusually focused when it came to something he wanted. He had wanted Mr. Piloto to win the All American, and he’d made sure it happened.
The debriefings went late into the evening over two days, as the agents and Gardner interviewed Cuellar and his men. The team was worn out from the long days, but also elated. They now had the other side of the story from Mexico. Not only had Cuellar, Vasquez, and the others told them how much drug money they received from Dallas, but they’d also discussed where the money went, and how much of it they’d sent to Carlos Nayen and José. The men had given them invaluable firsthand information, which meant they had conclusive evidence that Miguel was laundering his drug money through his brother’s racing business, Tremor Enterprises.
Cuellar’s warning about Miguel reminded Pennington once again of the danger involved in prosecuting José and his men. He still hadn’t forgiven himself for a Dallas police officer getting shot during one of his previous investigations. The officer had nearly died. In hindsight, there wasn’t much he could have done to prevent it, but he still felt responsible because he’d written the arrest warrant and sent the lieutenant out to knock on the door. He didn’t want anyone dying under his watch. He also couldn’t help but think about his own safety. He didn’t go anywhere unarmed. Going after federal agents on U.S. soil was a suicidal move that most cartels wouldn’t even consider. But the Zetas had killed a U.S. federal agent in Mexico already, so he imagined they were more than willing to cross that line.