AZMEX UPDATE 22 APR 2012
Note: Learning from the home boys how to game the system. Everyone
rolls over and becomes an informant for one agency or another, and
keep on doing their thing. Another reason that the "investigations"
take years? And the drugs, illegals, money keeps flowing.
From a Mexican kingpin to an FBI informant
After agents arrest a drug cartel chieftain named Jesus Audel
Miramontes-Varela, he becomes one of the bureau's most valuable
sources of information, according to confidential interview reports.
A Fox News film crew investigates reports that 20 bodies were
unearthed on a ranch outside Palomas, Mexico. Investigators removed
remains from several large graves. (Maggie Ybarra, El Paso Times /
November 30, 2010)
By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times
April 21, 2012, 8:12 p.m.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi-
informant-20120422,0,3657555,full.story
WASHINGTON — Police and federal agents pulled the car over in a
suburb north of Denver. An FBI agent showed his badge. The driver
appeared not startled at all. "My friend," he said, "I have been
waiting for you."
And with that, Jesus Audel Miramontes-Varela stepped out of his white
2002 BMW X5 and into the arms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Over the next several days at his ranch in Colorado and an FBI safe
house in Albuquerque, the Mexican cartel chieftain — who had
reputedly fed one of his victims to lions in Mexico — was transformed
into one of the FBI's top informants on the Southwest border.
Around a dining room table in August 2010, an FBI camera whirring
above, the 34-year-old Miramontes-Varela confessed his leadership in
the Juarez cartel, according to 75 pages of confidential FBI
interview reports obtained by The Times/Tribune Washington Bureau.
He told about marijuana and cocaine routes to California, New York
and the Great Lakes. He described the shooting deaths of 30 people at
a horse track in Mexico, and a hidden mass grave with 20 bodies,
including two U.S. residents.
He told them about his African lions, which he had acquired as circus
cubs. The story about feeding one of his enemies to them was false,
he claimed, but he said he had seen plenty of "violence and
suffering." He told agents he was desperate to trade his knowledge
for government protection. He wanted a new life for himself and his
wife and three daughters.
A week later Miramontes-Varela pleaded guilty in federal court in New
Mexico to a minor felony as an illegal immigrant in possession of a
firearm. Then he disappeared, almost certainly into the federal
witness protection program.
FBI officials in Arizona and Washington declined to comment about
Miramontes-Varela, citing bureau policy against discussing
informants. But the documents tell plenty.
During the interview sessions, Miramontes-Varela "provided
significant information about drug trafficking activity," the
documents said, leading to several successful unnamed law enforcement
operations in the U.S. and Mexico.
After Miramontes-Varela was stopped in Brighton, Colo., agents took
him back to his ranch. They advised him and his wife, Mari, that he
was "the subject of an FBI investigation for his involvement in drug
trafficking, firearms trafficking, money laundering and the
interstate transportation of stolen property."
In Spanish, they read him his Miranda rights. He called an attorney;
they spoke quietly in Spanish. Miramontes-Varela hung up and turned
to the agents. "Yes," he said. "He told me to do as much as I can for
you."
Miramontes-Varela signed the Miranda waiver and looked up at the
agents. He asked, "Where do you want to start?"
First, they said, any guns?
Miramontes-Varela mentioned a black 9-millimeter semiautomatic Glock
pistol he said he bought after being shot at in El Paso. The agents
asked to see it. "Yes, yes, no problem," he said. He walked to a
floor safe in a far corner of the living room, unlocked it and handed
the weapon over.
Agents drove the couple to the FBI safe house in Albuquerque. Inside,
they pointed to two cameras. One was in the master bedroom, where
Miramontes-Varela and his wife would stay. Agents showed that that it
was unplugged and that they had covered it with a white plastic bag.
"Very nice," Miramontes-Varela said.
Miramontes-Varela talked to them around the dining room table. That
is where the other camera was. It stayed on.
His story poured out. He was born the third of 10 children in
Terrero, Mexico, and grew up in Namiquipa, northern Mexico. He
married when he was 18, his bride 15. They sneaked though Nogales,
Ariz., coming to the U.S., he said, "to make money."
They settled in Denver. Miramontes-Varela installed drywall. But in
the late 1990s a brother, Yovany, lost an arm in a tractor mishap,
and Miramontes-Varela returned home. He grew apples and traded in
cattle.
In early 2002, he said, the Juarez cartel came to Namiquipa. Pedro
Sanchez, known as El Tigre, controlled things. He offered Miramontes-
Varela a job collecting a monthly $35,000 "tax" from marijuana growers.
Every 15 days, growers carted 20 tons to a local warehouse. It was
shipped north through El Paso, the proceeds funneled back to the
cartel and the growers.
One day the military arrived and gunfire ensued. "The mayor and town
treasurer were killed," Miramontes-Varela said. Later, El Tigre was
arrested.
In 2008, Miramontes-Varela said, he fled with his family to El Paso.
When he failed to return, the cartel burned his ranch and stole his
cattle, all 120 cows. He was done with the violence, he said.
That part, according to the FBI, was not true. Miramontes-Varela
shuffled between ranches in New Mexico and Colorado, they said, often
in an armored car with bodyguards, and set up his own drug- and gun-
smuggling operation.
When a courier was arrested with 18 kilos of cocaine, Miramontes-
Varela offered the man's family the choice of one of his 16 homes in
Mexico, including his "big house," according to telephone wiretaps
outlined in the documents.
In March 2010, the FBI listed him as head of the "Miramontes-Varela
Drug Trafficking Organization," tied to the Juarez, Sinaloa and Los
Zetas cartels. From two confidential sources and two wiretaps, agents
learned that his organization had stolen tractors in the U.S. and
driven them to Mexico as payment for lost loads. One debt alone
reached $670,000. They learned that one of Miramontes-Varela's bosses
in Mexico, "Temoc," was tortured and killed by the Sinaloans.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also wanted
him arrested. It had tracked $250,000 in illegal gun purchases to
Miramontes-Varela and his brother through its ill-fated Fast and
Furious gun-smuggling surveillance operation in Arizona.
FBI agents rigged a 24-hour pole camera outside his ranch near Santa
Teresa, N.M. But Miramontes-Varela figured it out. Five of his men in
two vehicles followed a surveillance agent for 90 minutes, then
slashed his tire.
More ominously, the FBI learned Miramontes-Varela and his
organization had bribed U.S. officials in El Paso and New Mexico.
They decided it was time to bring him in.
On Aug. 18, 2010, they followed him from his Colorado farm. He
briefly visited a Walgreens, then the State Patrol pulled him over.
The time was 11:20 a.m. They had him.
In the safe house dining room, agents brought out maps, and
Miramontes-Varela sketched in smuggling routes. He said weapons were
easily acquired in this country, including .50-caliber rifles. "Good
for long-range sniper fire," he said.
He filled in the cartel hierarchies too. One chieftain had arm and
shoulder scars from bullet wounds. At the horse track murders, the
chieftain wore a mask. Some switched sides; others died when loads
went missing.
And he told them about that mass grave in Palomas, Mexico.
Authorities dug up 20 decaying corpses. Miramontes-Varela, the FBI's
new informant, was right.
richard.serrano@latimes.com
Note: the Honduran passports of interest.
Detienen a presunto líder de célula criminal, y 4 cómplices traían
armas y droga
Por: redaccion2 redaccion | 21-Abr-2012 08:16
http://www.elfronterizo.com.mx/noticias/detienen-a-presunto-lider-
de-celula-criminal-y-4-complices-traian-armas-y-droga/
Ciudad Juárez, Chih.- Elementos de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública
Municipal realizaron durante la tarde de ayer el arresto de cinco
personas en posesión de armas de fuego y droga, junto con el presunto
líder de una célula criminal de una banda delincuencial relacionada
con la comisión de varios delitos graves.
La detención se llevó a cabo a las 16:00 horas de ayer en la
intersección de las calles Vicente Guerrero y avenida Benito Juárez,
cuando el tripulante de una camioneta marca Kia, modelo 1999, se pasó
un semáforo en rojo, por lo que de inmediato policías municipales le
marcaron el alto para verificar por qué no respetó el señalamiento vial.
El conductor del vehículo se bajo hablando por teléfono, dando la
ubicación de dónde lo habían detenido, mientras que al hacer la
intervención se encontró en la camioneta un arma larga y 10 paquetes
de mariguana, una mujer que iba de copiloto y un tercer hombre que
cuidaba en el asiento trasero a un menor de apenas 5 años, por lo que
fueron puestos bajo arresto de inmediato.
Minutos después de la intervención llegó una camioneta tipo Jeep
Liberty con dos sujetos en su interior a querer rescatar al conductor
del primer vehículo, quien responde al nombre de Víctor Reyes Olguín,
de 41 años, alias "El Alacrán", quien tenía en su poder un arma de
fuego tipo escuadra calibre 9 milímetros con ocho cartuchos útiles en
el cargador, por lo que de inmediato fueron sometidos y arrestados
por los agentes municipales, ya que los superaban en cantidad y
estrategia.
Los detenidos responden a los nombres de:
Víctor Reyes Olguín, de 41 años, alias "El Alacrán".
María Robles González Rodríguez, de 30 años
Carlos Omar Monreal, de 21 años
Cristóbal Ramírez Rodríguez, de 48 años
Miguel Ángel Guzmán Pérez, de 19 años
Cabe hacer mención que los dos últimos mencionados son de procedencia
hondureña, y según comentaron que trabajan para Reyes Olguín, quien
prometió que los ayudaría a que cruzaran a los Estados Unidos. A los
detenidos se les aseguro en total lo siguiente:
Un fusil de asalto calibre 7.62 x 39
Una pistola tipo escuadra calibre 9 milímetros
Un cargador para fusil de asalto calibre 7.62 x 39
33 cartuchos útiles para fusil de asalto calibre 7.62 x 39
Tres cargadores para pistola calibre 9 mm
8 cartuchos útiles calibre 9 mm
10 paquetes de mariguana con un peso aproximado de una libra cada
uno
Camioneta Jeep Liberty, color negro, modelo 2011
Camioneta Kia, color blanco, modelo 1999
2 pasaportes de Honduras
2 radios de comunicación
2 teléfonos celulares
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