You’re walking in the desert just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, when you notice
something strange...a little red ribbon tied to a small sagebrush plant.
Hmm, why would someone have tied a ribbon around this desert shrub, an herbaceous plant
that is widespread in certain areas of the American West.
That’s how you think…you’re a formal type of guy.
You’re clever, too, and you’ve seen the entirety of “Breaking Bad”, three times.
You assume of course that the ribbon is tied around that shrub because some drug dealer
who operates on a massive scale has buried millions of dollars nearby.
You then look over your shoulder to ensure the cartels aren’t watching…Hey, you’ve
seen those chainsaw videos, you don’t wanna end up starring in a short film posted on
LiveLeak.
Nonetheless, you think, I’m coming back at night with a shovel.
It’s an age-old problem for drug dealers, the ones who make a lot of cash.
What does one do with all one’s money?
Stash it under the floorboards?
Fill the walls with it?
Bury it in the desert?
You really have to do something with that cash, because if you don’t, someone is likely
going to take it from you.
Police once raided the house of a Colombian drug dealer and just sitting around was $29
million.
In the drug world, that wasn’t all that weird.
A few years ago the cops found up to $20 million dollars at a house in Miami.
The cash was hidden in buckets.
We won’t go on, but will tell you that drug traffickers have had their stash taken many
times, and the hiding places weren’t always that great.
It’s thought at some point the drug Kingpin named Pablo Escobar was worth an astonishing
$30 billion, and even today people are hunting for part of that buried treasure.
In fact, Pablo’s brother, Roberto Escobar, has said that buried somewhere out there,
maybe in the desert, maybe in the walls of houses now occupied by unknowing tenants,
are tens of millions of dollars.
So, with that in mind, maybe the next time you see a red ribbon tied to a shrub in the
middle of nowhere, you should start digging.
But what about the money that once belonged to El Chapo, where did that go?
How much was he even worth?
The problem is, drug cartel bosses don’t usually do their taxes, so it’s hard to
know how much they are worth.
Forbes magazine actually had the Sinaloa cartel down as making a cool three billion a year
during El Chapo’s heyday, but we are guessing Forbes is pulling that number out of thin
air.
How would Forbes know?
One time the Mexican army pulled over a car and inside was about $15.3 million, and that
cash was said to be the property of one Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
We might not ever know exactly how much he had, but if you figure out how much he and
his cartel friends got over the U.S./Mexican border, we can safely say he was incredibly
rich.
Maybe El Chapo made a billion…let’s just go with a billion for now.
So, the cops didn’t just find El Chapo sitting with a bunch of suitcases filled with a billion
dollars.
They didn’t find a savings account belonging to one Joaquin Guzman Loera and there were
millions and millions of bucks in it.
Before we get to “hidden stashes”, we should tell you that incredibly rich drug
traffickers do the same as many other rich people, in that they hide their money in off-shore
accounts.
That’s right, like former heads of governments, celebrities, sports stars, business people
and even the British Royal family, drug dealers get their money in these tax havens where
the cash is kept away from the prying eyes of tax collectors.
The money is owned by what’s called a “shell-company”, meaning it’s fake, inactive... in reality,
just a name.
. In 2016, it was discovered that another Mexican
narcotics kingpin, a guy named Rafael Caro Quintero, had one of these accounts in Panama.
He got some clever dude to take his drug money and diversify it, and then make it look like
that money belonged to a made-up business with accounts in a tax haven.
In fact, a few years ago the British banking giant HSBC admitted to laundering billions
of dollars for Mexican and Columbian drug dealers.
An investigation found that the Mexican cartels would turn up to a bank and in just one day
hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash into one single account... no questions
asked of course.
The bank didn’t even face criminal charges in the end, for the reason that an indictment
might topple the bank and subsequently endanger the financial system at large.
HSBC just said it would defer bonuses for a few years and settle to the amount of $1.9
billion.
That was virtually nothing for HSBC, and you can bet a lot of bosses got some dope bonuses
when they were dealing with the traffickers.
No one did any hard time, like you’d have to, if you got pulled over and had a bag of
weed on you.
Anyway, there’s no doubt El Chapo has laundered a ton of money.
When he stood trial, we found out about his personal zoo; his collection of jewel-encrusted
guns and planes supposedly full of cash, but U.S. officials weren’t quite sure where
to look for the billions of dollars this guy could have earned.
His indictment was valued at $14 billion, but that number was a bit of a guess based
on how many drugs El Chapo and his cartel had trafficked.
In fact, at the time, a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. said there was likely no way that
El Chapo had $14 billion hidden some place, whether it be a hole in the desert or a bank
account in Panama.
Some people said $14 billion was a “fantasy figure”, but he certainly had quite a lot
of millions hidden somewhere…but where?
Well, more recently a 12-page document was released talking about the money trail.
It said in drug shipments El Chapo and his gang made $12,666,181,704.
How they came up with an exact number is beyond explanation, but it is what it is.
The investigators went looking for any legitimate businesses owned by the cartel, which is what
the traffickers did to make their money legal.
The problem is, U.S. investigators can do nothing about cash that was spent on businesses
in Mexico.
One investigator said cartel guys, or guys that worked for the cartel, would arrive in
the U.S. with prepaid credit cards loaded with millions of dollars.
They could then make a giant purchase, such as lots of high-grade computers.
Then they’d export the computers and the cash from the sale ended up not in the U.S.,
but in Mexico.
One person who testified against El Chapo said the man did indeed spend a lot, but he
spent all that cash in Mexico.
He bought things like private planes, yachts, and he had lavish properties all over the
place.
The U.S. can do nothing about that.
What was bought in Mexico stays in Mexico.
In fact, two wives of former cartel members said sometimes vast quantities of street money
would be taken through the U.S. into stash houses in Mexico.
They’d use counting machines there to count the millions, and then package that cash.
But where did it go, that’s the billion dollar question?
Guzman’s wife doesn’t act or live like a billionaire, but she’s certainly not broke.
People who testified against him also said that the cartel buys things like dairy farms
and shopping malls.
The Mexican local authorities might turn a blind eye because the cartel also invests
in things such as charities and sports teams.
El Chapo’s wife by the way, one Emma Coronel Guzmán, has stood by her husband and said
that he is a “humble” man and a lot of lies have been told about him.
She said the U.S. government and the media have overblown just how big he was in the
drug trafficking and she has also said the billions he is presumed to have or be hiding
just don’t exist.
She doesn’t deny that he was a powerful man, so powerful in fact, that she has gone
on record saying the Mexican government wanted him dead.
The reason for that, she said, was because he knew too much - meaning he had made many
friends in the government during his drug trafficking days.
She’s even been called the Narco-Princess Diana, since she has been known to be charitable.
But does she have billions of dollars?
So far, she has not done anything that would tell us she has a ton of cash.
No doubt her accounts have also been investigated.
When asked about just how much cash she has and how she earns her money, this is what
she said in an interview: “I have irrigation land, things like that,
which I prefer not to talk about ... I do not have anything illegal.
I know the government has been checking or verifying if I have something unlawful”.
Investigations have found out that she gets payments from what was called her “legal
counsel” but she doesn’t live a glamorous lifestyle and lives in a pretty normal, if
not nice house in Mexico.
Obviously if she did have billions she wouldn’t be flaunting it, but right now the money trail
doesn’t lead back to her.
The DEA has said different, and has spoken out about how this former beauty queen does
actually live a fairly lavish life.
That agency has said the Mexican government could get on the money trail but it criticized
Mexican officials for not even trying to find the money.
Hey, maybe some people are still on the payroll.
As for Guzman’s two sons, well, they are both wanted men and both in the drug trafficking
game.
One of them drives around in a $220,000 car, so you would think that the Guzman family
isn’t short of cash.
Some reports suggest that it is these two sons who are paying off the Mexican government,
and that is why El Chapo’s billions will never be found.
El Chapo has bribed a lot of people in the past, but right now he doesn’t have many
options given the fact he is locked down in pretty much a modern dungeon and is allowed
very few visits.
A former assistant U.S. attorney has said that El Chapo will certainly have shell companies,
but finding these off-shore companies won’t be easy because they will be well-hidden.
So far, the U.S. has recovered very little, and the Mexican government has been accused
of accepting bribes from the Cartels.
While El Chapo is in prison the drug trade still flourishes and most people agree that
the war on drugs cannot ever be won.
Right now the Sinaloa cartel and other cartels are hiring very clever attorneys and other
professionals to hide and invest their money.
These days you can’t walk up to an HSBC bank with half a million bucks and say, “I’d
like to make a deposit.”
Something the cartels do now is hire huge gangs of people to deposit less than $10,000
in a bank account.
That way, the cash stays off the radar, but don’t be fooled into thinking anything has
really changed.
The cash still flows like a river that’s burst its banks.
More recent reports said that the Mexican President wants any money from El Chapo to
go back to Mexico, after all, it was earned in Mexico.
El Chapo himself has said if the cash does get back to Mexico he wants it to go to the
country’s poorest folks, the indigenous communities.
Alas, no one has found El Chapo’s cash.
The U.S. meanwhile spent about $50 billion last year on its war against drugs, with around
20 to 30 billion being spent on heroin and cocaine prohibition.
Obviously that wasn’t all spent on hunting down cartel members, but you could safely
say it cost a few billion to catch El Chapo.
Meanwhile, other drug lords have taken over and cocaine consumption in the U.S. is on
the rise.
We doubt El Chapo’s cash will be in a hole in the desert, next to a sagebrush plant,
but you never know, one day you might see that red ribbon.
Nonetheless, it’s much more likely his money is tied up in properties and legitimate businesses,
as well as hidden in offshore accounts next to other very wealthy people’s money.
Right now you have to watch these two videos, “Insane Way El Chapo Escaped Prison” and
“How Insane is El Chapo's Prison Cell Security?”