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Friday, July 9, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
altar,sonora
Very few residents dare to drive on one of the roads out of this watering-hole for migrants, fearing they will be stopped at gunpoint. They worry they will be told to turn around after their gas tanks are drained or, worse, be kidnapped or killed.
A shootout that left 21 people dead and six wounded on the road last week is the most gruesome sign that a relatively tranquil pocket of northern Mexico is quickly turning into a hotbed of drug-fueled violence on Arizona's doorstep. The violence in recent months is grist for supporters of the state's tough new law against illegal immigration, who are eager to portray the border as a lawless battlefield of smugglers both of drugs and humans.
Nogales, the main city in the region, which shares a border with the Arizona city of the same name, has had 131 murders so far this year, nearly surpassing 135 for all of 2009, according to a tally by the newspaper Diario de Sonora. That includes two heads found Thursday stuffed side by side between the bars of a cemetery fence.
The carnage still pales compared to other Mexican border cities, most notably Ciudad Juarez, which lies across from El Paso, Texas, which had 2,600 murders last year. But the increase shows that some small cattle-grazing towns near Nogales are now in the grip of drug traffickers who terrorize residents.
The violence is concentrated in a few villages in the mountainous desert area of Rio Altar, which, until recently, drew tourists for its handsome churches, its river, a tilapia-filled lake and cooler temperatures. The roads wind through mountains of mesquite trees and saguaro cactus.
That's where Thursday's pre-dawn shootout occurred, just 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of the border, on a deserted stretch between the villages of Tubutama and Saric. Eight vehicles and numerous weapons were found in what authorities described as a confrontation between rival gangs competing for drug and immigration routes into the U.S.
The windows and panels of some vehicles were painted with X's in white shoe polish, said Fernando Pompa, a police officer in Altar who visited the scene. Bullet casings littered the pavement.
The territory is disputed between Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who heads the Sinaloa cartel, and the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a shootout last December with Mexican marines in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City.
Locals trace the wave of violence to the arrest in February of Jose Vazquez Villagrana, nicknamed "El Jaibil," or "The Wild Boar." Vazquez, reported to be an ally of Guzman, was captured by federal police in the nearby town of Santa Ana.
Many people have fled in the last few months, said one resident whose family has longtime roots in a village near the shootings. He asked that his only his first name, Luis, be published because he fears for his safety. His relatives abandoned their homes this spring to join him in a larger city where he lives.
"This began like a cancer in the finger and now it is spreading to other parts of the body," he said, noting that it seems as if the government has no control to stop it.
Luis said schools closed early this year without explanation. Soft-drink vendors and electricity meter readers refuse to come.
Tubutama, a village of about 1,500 people with no hotel, restaurant or gas station, canceled its annual town fair last month for the first time in memory. The move came after the town's comptroller and director of public works were murdered.
Journalists who cover the small villages stopped visiting several months ago, saying it is too dangerous.
"If no one puts a stop to this, these will become ghost towns," said Jose Martin Mayoral, editor of Diario del Desierto, the newspaper in Caborca.
Despite its small size, many motorists used to pass through Tubutama because it is a hub for local roads. Now they drive longer distances on a toll road.
"It's very dangerous," said Alvaro Celaya, 57, a taxi driver in Altar, which sits just outside the danger zone. "No one will take you there anymore."
Altar, a town of about 10,000 people with a yellow-domed Roman Catholic church in its central square, has been spared the violence but is only about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Tubutama. The town's economy was booming a few years ago with taxi drivers, restaurants and lodging houses that catered to migrants preparing to cross the U.S. border illegally in the Arizona desert.
Now, a scarcity of jobs because of the U.S. economic downturn is keeping illegal immigrants away, causing Altar to fall on hard times as well.
Ana Maria Velasquez, who volunteers at the church, said there used to be 50 candles on an altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe, each left by a migrant as a good-luck ritual before crossing the border. On Sunday, there was only one.
"The migrants sustained this town," said Velasquez, 29. "Now that the flow is down, we're very bad off economically."
On many afternoons, Altar police set up checkpoints to warn residents on the road to Tubutama that it is a risky trip, said Pompa, the police officer.
More than 23,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive on cartels in 2006.
Despite its proximity to Arizona, the increase in drug-fueled violence in this region has not spilled across the border — nor has it in El Paso or San Diego, across from Tijuana, Mexico.
Tony Estrada, the sheriff of Santa Cruz County, Arizona, said last week's shootout unnerved some people in his jurisdiction, which includes Nogales, Arizona.
"They don't want this happening in their backyard," he said. Everyone is just kind of on alert and watchful of what happened over there and hoping the violence will stop."
Estrada, echoing the view of many in Mexico's Rio Altar area, believes the violence will continue until one cartel assumes control or the warring factions broker a truce.
"These groups are battling for this area and you know it's going to continue," he said. "There's going to be retaliation for this."
A shootout that left 21 people dead and six wounded on the road last week is the most gruesome sign that a relatively tranquil pocket of northern Mexico is quickly turning into a hotbed of drug-fueled violence on Arizona's doorstep. The violence in recent months is grist for supporters of the state's tough new law against illegal immigration, who are eager to portray the border as a lawless battlefield of smugglers both of drugs and humans.
Nogales, the main city in the region, which shares a border with the Arizona city of the same name, has had 131 murders so far this year, nearly surpassing 135 for all of 2009, according to a tally by the newspaper Diario de Sonora. That includes two heads found Thursday stuffed side by side between the bars of a cemetery fence.
The carnage still pales compared to other Mexican border cities, most notably Ciudad Juarez, which lies across from El Paso, Texas, which had 2,600 murders last year. But the increase shows that some small cattle-grazing towns near Nogales are now in the grip of drug traffickers who terrorize residents.
The violence is concentrated in a few villages in the mountainous desert area of Rio Altar, which, until recently, drew tourists for its handsome churches, its river, a tilapia-filled lake and cooler temperatures. The roads wind through mountains of mesquite trees and saguaro cactus.
That's where Thursday's pre-dawn shootout occurred, just 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of the border, on a deserted stretch between the villages of Tubutama and Saric. Eight vehicles and numerous weapons were found in what authorities described as a confrontation between rival gangs competing for drug and immigration routes into the U.S.
The windows and panels of some vehicles were painted with X's in white shoe polish, said Fernando Pompa, a police officer in Altar who visited the scene. Bullet casings littered the pavement.
The territory is disputed between Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who heads the Sinaloa cartel, and the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose leader, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a shootout last December with Mexican marines in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City.
Locals trace the wave of violence to the arrest in February of Jose Vazquez Villagrana, nicknamed "El Jaibil," or "The Wild Boar." Vazquez, reported to be an ally of Guzman, was captured by federal police in the nearby town of Santa Ana.
Many people have fled in the last few months, said one resident whose family has longtime roots in a village near the shootings. He asked that his only his first name, Luis, be published because he fears for his safety. His relatives abandoned their homes this spring to join him in a larger city where he lives.
"This began like a cancer in the finger and now it is spreading to other parts of the body," he said, noting that it seems as if the government has no control to stop it.
Luis said schools closed early this year without explanation. Soft-drink vendors and electricity meter readers refuse to come.
Tubutama, a village of about 1,500 people with no hotel, restaurant or gas station, canceled its annual town fair last month for the first time in memory. The move came after the town's comptroller and director of public works were murdered.
Journalists who cover the small villages stopped visiting several months ago, saying it is too dangerous.
"If no one puts a stop to this, these will become ghost towns," said Jose Martin Mayoral, editor of Diario del Desierto, the newspaper in Caborca.
Despite its small size, many motorists used to pass through Tubutama because it is a hub for local roads. Now they drive longer distances on a toll road.
"It's very dangerous," said Alvaro Celaya, 57, a taxi driver in Altar, which sits just outside the danger zone. "No one will take you there anymore."
Altar, a town of about 10,000 people with a yellow-domed Roman Catholic church in its central square, has been spared the violence but is only about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Tubutama. The town's economy was booming a few years ago with taxi drivers, restaurants and lodging houses that catered to migrants preparing to cross the U.S. border illegally in the Arizona desert.
Now, a scarcity of jobs because of the U.S. economic downturn is keeping illegal immigrants away, causing Altar to fall on hard times as well.
Ana Maria Velasquez, who volunteers at the church, said there used to be 50 candles on an altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe, each left by a migrant as a good-luck ritual before crossing the border. On Sunday, there was only one.
"The migrants sustained this town," said Velasquez, 29. "Now that the flow is down, we're very bad off economically."
On many afternoons, Altar police set up checkpoints to warn residents on the road to Tubutama that it is a risky trip, said Pompa, the police officer.
More than 23,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive on cartels in 2006.
Despite its proximity to Arizona, the increase in drug-fueled violence in this region has not spilled across the border — nor has it in El Paso or San Diego, across from Tijuana, Mexico.
Tony Estrada, the sheriff of Santa Cruz County, Arizona, said last week's shootout unnerved some people in his jurisdiction, which includes Nogales, Arizona.
"They don't want this happening in their backyard," he said. Everyone is just kind of on alert and watchful of what happened over there and hoping the violence will stop."
Estrada, echoing the view of many in Mexico's Rio Altar area, believes the violence will continue until one cartel assumes control or the warring factions broker a truce.
"These groups are battling for this area and you know it's going to continue," he said. "There's going to be retaliation for this."
headless
Police have found the decapitated bodies of three men inside a burned-out car in the drug gang-plagued Mexican state of Sinaloa. The heads had been put on the vehicle's hood.
The Sinaloa state attorney general's office says one of the burned bodies was in the driver's seat, another in the back seat and the third was in the trunk.
Investigators found the car Monday in the city of Angostura, near the Pacific coast.
The office's statement provided no information on possible suspects or the motive for the killings.
Sinaloa has long been considered the home state of many of Mexico's most powerful drug lords.
The Sinaloa state attorney general's office says one of the burned bodies was in the driver's seat, another in the back seat and the third was in the trunk.
Investigators found the car Monday in the city of Angostura, near the Pacific coast.
The office's statement provided no information on possible suspects or the motive for the killings.
Sinaloa has long been considered the home state of many of Mexico's most powerful drug lords.
to the polls
After a Super Sunday of elections across Mexico that was widely seen as a test for the 2012 presidential race and the nation's future, the winner turns out to be _ well, not really anyone.
President Felipe Calderon's party is weak, the left is in collapse and the Institutional Revolutionary Party that is on a tentative path to recapture the presidency it held for 71 years was shown to be vulnerable. Drug cartel intimidation dissuaded many from voting at all.
The mixed outcome in elections across 15 states showed no party has won the faith of Mexicans desperate to bring their country out of a quagmire of economic stagnation and relentless gang wars that have killed more than 23,000 people since Calderon took office three years ago.
Calderon's conservative National Action Party won not a single state on its own, and lost two it had held, according to results Monday, and needed desperate alliances with leftists to wrest strongholds from the old ruling party.
That party, known as the PRI, demonstrated it remains Mexico's most important political force, won nine of 12 governorships Sunday.
Still, that was no change from the number it had before the ballot. And its defeat in three longtime bastion states indicated many Mexicans are still repulsed by the party that ruled through patronage and corruption from 1929 to 2000 _ a system that Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once called the "perfect dictatorship."
Sunday's elections also displayed the intimidating power of drug cartels in the most embattled states. Only a third of voters showed up in the country's most violent state, Chihuahua, where drug gangs hung four bodies from bridges on election day. Less than 40 percent voted in Tamaulipas, where gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre was assassinated last week.
It's not where Mexicans thought they would be when National Action's Vicente Fox ousted the PRI in 2000 and promised a new era.
"I still remember the celebration when Vicente Fox won the presidential elections 10 years ago. It was as if Mexico had won the World Cup," Mexican political scientist Leo Zuckerman wrote Monday in Excelsior newspaper. "Where are we 10 years after the historic triumph of Fox?"
"I see multiple threats to democracy, which has not yet consolidated itself in Mexico. I think organized crime is the biggest challenge," he said. "The stamp is very clear: crime has exercised its veto power over the power of the vote."
The PRI, a party that was created by the nation's rulers to tame the complex forces of the Mexican Revolution, was widely seen as doomed after its loss to Fox, and it was a battered afterthought in the 2006 presidential election, when Calderon narrowly defeated a resurgent leftist Democratic Revolution Party.
Four years later, Calderon's approval ratings are slumping amid mass shootings, corruption scandals and kidnappings that remind Mexicans daily of the resilient power of drug cartels he has vowed to defeat.
"He has reverse coattails," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "The economy is quite weak ... and the narco-traffickers have been on a binge."
Democratic Revolution _ the PRI's biggest competitor for the working class vote _ has largely imploded amid internal wrangling, four years after nearly winning the presidency. It lost the only state it controlled on its own among the 12 up for grabs Sunday.
In a sense, the left and right are back to where they were in the days of PRI rule: forced into uncomfortable alliances to tackle a powerful opponent. In 1988, National Action joined leftist parties in protesting the allegedly fraudulent presidential victory of Carlos Salinas.
On Sunday, neither the left nor the right were able to beat the PRI alone.
Democratic Revolution joined Calderon's party to win Sinaloa and Puebla behind coalition candidates who only recently bolted from the PRI. A similar coalition won in Oaxaca behind a minor-party candidate who quit the PRI a decade ago.
Though the results were largely due to local issues and local scandals, they were a blow to the PRI's hope that Sunday would help propel it back to the presidency. The party had ruled those states for 80 years.
Many saw the result as evidence that voters are skeptical about PRI promises that it has learned from its past mistakes and abandoned the strongman politics that kept in power for so long.
In Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking, PRI candidate Jesus Vizcarra long faced allegations of ties to the cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted drug lord. The newspaper Reforma recently published a photograph of Vizcarra attending a party years ago with El Chapo's No. 2, Ismael Zambada. Vizcarra, the mayor of state capital Culiacan and a distant relative of slain drug trafficker Ines Calderon, dodged questions about whether Zambada is the godfather of one of his children, saying only that he had never committed a crime.
In the heavily indigenous state of Oaxaca, outgoing Gov. Ulises Ruiz alienated many voters with his heavy handed approach to a five-month deadly uprising in 2006 over allegations that he stole his election victory.
In Puebla, the outgoing PRI official was widely ridiculed as "Precious Governor" because of a sycophantic comment made during a leaked conversation he had with a local businessman who complained about a reporter who was crusading against child molesters. Puebla police later seized the reporter in another state and hauled her halfway across Mexico. She was eventually freed.
"To a large extent this gives some breathing room to President Calderon, who expected to be faced with a resurgent PRI," said Andrew Selee, director of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson's Mexico Institute.
Voter turnout was robust in Sinaloa and Oaxaca and very low in two states where the PRI easily won: Chihuahua and Tamaulipas. National Action leaders touted this as a promising sign, insisting the PRI can only win where turnout is low.
"We won in places where people came out and voted," said Jose Sacramento, the defeated National Action candidate for governor in Tamaulipas, where the PRI fielded the brother of its assassinated candidate.
But then, what's the party plan for states where Calderon has failed to root out the cartels since launching his drug war at the end of 2006? In Tamaulipas, party leaders said they couldn't even find candidates who dared to run for mayor in some gang-plagued towns.
"It was an election that began with blood and ended with blood and that was a factor because citizens were afraid to participate," Sacramento said.
___
President Felipe Calderon's party is weak, the left is in collapse and the Institutional Revolutionary Party that is on a tentative path to recapture the presidency it held for 71 years was shown to be vulnerable. Drug cartel intimidation dissuaded many from voting at all.
The mixed outcome in elections across 15 states showed no party has won the faith of Mexicans desperate to bring their country out of a quagmire of economic stagnation and relentless gang wars that have killed more than 23,000 people since Calderon took office three years ago.
Calderon's conservative National Action Party won not a single state on its own, and lost two it had held, according to results Monday, and needed desperate alliances with leftists to wrest strongholds from the old ruling party.
That party, known as the PRI, demonstrated it remains Mexico's most important political force, won nine of 12 governorships Sunday.
Still, that was no change from the number it had before the ballot. And its defeat in three longtime bastion states indicated many Mexicans are still repulsed by the party that ruled through patronage and corruption from 1929 to 2000 _ a system that Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once called the "perfect dictatorship."
Sunday's elections also displayed the intimidating power of drug cartels in the most embattled states. Only a third of voters showed up in the country's most violent state, Chihuahua, where drug gangs hung four bodies from bridges on election day. Less than 40 percent voted in Tamaulipas, where gubernatorial candidate Rodolfo Torre was assassinated last week.
It's not where Mexicans thought they would be when National Action's Vicente Fox ousted the PRI in 2000 and promised a new era.
"I still remember the celebration when Vicente Fox won the presidential elections 10 years ago. It was as if Mexico had won the World Cup," Mexican political scientist Leo Zuckerman wrote Monday in Excelsior newspaper. "Where are we 10 years after the historic triumph of Fox?"
"I see multiple threats to democracy, which has not yet consolidated itself in Mexico. I think organized crime is the biggest challenge," he said. "The stamp is very clear: crime has exercised its veto power over the power of the vote."
The PRI, a party that was created by the nation's rulers to tame the complex forces of the Mexican Revolution, was widely seen as doomed after its loss to Fox, and it was a battered afterthought in the 2006 presidential election, when Calderon narrowly defeated a resurgent leftist Democratic Revolution Party.
Four years later, Calderon's approval ratings are slumping amid mass shootings, corruption scandals and kidnappings that remind Mexicans daily of the resilient power of drug cartels he has vowed to defeat.
"He has reverse coattails," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. "The economy is quite weak ... and the narco-traffickers have been on a binge."
Democratic Revolution _ the PRI's biggest competitor for the working class vote _ has largely imploded amid internal wrangling, four years after nearly winning the presidency. It lost the only state it controlled on its own among the 12 up for grabs Sunday.
In a sense, the left and right are back to where they were in the days of PRI rule: forced into uncomfortable alliances to tackle a powerful opponent. In 1988, National Action joined leftist parties in protesting the allegedly fraudulent presidential victory of Carlos Salinas.
On Sunday, neither the left nor the right were able to beat the PRI alone.
Democratic Revolution joined Calderon's party to win Sinaloa and Puebla behind coalition candidates who only recently bolted from the PRI. A similar coalition won in Oaxaca behind a minor-party candidate who quit the PRI a decade ago.
Though the results were largely due to local issues and local scandals, they were a blow to the PRI's hope that Sunday would help propel it back to the presidency. The party had ruled those states for 80 years.
Many saw the result as evidence that voters are skeptical about PRI promises that it has learned from its past mistakes and abandoned the strongman politics that kept in power for so long.
In Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking, PRI candidate Jesus Vizcarra long faced allegations of ties to the cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted drug lord. The newspaper Reforma recently published a photograph of Vizcarra attending a party years ago with El Chapo's No. 2, Ismael Zambada. Vizcarra, the mayor of state capital Culiacan and a distant relative of slain drug trafficker Ines Calderon, dodged questions about whether Zambada is the godfather of one of his children, saying only that he had never committed a crime.
In the heavily indigenous state of Oaxaca, outgoing Gov. Ulises Ruiz alienated many voters with his heavy handed approach to a five-month deadly uprising in 2006 over allegations that he stole his election victory.
In Puebla, the outgoing PRI official was widely ridiculed as "Precious Governor" because of a sycophantic comment made during a leaked conversation he had with a local businessman who complained about a reporter who was crusading against child molesters. Puebla police later seized the reporter in another state and hauled her halfway across Mexico. She was eventually freed.
"To a large extent this gives some breathing room to President Calderon, who expected to be faced with a resurgent PRI," said Andrew Selee, director of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson's Mexico Institute.
Voter turnout was robust in Sinaloa and Oaxaca and very low in two states where the PRI easily won: Chihuahua and Tamaulipas. National Action leaders touted this as a promising sign, insisting the PRI can only win where turnout is low.
"We won in places where people came out and voted," said Jose Sacramento, the defeated National Action candidate for governor in Tamaulipas, where the PRI fielded the brother of its assassinated candidate.
But then, what's the party plan for states where Calderon has failed to root out the cartels since launching his drug war at the end of 2006? In Tamaulipas, party leaders said they couldn't even find candidates who dared to run for mayor in some gang-plagued towns.
"It was an election that began with blood and ended with blood and that was a factor because citizens were afraid to participate," Sacramento said.
___
furry little things
executives of a Los Angeles toy company - including two from the San Gabriel Valley - were arrested Friday for their alleged part in a scheme to launder almost $9 million for drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia using teddy bears and Topo Gigio mouse dolls.
Meichun Cheng Huang, 57, of Irvine, a co-owner of Angel Toy Corp.; Ling Yu, 52, of Arcadia, CEO and co-owner of the company; and company accountant Xiaoxin "Judy" Ju, 48, of San Gabriel, were arrested on federal charges at the downtown business on Alameda Street, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"It's no small irony that a multi-million-dollar company which promoted itself as retailer of cuddly stuffed animals was allegedly acting as a financial linchpin for drug trafficking operatives in Colombia and Mexico," said ICE Director John Morton.
"It may be a toy company, but we believe these defendants' pursuits were anything but child's play," he said. "Businesses that launder profits for drug trafficking organizations should be on notice there will be a high price to pay for helping further these dangerous criminal enterprises."
According to an indictment, Huang and Yu directed their Colombian and Mexican clients to drop cash off at the company's Los Angeles headquarters or deposit it directly into the company's bank accounts.
After receiving the money, Angel Toy executives allegedly wired it to China to purchase stuffed animals and dolls, according to ICE.
toys were subsequently exported to Colombia, where an associate apparently arranged for their sale, ICE said.
The Colombian pesos generated by those sales were then used to reimburse Colombian drug traffickers, a money-laundering process known as a "black market peso exchange," said state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office investigated the case along with ICE.
"This sort of scheme does go on in other contexts, but linking teddy bears to the drug business -- that's one for the record books," the Democratic gubernatorial candidate said.
"The money goes to China, the toys go to Colombia, and the profits go to drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia."
The drug proceeds, which were allegedly laundered through numerous cash deposits in the United States, were returned to clients when the stuffed animals and dolls were exported to the foreign countries and sold to generate local "clean" money, according to ICE.
Today's arrests stemmed from a five-count indictment that charged five defendants, including the co-owners of Angel Toy Corp., and Jose
Leonardo Cuevas Otalora, 50, a Colombia-based businessman who allegedly oversaw the importation of the toys into his country, prosecutors said. The fifth defendant in the case is Angel Toy Corp. itself.
Immigration officials were working with the Colombian National Police and the U.S. Department of Justice to arrest Otalora, according to ICE.
The indictment also seeks the forfeiture of more than $8.6 million dollars, which is the amount of money allegedly laundered over a four-year period, from 2005 to 2009.
Topo Gigio was a character on a children's puppet show on Italian and Spanish television in the early 1960s and began famous worldwide when the cute rodent appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Topo Gigio remains a Latino cultural icon.
Meichun Cheng Huang, 57, of Irvine, a co-owner of Angel Toy Corp.; Ling Yu, 52, of Arcadia, CEO and co-owner of the company; and company accountant Xiaoxin "Judy" Ju, 48, of San Gabriel, were arrested on federal charges at the downtown business on Alameda Street, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"It's no small irony that a multi-million-dollar company which promoted itself as retailer of cuddly stuffed animals was allegedly acting as a financial linchpin for drug trafficking operatives in Colombia and Mexico," said ICE Director John Morton.
"It may be a toy company, but we believe these defendants' pursuits were anything but child's play," he said. "Businesses that launder profits for drug trafficking organizations should be on notice there will be a high price to pay for helping further these dangerous criminal enterprises."
According to an indictment, Huang and Yu directed their Colombian and Mexican clients to drop cash off at the company's Los Angeles headquarters or deposit it directly into the company's bank accounts.
After receiving the money, Angel Toy executives allegedly wired it to China to purchase stuffed animals and dolls, according to ICE.
toys were subsequently exported to Colombia, where an associate apparently arranged for their sale, ICE said.
The Colombian pesos generated by those sales were then used to reimburse Colombian drug traffickers, a money-laundering process known as a "black market peso exchange," said state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office investigated the case along with ICE.
"This sort of scheme does go on in other contexts, but linking teddy bears to the drug business -- that's one for the record books," the Democratic gubernatorial candidate said.
"The money goes to China, the toys go to Colombia, and the profits go to drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia."
The drug proceeds, which were allegedly laundered through numerous cash deposits in the United States, were returned to clients when the stuffed animals and dolls were exported to the foreign countries and sold to generate local "clean" money, according to ICE.
Today's arrests stemmed from a five-count indictment that charged five defendants, including the co-owners of Angel Toy Corp., and Jose
Leonardo Cuevas Otalora, 50, a Colombia-based businessman who allegedly oversaw the importation of the toys into his country, prosecutors said. The fifth defendant in the case is Angel Toy Corp. itself.
Immigration officials were working with the Colombian National Police and the U.S. Department of Justice to arrest Otalora, according to ICE.
The indictment also seeks the forfeiture of more than $8.6 million dollars, which is the amount of money allegedly laundered over a four-year period, from 2005 to 2009.
Topo Gigio was a character on a children's puppet show on Italian and Spanish television in the early 1960s and began famous worldwide when the cute rodent appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Topo Gigio remains a Latino cultural icon.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
goin to the polls
Suspected drug hitmen in Mexico killed a top prosecutor, murdered 21 people in a shootout and dumped a severed head outside the house of a mayoral candidate days before elections, authorities said.
The violence unfolded in two states just south of the U.S. border and was the latest sign that Mexico's drug war is growing more intense.
Gunmen killed Sandra Salas, a deputy prosecutor for the northern state of Chihuahua in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, Wednesday night as she was being driven by bodyguards, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said.
Then Thursday, unidentified men also left a head outside the house of the favorite for Ciudad Juarez mayor, Hector Murgia, who is running for Mexico's main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, before the vote in 12 states Sunday.
President Felipe Calderon is under mounting pressure to control escalating drug violence that worries Washington and that is scaring off tourists and forcing some U.S.-owned factories to freeze investment plans.
Two drug gangs rumbled on a desert highway early on Thursday in a shootout that left 21 people dead in the northern state of Sonora, said Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office.
"It happened 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the U.S. border," Larrinaga said.
Larrinaga said investigators don't know what triggered the shootout, but the country's cartels routinely battle for the smuggling routes used to get cocaine into the United States.
Mexican authorities are on high alert after hitmen dressed as marines ambushed and killed the front-runner candidate for governor in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas Monday, in the worst sign so far of political intimidation by smuggling gangs.
Murguia, a former Ciudad Juarez mayor, faces accusations from rival politicians and rights groups of being in the pay of the city's powerful Juarez cartel, which is fighting the Sinaloa alliance for control of trafficking routes in a battle that has killed some 5,700 people in the city since 2008.
More than 26,000 people have died in drug violence across Mexico over the past 3 1/2 years.
Calderon has repeatedly vowed to stick to his military-backed anti-drug strategy, relying on thousands of troops across the country to curb the power of drug cartels.
Adding to a climate of violence ahead of the elections, a mayor in the southern state of Oaxaca was killed along with another local official Wednesday. The state prosecutor's office said the attack on Nicolas Garcia, mayor of the coastal town of Santo Domingo de Morelos, was likely a robbery.
The violence unfolded in two states just south of the U.S. border and was the latest sign that Mexico's drug war is growing more intense.
Gunmen killed Sandra Salas, a deputy prosecutor for the northern state of Chihuahua in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, Wednesday night as she was being driven by bodyguards, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said.
Then Thursday, unidentified men also left a head outside the house of the favorite for Ciudad Juarez mayor, Hector Murgia, who is running for Mexico's main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, before the vote in 12 states Sunday.
President Felipe Calderon is under mounting pressure to control escalating drug violence that worries Washington and that is scaring off tourists and forcing some U.S.-owned factories to freeze investment plans.
Two drug gangs rumbled on a desert highway early on Thursday in a shootout that left 21 people dead in the northern state of Sonora, said Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office.
"It happened 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the U.S. border," Larrinaga said.
Larrinaga said investigators don't know what triggered the shootout, but the country's cartels routinely battle for the smuggling routes used to get cocaine into the United States.
Mexican authorities are on high alert after hitmen dressed as marines ambushed and killed the front-runner candidate for governor in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas Monday, in the worst sign so far of political intimidation by smuggling gangs.
Murguia, a former Ciudad Juarez mayor, faces accusations from rival politicians and rights groups of being in the pay of the city's powerful Juarez cartel, which is fighting the Sinaloa alliance for control of trafficking routes in a battle that has killed some 5,700 people in the city since 2008.
More than 26,000 people have died in drug violence across Mexico over the past 3 1/2 years.
Calderon has repeatedly vowed to stick to his military-backed anti-drug strategy, relying on thousands of troops across the country to curb the power of drug cartels.
Adding to a climate of violence ahead of the elections, a mayor in the southern state of Oaxaca was killed along with another local official Wednesday. The state prosecutor's office said the attack on Nicolas Garcia, mayor of the coastal town of Santo Domingo de Morelos, was likely a robbery.
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