One of the cartel wives is married to Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo. For years, he was Chicago’s Public Enemy No. 1 before he was caught.
The other is married to a cartel druglord known as El Mencho. He’s currently considered Chicago’s top public enemy under indictment here and a fugitive with a huge bounty on his head.
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The reward is $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera. His New Generation cartel has muscled its way into Chicago and is now commanding a sizable share of the heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl markets once held exclusively by Joaquin ” El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel.
El Chapo is locked up for life in the U.S.; El Mencho is a fugitive in Mexico. Both of their wives are in government custody.
Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, is in Washington, D.C. and due to be sentenced Tuesday. U.S. prosecutors are asking that the former teenage beauty queen be imprisoned for four years, even though she pleaded guilty to trafficking and money laundering.
And in Mexico, El Mencho’s wife, Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia, is under arrest on laundering charges and being held in a Mexico prison where security has been tightened because she is suspected of running her husband’s multi-billion dollar drug empire.
“The Mexico based drug cartels have formed alliances with the Chicago local gangs and distribute the most dangerous drugs on the planet, said Robert Bell, Special Agent in Charge of DEA Chicago.
In a recent interview with the I-Team, Bell said the cartels continue to exploit a voracious appetite for opioids here. And, he explained that what happens in Mexico has violent ripple effects in Chicago.
“The Mexico drug trafficking cartels, the drugs that they manufacture and supply and the violence they perpetrate. is directly connected to the street gangs in Chicago that control the drug markets here and directly connected to the violence, the addiction, the overdoses and the misery that’s caused by those cartels.”
As the I-Team reported in March of 2020, El Mencho was named in a new Chicago racketeering indictment that cited his cartel’s alleged role in “murders, assaults, kidnappings, assassinations, and acts of torture.”
Whether his wife will finally lead authorities to Chicago’s Public Enemy Number One may be a longshot, but their daughter is also in prison in the U.S., so prosecutors here and in Mexico are putting pressure on the whole El Mencho family.
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