Original subtitles

[♪]

Gangs rule their territories through ruthless enterprises,

fear,

and a strict code.

Deviate from this code

or challenge their power...

and retribution soon follows...

especially for the most powerful

and dangerous drug trafficking operation

in the world...

the Sinaloa Cartel,

a criminal enterprise

built on terror

and a devious business strategy.

Here are three stories

about their quest

to become the world's largest drug empire.

First, the Sinaloa Cartel

takes their business deep underground.

[Riley] These tunnels were engineered to the max.

It was a real wake-up call.

[Narrator] Then, a power struggle

pushes the Sinaloa Cartel into a deadly war across Mexico.

[Donovan] They would use extreme violence

to make sure that they control

and send a message to their enemies.

[Narrator] And finally, authorities must crack

the cartel's sophisticated communication system

to bring down its leader, El Chapo.

This technology really became his undoing.

[Narrator] These are stories

from the El Chapo years of the Sinaloa Cartel.

This is Gangland Chronicles.

1985. Mexico.

The Guadalajara Cartel,

one of Mexico's largest

and most brutal drug trafficking organizations,

falls apart.

As the Guadalajara Cartel buckled under the pressure

of U.S. and Mexico law enforcement,

that left a bit of a power vacuum,

and so we see this period of reorganization.

[Narrator] The Guadalajara Cartel

splits into three separate factions,

Tijuana, Juarez, and Sinaloa,

turning former partners into competitors.

A ruthless former Guadalajara lieutenant

takes control of the new Sinaloa Cartel.

His name, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka El Chapo.

Chapo Guzmán is clearly the leader of Sinaloa

as it evolved and became as violent...

and really as dominating in the drug market,

certainly in the United States.

I also think he's one of the most cunning criminals

of our lifetime.

[Narrator] By 1989, El Chapo runs the Sinaloa Cartel

alongside two other former Guadalajara lieutenants,

"El Mayo" Zambada and Héctor Salazar.

Beneath them, a well-oiled machine

takes the cartel's reach around the world.

They had a security department,

they had a communications department,

and they had hundreds of sicarios

who, when needed, would go do the dirty work.

I don't like giving him credit,

but Chapo was one hell of a CEO.

The Sinaloa Cartel is massive.

Not everyone reports directly to Chapo.

If there's a conflict

that is serious enough where it rises to the top,

Chapo will make a decision,

who's right, who's wrong,

who needs to live, who needs to die.

[Narrator] The Sinaloa Cartel's swift violence

works hand in hand

with their strategy to deal with law enforcement.

With police agencies,

they'll pay 'em off, they'll bribe them,

and if they don't take the bribe,

then they'll often target them for assassination.

[Narrator] During El Chapo's reign,

Sinaloa will become the richest drug cartel in Mexico,

earning over $12 billion

from trafficking drugs to the United States...

but in the beginning,

the cartel has challenges reaching its number-one market.

The initial methods that Sinaloa would utilize

to smuggle drugs across the border

was straight through the port of entry,

expecting to lose several of the vehicles,

hoping to get the majority of that shipment through.

[Narrator] The Sinaloa Cartel has a better plan,

one they hope will turn their criminal enterprise

into a multi billion-dollar industry...

by taking it underground.

1989. Mexico.

El Chapo dispatches a lawyer to buy a home in Agua Prieta,

a few hundred yards from the U.S. border.

Then, he buys a warehouse in Douglas, Arizona.

[Hurowitz] People started to notice that something's up,

and he said, "Oh, you know,

I'm building a pool for my kids."

Instead of building a pool,

his workers were actually digging a tunnel.

[Narrator] This isn't just any tunnel.

Excavated to a depth of 30 feet,

the tunnel stretches the length of a football field

beneath the border.

Full scale, fully operational, ventilated, lighting...

They'd set up hydraulics in Mexico

so that they could drop a ton of cocaine

and then put it on a rail system.

[Narrator] From 1989 to 1990,

El Chapo moves tons of drugs into the U.S.,

all under the noses of law enforcement.

Chapo built his legend on transporting narcotics

from Mexico to, say, LA, or Chicago, or New York,

and doing that within 24 to 48 hours.

Before long, he earned the nickname "El Rápido,"

the speedy one.

The Sinaloa Cartel was responsible

for upwards to 75 to 80% of all the narcotics

being trafficked in the United States.

[Narrator] All of this success

puts a target on the Sinaloa Cartel.

1990. Agua Prieta, Mexico.

The Sinaloa Cartel's super tunnel

to Douglas, Arizona

has made them Mexico's top drug traffickers.

[Hurowitz] El Chapo was able to move

a staggering amount of drugs under the border,

virtually undetected.

Now, this sort of golden age of El Chapo's tunnel success

lasted only about a year.

[Narrator] In May, U.S. law enforcement gets a tip

about a suspicious warehouse located in Douglas, Arizona.

U.S. law enforcement followed a truck

from Douglas up to Phoenix, Arizona,

and they found a whole bunch of kilos of cocaine.

[Narrator] U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents

raid the warehouse

while Mexican authorities storm the house in Agua Prieta.

At first, authorities are stumped.

There's nothing suspicious in either location.

But then, after hours of searching,

they discover the tunnel entrance,

cleverly concealed in the most unlikely place.

On the Mexican side,

it was covered by a pool table.

If you found a hidden switch,

it would rise up and reveal the entrance.

It was really something.

[Narrator] Inside the tunnel,

authorities seize 2,000 pounds of cocaine,

worth over $46 million.

The first tunnel

brought everybody to their knees in law enforcement

because we realized how vulnerable we were.

[Narrator] But authorities don't realize

that the Sinaloa Cartel is already at work

building more tunnels from Arizona to California.

The whole art of building tunnels

is much like a cat and mouse game.

The difference is we have to play by the rules,

and Chapo made up the rules and has unlimited budget.

[Narrator] Despite the Sinaloa Cartel's massive growth,

El Chapo wants to make even more money.

For Chapo to control a desolate area

really was not money-making for him.

He wanted to get into those high-volume corridors

and increase the volume of what was going across.

Everything was at stake here.

[Narrator] El Chapo sets his sights

on taking control of the most lucrative smuggling routes...

even if that means war.

1989. Tijuana, Mexico.

One of the most lucrative regions

of the U.S.-Mexico border

for drug trafficking.

It is also the territory of the Tijuana Cartel,

led by the ruthless Arellano-Félix brothers.

There was some latitude

for other drug traffickers to operate in Tijuana,

but they had to pay,

and El Chapo didn't want to pay anymore.

Chapo wasn't afraid to move in

and infringe on that territory.

[Narrator] Sinaloa's brazen disregard of Tijuana's rules

upsets a fragile peace between the two cartels.

What these cartels often fight about

is controlling the flow of drugs into the U.S.

and the money coming back south.

It always came down to money, greed, power, control.

[Hurowitz] In the early 1990s, there started to be

these sort of tit-for-tat acts of violence

between the two crews.

[Narrator] The Tijuana Cartel kills two Sinaloa associates.

Then they behead the wife of El Chapo's business partner,

Héctor Palma Salazar,

and send her head to her family in a box.

Cartels in Mexico are extremely violent,

so beheadings,

all these other ways they would torture and kill people

was really about sending a message.

[Riley] It's on now,

and retribution is really important

that it happens quick, violently,

and surprise is crucial.

[Narrator] The Sinaloa Cartel learns

that the Arellano-Félix brothers are celebrating a birthday

at a discotheque in Puerto Vallarta.

El Chapo sends his men to the club,

armed to the teeth.

Several of the Arellano- Félix brothers

and their bodyguards

are relaxing, having a good time.

Outside, El Chapo and his men pull up.

They're dressed as cops.

[Narrator] The hitmen of the Sinaloa Cartel

have one mission...

kill the heads of the Tijuana Cartel

and anyone who gets in their way.

November 8, 1992.

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

In an escalation of their war with the Tijuana Cartel,

gunmen from the Sinaloa Cartel charge into a crowded nightclub

to assassinate Tijuana's leaders,

the Arellano-Félix brothers.

They unleash hell on the nightclub.

A rain of bullets, shooting at random.

Several people were shot,

but the brothers made it out of there alive,

and they were not happy, to say the least.

[Narrator] On May 24th, 1993,

the Arellano-Félix brothers punch back

after learning El Chapo

is flying out from the Guadalajara airport.

[Hurowitz] El Chapo was driving to the airport,

and as he's getting out of the car,

gunmen from Tijuana jump out and open fire.

[Narrator] As gunfire sprays across the front of the airport,

El Chapo bolts through the baggage terminal.

On a nearby road, he hijacks a car and escapes.

Back in the parking lot, it's just a scene of carnage.

Seven people are dead.

[Narrator] Among the casualties

is Cardinal Juan Jesús Posado Ocampo,

Archbishop of Guadalajara,

a popular figure from the Catholic Church.

His death sends shockwaves across the country.

The killing of the cardinal

was one of those things that set the house on fire.

The Mexican government now had to get serious.

[Hurowitz] Suddenly El Chapo goes

from being a successful anonymous drug trafficker

to being one of the most wanted men in Mexico,

and he immediately heads south,

crosses the border into Guatemala.

[Narrator] June 9, 1993.

El Chapo is captured by the Guatemalan Army,

and extradited back to Mexico.

He is convicted of drug trafficking and bribery

and sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security prison.

But jail has one advantage...

El Chapo is now out of the reach of the Tijuana Cartel.

He solidified power while he was in jail,

and at the same time, he was protected

about as much as you could be.

[Narrator] But there is one adversary

El Chapo isn't safe from...

U.S. law enforcement.

In 2000, the Mexican Supreme Court

hands down a decision

to allow extradition of drug traffickers

from Mexico to the United States.

The worst possible fate to El Chapo

was being extradited to the United States,

so he started to plan his escape.

[Narrator] After seven years behind bars in a Mexican prison,

El Chapo masterminds his escape by hiding in a laundry cart.

And this begins the second era of El Chapo's career.

[Narrator] After years of operating in the open,

El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel

must now adapt to working on the run...

with the DEA on its heels.

2001. Sinaloa, Mexico.

El Chapo vanishes into the security of the mountains.

Chapo began plotting what was the next move for Sinaloa.

[Hurowitz] El Chapo's main business for many years

had been cocaine,

but he and other traffickers

start manufacturing methamphetamine

and flooding the market in the United States.

[Narrator] Through the 2000s,

the Sinaloa Cartel ramps up production of synthetic drugs

like methamphetamines and opioids

including the deadly but lucrative fentanyl.

The Sinaloa Cartel

could generate hundreds of millions of dollars

right there in Sinaloa,

utilizing chemicals to generate fentanyl.

[Narrator] As Sinaloa cashes in on these lethal narcotics,

it creates a crisis on American streets

that the DEA can't ignore.

[Riley] Notre Dame Stadium holds 80,000 people,

and I think to myself,

last year, more U.S. citizens died of drug overdose

than are in this stadium...

and it's because of people

like Chapo Guzmán and his organization.

So we really understood

how important it was for us to pursue him

so that the organization itself would crumble.

[Hogan] Not only was it a manhunt,

but it was also a drug investigation.

We're not solely looking to take down just Chapo.

We're looking to dismantle his entire organization.

[Narrator] But with the Sinaloa Cartel leader

always one step ahead,

law enforcement needs to first crack El Chapo's secret weapon.

2011. Mexico.

El Chapo for years has operated the cartel on the run.

The secret to his success is in the palm of his hand.

Chapo had to have a communication apparatus

that was effective

and that he could deliver his message to his subordinates,

otherwise, they weren't going to make any money.

[Narrator] The Sinaloa Cartel's communication network

is custom-built by a young computer whiz

named Christian Rodriguez.

El Chapo commissions Christian Rodriguez

to set up Blackberries with this encrypted technology.

The system was next to impossible to crack.

[Narrator] U.S. law enforcement realizes

the only way to break the cartel is to hack their communications.

The one weakness of this system

was if you have the guy who built it,

you can get inside it,

and so the FBI set about

trying to find and entrap Christian Rodriguez.

[Narrator] The FBI track and secretly record

the young encryption expert

bragging about his work for the Sinaloa Cartel.

They tell him, "Look, man, we got you,"

and Christian,

after a few hours of interrogation, cracks.

[Narrator] Rodriguez agrees

to give them the key to the software

in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Suddenly federal agents of the United States

have access to all of El Chapo's communications.

Before you know it,

we're painting this picture of Chapo's inner world

and actually his true organization that he's running.

Was he moving drugs? Yes.

Was he moving money? Of course.

[Narrator] The Sinaloa Cartel's communications

reveal the extent of their global empire,

and the secret partnership

fueling their fentanyl production.

We started seeing Chinese groups

and different factions of these gangs

collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel.

They were primarily bringing in the chemicals

that they needed to produce fentanyl.

[Narrator] And by hacking cartel members around El Chapo,

U.S. law enforcement is finally able

to track Sinaloa's elusive leader.

[Donovan] We would identify, well,

who's making contacts, who's paying bribes,

who's receiving money,

who's delivering money to him?

And it changed our ability to infiltrate him very quickly.

[Narrator] But with El Chapo constantly on the move,

it takes years to pin down his exact location.

We start reading the messages of Chapo's cartel members

that are sending messages to a man

that they were calling "El Señor."

My partner and I were like,

the communication stops here, and he's right here.

We were essentially staring Chapo in the eye.

[Narrator] After several near-misses and escapes

over a two-year period,

El Chapo is captured for a final time

on January 8, 2016,

and extradited to the United States.

[Donovan] The fact that we were able

to bring this bigger than life criminal leader

to face justice in the United States,

it basically said if we could do that with him,

then we could do that with anyone.

[Narrator] Three years later,

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera

is found guilty on 17 charges

in the United States District Court of New York.

He's sentenced to life plus 30 years,

and imprisoned in ADX,

the most secure prison in the United States.

Despite El Chapo's incarceration,

the Sinaloa Cartel is as strong as ever.

Believed to be run by El Mayo and El Chapo's sons,

today the cartel profits up to $3 billion a year.

In the years since El Chapo was arrested,

the amount of cocaine, fentanyl, meth

coming over the border has not gone down.

If anything, it's gone up.

[Donovan] The Sinaloa Cartel

has distribution cells in 47 countries worldwide.

It is a full-scale criminal organization

that is very powerful and very dangerous.

[Riley] I would consider Sinaloa

the largest, most influential cartel still in Mexico

and probably in the world.