Mexican drug cartels increasingly hire US military servicemen as assassins

Mexican drug cartels are hiring US military personnel to carry out murders. In exchange for cash or drugs, some American servicemen are working as hit men or teaching gangsters their skills.

Drug cartels have recruited American servicemen for years, paying them thousands of dollars to assassinate government informants, ousted cartel members, and other enemies of the group, law enforcement experts told Fox News.

“There has been a persistent gang problem in the military for the past six to eight years,” said Fred Burton, vice president for STRATFOR Global Intelligence. “…It is quite worrisome to have individuals with specialized military training and combat experience being associated with the cartels.”

As of April 2011, the FBI National Gang Intelligence Center identified members of at least 53 gangs that have served in or are affiliated with the US military. The NDIC has also noted a rise in gang-related violence and activity along the US-Mexican border.

In one case, Michael Apodaca, a 22-year-old private first-class stationed at Fort Bliss, Tx., accepted a $5,000 offer by the Juarez Cartel to kill Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana, a cartel member who was secretly working as an informant for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Apodaca, who was 18 years old when he was recruited, fatally shot the informant in May 2009, but was caught by authorities and last week sentenced to life in prison.

In another case, Kevin Corley, a 29-year-old Army first lieutenant stationed at Fort Carson, Colo., conspired to commit a murder-for-hire for the Los Zetas drug cartel in November 2012. He was promised $50,000 and five kilograms of cocaine to conduct a drug raid and contract killing at a ranch near Laredo. He was required to bring his own team of assassins.

Corley also offered to provide tactical training for members of the cartel and steal weapons from the US military. Undercover agents posing as members of the gang discovered his intentions, and Corley was arrested. Former Army Sgt. Samuel Walker, 28, had been working with Corley and was convicted for conspiring in the murder-for-hire.

In May, a 43-year-old former lawyer for the Gulf Cartel, Juan Gerrero-Chapa, was found dead in the parking lot of a mall in an affluent neighborhood near Fort Worth, Tx. Authorities are concerned that the murder may have been conducted by an American serving for the US military.

“Obviously, the nature of this homicide, the way it was carried out indicates – and I said indicates – an organization that is trained to do this type of activity,” Southlake Police Chief Stephen Mylett announced after the body was found. “When you’re dealing with individuals that operate on such a professional level, certainly caution forces me to have to lean toward that this is an organized criminal activity act.”

The US Army no longer takes in applicants with tattoos that are sympathetic to gangs, and fears that more of its members are aiding drug cartels each year – especially the Los Zetas cartel, which is notorious for kidnapping civilians and beheading its enemies.

“The FBI judges with high confidence that Los Zetas will continue to increase its recruitment efforts,” the FBI wrote in a bulletin last month, warning that violence may continue to increase along the Southwest border.

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs

As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignoredOn 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Criminal proceedings were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual, but the case never came to court. In March 2010, Wachovia settled the biggest action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court in Miami. Now that the year's "deferred prosecution" has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear. It paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine.

More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn – a sum equivalent to one-third of Mexico's gross national product – into dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

"Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations," said Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor. Yet the total fine was less than 2% of the bank's $12.3bn profit for 2009. On 24 March 2010, Wells Fargo stock traded at $30.86 – up 1% on the week of the court settlement.

The conclusion to the case was only the tip of an iceberg, demonstrating the role of the "legal" banking sector in swilling hundreds of billions of dollars – the blood money from the murderous drug trade in Mexico and other places in the world – around their global operations, now bailed out by the taxpayer.