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A Mexican drug cartel known for gruesome public slaughtering drained $40 million from Americans, and stole many elderly victims’ life savings without a drop of blood in 2022, according to FBI stats. It’s part of a rapidly evolving timeshare scam run by the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG) that is becoming more intricate, and is now estimated to be stealing hundreds of millions from Americans each year. It started as a small operation in the Puerto Vallarta area and expanded to popular tourist spots like Cancun, according to the U.S. Treasury, which issued sanctions against seven fugitives and 19 Mexican...

Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio has been killed, the country’s president Guillermo Lasso has said, vowing the “crime will not go unpunished”. Local media had earlier reported Villavicencio, a former lawmaker who had been polling at 7.5%, had been shot at a campaign event in Quito.

A drug cartel in Mexico is forcing new members into cannibalism and started sharing videos of gang members feasting on the hearts of their enemies. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel took sickening footage of one of its members eating a rivals' heart straight from his mutilated chest in Zacatecas state last month. The CJNG gang has become one of the most dominant cartels in the country and operates in at least 35 states across Mexico and Puerto Rico. It is led by by Nemesio 'El Mencho' Oseguera Cervantes and has started to incorporate cannibalism as part of its methods of...

Mexican drug cartel members have recently taken to targeting police officers in their homes — then torturing and killing them, according to a disturbing new report. The Jalisco cartel has vowed to wipe out members of an elite law enforcement force known as the Tactical Group in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the Associated Press reported Sunday. The cartel even had a banner printed up and hung from a building in Guanajuato city that declared: “If you want war, you’ll get a war. We have already shown that we know where you are. We are coming for all of...

In the largest heroin bust Georgia’s has ever seen, DEA officials seized a massive amount of drugs this week in Atlanta. Authorities confiscated 170 kilograms of heroin, along with cocaine, marijuana, 41 guns and more than a million dollars in cash. The estimated street value of the drugs was around $8.5 million. Earlier this week, agents also announced the arrest of 46-year-old Antonio DeShawn Daniels, also known as “Freckleface Shawn.” He’s since been indicted on federal charges. According to officials, Daniels was one of the cartel’s top suppliers. “This investigation has ties all the way up to the highest cartel...

Mexico’s top security official is trying to downplay a cartel-produced video purportedly showing an armored paramilitary unit. The unit includes a large contingent of cartel gunmen wearing high-end tactical gear and posing by what appears to be dozens of factory-made armored trucks and SUVs. The release of the video comes just one day after Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador visited the region. The incident took place Friday afternoon as suspected members of Mexico’s Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion leaked a two-minute-long video. The video shows what appears to be hundreds of gunmen in military-style uniforms next to a long line...

Drug production hit by lack of chemicals The lockdown has also dried up the supply of imported Chinese chemicals needed to produce synthetic drugs. Prior to the virus outbreak, for example, China's Hubei province was a major exporters of fentanyl, an opioid. But now, Mexico's big Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) drug cartels are lacking the raw materials to produce drugs, as insightcrime.org reports. According to Mexican weekly Riodoce, Sinaloa boss Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada has therefore hiked the market price for synthetic drugs. It reports that the price for 1 pound (just under half a kilogram) of methamphetamine,...

The Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) today announced the results of Project Python, a DEA-led interagency operation encompassing all global investigations and related disruption activities targeting the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).This announcement marks the successful conclusion of six months of investigative and enforcement activity targeting CJNG, culminating in large scale arrests throughout the country within the past week.  Project Python has resulted more than 600 arrests, 350 indictments, as well as significant seizures of money and drugs.“Project Python marks the most comprehensive action to date in the Department of Justice’s campaign to disrupt, dismantle,...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced Wednesday that more than 600 arrests have been made as a result of an interagency operation cracking down on Mexican cartel activity. “Project Python,” a DEA-led initiative, targeted members of Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). According to the DEA, over the last six months federal law enforcement officials have been monitoring the activities of the accused. The operation resulted in more than 600 arrests nationwide, 350 indictments and “significant seizures of money and drugs,” according to the agencies. “Project Python marks the most comprehensive action to date in...

Two weeks after residents of Tlaquepaque, Mexico began complaining about a terrible smell coming from a local warehouse, they discovered the reason for the odor was a refrigerated truck with 150 unclaimed bodies inside. “The odor would come in waves,” Guadalupe Vázquez told CNN. “Something else that was suspicious was that patrol cars were always there guarding and at night dogs would bark and a lot of flies.” Local officials discovered the makeshift morgue on Friday during a routine inspection. It had been stored there by state authorities. “When we wanted to close it down we were told we couldn’t...

Forensics officials in the western Mexican state of Jalisco are trying to determine how many victims are accounted for in 26 plastic bags... The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it began to collect the bags Tuesday in the municipality of Tonala on the outskirts of Guadalajara. Officials initially recovered 14 bags of body parts. They returned Wednesday and found 12 more.

Washington, DC ~ Wednesday, March 11, 2020 Remarks as Prepared for DeliveryGood afternoon, everyone.  Thank you for joining us.Today, we are announcing the results of Project Python, a multilateral interagency operation targeting the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, also known as CJNG.  This operation was led by the DEA, and on behalf of the Department, I want to thank Acting Administrator Dhillon for his strong leadership in the fight against transnational organized crime. And I want to express my appreciation for the courageous law enforcement professionals of the DEA – the men and women who, day in and day out, put...

Like a number of states, concealed pistol license holders in Michigan are exempted from the requirement to undergo a NICS background check every time they purchase a new firearm. That’s because permit holders have already undergone an extensive background check and fingerprinting in order to be issued a permit in the first place. Michigan has had that exemption from the ATF since 2006, but yesterday the ATF rescinded it. Why? Because recreational marijuana is now legal in the state. Voters approved legalization in 2018 and retail sales started December 1, 2019. While buying and using weed may not be a...

(Reuters) - In just four years, marijuana use grew by 75% among Americans aged 65 and older, according to a new study, and researchers expressed concern over a lack of information on the potential health implications. The increase was most pronounced in women, those with higher incomes and more education, according to a report published on Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. The findings continue a trend seen over the last decade, said the study's lead author, Benjamin Han, an assistant professor of geriatric medicine and palliative care at the New York University School of Medicine. "Consider that not even 10...

A groom was beaten to death by two men who crashed his wedding reception, which was being held in a backyard east of Los Angeles, authorities said. Two suspects were arrested Sunday afternoon in the city of Chino, California, hours after the groom, 30-year-old Joe Steven Melgoza was found a block from the party suffering from head trauma, police said. He died at a hospital.

When the most popular medical marijuana dispensary in Chicago begins selling recreational pot on New Year’s Day, it will operate like a busy restaurant. Dispensary 33 plans to take names from those in line and page customers by phone when they can get in. The North Side cannabis shop will take that unusual step due to the huge crowds expected when weed sales become legal under state law at 6 a.m. Jan. 1, 2020. The celebration will be similar to the unofficial pot holiday of April 20, or 4/20, when a Dispensary 33 street fest and special deals this year...

6 illegal immigrants linked to Mexican cartel arrested in NC for drug trafficking operation, officials saySix illegal immigrants with ties to a Mexican drug cartel — a rival of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, whose notorious leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was convicted last week — were arrested in an elaborate drug trafficking operation in North Carolina, according to reports. The massive drug operation included transporting large amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine across state lines — for instance, from Texas to Georgia and North Carolina, WSOC reported. The feds identified the suspects as Oscar Rangel-Gutierrez, Regulo Rangel-Gutierrez, Francisco Garcia-Martinez, Rodolfo Martinez,...

A verified and convicted terrorist who attacked a U.S. Consulate with a grenade and automatic rifle fire has taken over the ruthless Los Zetas cartel, a group headquartered at the Texas border in the Nuevo Laredo-Laredo metropolitan border area. Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, sits immediately across the border from Laredo, Texas, and is the only urban location along the entire U.S.-Mexico Border that does not have any fencing or constructed security barrier of any kind. The convicted terrorist, Hector Raul Luna Luna, is known as “El Tory” and was convicted in the 2008 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey,...

Despite the capture of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the criminal group continues to export "wholesale" quantities of methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl through crossing points located along the Mexican-California border: AZ, NM, and W. Texas.... the Sinaloa cartel "maintains an international expansionary footprint" in comparison with other groups, says the Drug Control Administration (DEA) in its annual report on drug trafficking which was published this Friday. SINALOA- continues to export "wholesale" amounts of methamphetamine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl through crossing points located along the Mexican border .... These drugs are distributed in cities such as Chicago, Phoenix, Los...