Five Mexican cartel leaders were charged on Thursday with several drug trafficking crimes, with the federal government offering up to $26 million for information leading to their arrests.
The case began with a car crash in a small town in eastern Tennessee, with the feds following the money and drugs back to leaders of the group United Cartels, based in Michoacan, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Juan Jose Farias Alvarez (“El Abuelo”), Alfonso Fernandez Magallon (“Poncho”), Luis Enrique Barragan Chavez (“Wicho”), Edgar Orozco Cabadas (“El Kamoni”) and Nicolas Sierra Santana (“El Gordo”) were accused of operating a decades-long conspiracy to bring methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl into the U.S.
Alvarez is allegedly the leader of United Cartels, an umbrella group with significant control in the western state of Michoacan.
The case kicked off when two low-level dealers wrecked their car near Rockwood, Tenn., in 2019. The two men tried to ditch a case full of meth and escape, but they were both captured, the feds said.
Investigators later tied the two men to Eladio Mendoza, a cartel boss operating out of Atlanta, according to the Justice Department. Mendoza was in routine contact with higher-ups at United Cartels, but in 2020 federal agents found 850 kilograms of meth in a tractor-trailer at one of his properties.
Mendoza was later killed in Mexico under cartel orders because the feds seized his drugs, according to the indictment.
With News Wire Services
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