 Welcome back to the original gangsters podcast. We have another zoom edition here. I'm Jimmy Bucciolato here with my intrepid colleague Scott Bernstein. Hey now. And we have a very special guest today our returning champ, Douglas Sentry, who was who was on our show a few weeks ago. And we discussed that I brought my props here. We discussed his book on the Russian mafia, the last boss of Brighton, and it was a popular episode. So we're happy to have him back. And we are going to discuss his other book, Hunting El Chapo. And the reason why we went on is people who are following current events, I'm sure are aware of the strife going on in Mexico. El Chapo's son was arrested recently and the cartel is pushing back and things are getting quite violent there. So we have a lot to talk about tonight with the cartels. Doug, thank you. Welcome. And we appreciate your time. I am delighted to be back. I listened to your last episode about the Gambino's and the Sicilians. I'm a fan of the show now. So it's a pleasure to be here. But yeah, I got called from all kinds of Canadian media, US media, just because I've written about Chapo and this is his son. And it does tie in, of course, to his drug trafficking organization and Sinaloa being the ground zero for all narco trafficking in Mexico. So newsworthy, but after doing the last boss, you know, I mean, it's like people ask me, what, what crazy motherfucking like gangsters do not write about like every interest group? You seem to have an in with them. I'm like, okay. Can I just throw something out before we get started? And then we can talk about the book and then jump ahead to what's going on now. But just to give people a little bit of a palette pleaser or a teaser for what we got, it's it's not just like Jimmy said, strife. I'm not trying to correct him or tell or say it's a mischaracterization, but it's all out chaos right now. From what I've read that you might have two dozen bodies that have dropped in the last week. It's it's a it's a war. It's a narco terrorism crisis more than narco trafficking. They are basically terrorizing the state of Sinaloa. And this we can go through the history that shows back to what happened in 2019 when they essentially shot it out with the military and recaptured him and got him released. That didn't happen this time because of the way they got him out of the state by by plane. But yeah, this is not routine narco violence. This is the state, the military, the police gunning it with a bunch of young narcos, the younger generation, which are called narco juniors. And yeah, people down there are saying it's a war zone. It's the closest thing to a war zone. So we're talking about the airport. Black Hawk helicopters, you know, I mean, and the and the guys have the cartel gum and have 50 cow machine guns. It's it says who has more firepower and who has more juice within that state. And the, you know, we'll go through it logically so that we're not jumping all over the map. But yes, this is not Oh, a few tourists got murdered in Cancun, or this is essentially the capital and the main city of Sinaloa, Culiacan. All the traffic was shut down by burning buses. All the three airports, which is Los Moches, which is smaller one, Mazatlana, very popular tourist destination, and all international airports shut down. And I have a lot of Canadian friends. It's very close to the West Coast of Canada to get down to Mazatlana. People were just stuck in their hotels. I mean, people were asking me, are you safe down there as a tourist? I said, yes, stay in your hotel and drink your coronas and your tequila and don't venture out. And I would see these stories in the Canadian media that said tourists are still, you know, caught in this. And their big complaint was you can't believe how long the line is at the restaurant in the hotel. I was like, me, why those dead bodies? I mean, just chill in your hotel and this will pass and the tourism will get back to normal eventually because organized crime in Mexico does not like to disrupt the tourism. I mean, that's just not in their interest. So because they generally extort the hotels, extort, they have a piece of everything. It's just, it's not just narco trafficking. It's mafia. So they want the tourism stuff to go on, unencumbered by 50 caliber machine guns shooting up airplanes. Yeah, that's something that when people have asked me about, if I go to travel to Sicily, should I be worried about the mafia? And I'm like, no, absolutely not. The mafia isn't visible. If you go to Sicily, who do you think owns the restaurants and hotels in those coastal towns and villages? Like, actually, those are some of the safest places to be for a tourist is a mafia town in Sicily. Believe me, no one fucks around with tourists. Now, Palermo, you know, there's parts of Palermo that get kind of rough because it's more urban, you have poverty and things like that. But in the coastal towns, the mafia isn't visible. And those towns are very safe precisely because they're making money off of the commerce and the tourism. So I think there's parallels with places like Mexico. Yeah, I saw Stanley Tutri fantastic show about traveling Italy. And when he went to Sicily, he went to a kind of mafia owned restaurant, but it's completely safe. It was just a question of extortion and who gets paid off. And when I talk about, well, what's going on now, just for Americans, so they don't think all Mexico is Mexico is a vast country with many different states. This, you know, the capital, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico city is like 25 million people. It's the published a candidate in one city. Sinaloa is the gangster state. So I liken it to when Al Capone had Chicago, everybody knew he kind of controlled who was the mayor. The cops didn't, you know, they made bootlegging busts when Capone threw them a bone, but the city was run by a machine. And at the top of that machine was organized crime. That's what's going on in Sinaloa. You know, El Chapo had it and it's largely through bribery, but that's kind of a rogue state. And that's part of the reason the violence exploded is once you extradited a guy from there to Mexico city, now you're not in the same. Now you're not dealing with the same corrupted officials, the same police that are on the take, et cetera. So yeah, it's components Chicago in the 20s, but it's just a state in Mexico, which happens to be the heart of all the drug trafficking in that country. Well, let's, let's, uh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead, Scott. Let me just add one more thing. And then I'll throw it back to you, Jimmy, and we can kind of start from the beginning. What correlation do you see, Doug, uh, between President Biden's visit, uh, to Mexico city and the fact that Ovidio El Chapo son was, was taken off the streets within days or hours of each other. It was that, uh, was that just, I think they got him on the seventh and Biden's there now at the ninth and 10th, the 11th with Trudeau. So it's the North America, just, you know, don't leave out our Canadian prime minister, by the way, the three amigos are, um, you know, what I saw being a journalist and Scott, your journalist is that, you know, okay, Ovidio's involved in cocaine, methamphetamine, but a lot of the headlines in the American paper said fentanyl, fentanyl, fentanyl, fentanyl. Now he's a producer of fentanyl. He's the like a fentanyl capo, de capo. Well, he's, he's the poster boy for it in the media. So what is the crisis that we're talking about most in Canadian cities, American cities, overdoses of this, oh my God, people, even Prince and Tom Petty, they went for, you know, what they thought was pain medication and they get this stuff that fentanyl is a hundred times stronger than they want in the OD. So it looks like, wow, you got a fentanyl producer. He's 32 years old. He's got labs, but by the way, yes, they get the precursor, precursor drugs in from China and they have super labs down there and it's very easy to get across the border. So you get a fentanyl producer. That's a nice headline. And then right before Biden's visit, so everything in Mexico is political. You know, they turned El Chapo over for extradition on the day, they flew him in the day that Trump took office, he remember the timing of the summit of the three leaders of North America. It's, let's just call it fortuitous. I don't know. I can't make the correlation, but he had shot it out with the cops in 2019, probably someone from Biden's, you know, the chief of staff said, Hey, what do you have going on in that state there? Is it under control again? And I'm sure they had a beat on this guy. I mean, they knew where he was. It's just, can you get him? Get him extradited to Mexico City. He's in Altiplano prison there. So you can, I don't know what they've said in the press conference. I haven't heard it, but I'm sure if they've addressed the drug trafficking problem, well, we've just made a major arrest. So it's really good media PR and the top narcos in Mexico are the politicians. Everybody kind of knows this. It's a, I mean, they are the top of the food chain. So nobody gets arrested without somebody up top, like pushing the button and saying, yeah, he can go. So I can't make the correlation because I don't know it, but I can say it's a very interesting timing because it's a perfect photo op to say we have announced, and this isn't just like Coke. Oh, that's the fentanyl that you keep hearing about in the States. It's a very good media message for this supposed war on drugs, which we've been losing, and the addiction crisis of America and Canada is really what we're talking about and who supplies it. So yeah, I think it's time to that event, certainly. I mean, if it wasn't, it's just a very, very, very odd coincidence. So let's talk about hunting El Chapo, and then we'll swing back to this what's going on now, because I think this is a good read if you want to contextualize what's happening now. This is a good preface or however you want to think of it to really understand the politics of what's going on now. So tell us a little bit about hunting El Chapo, and then we'll jump back into the current stuff. Well, the book came to me with the agent Drew Hogan. At the time of El Chapo, he masterminded, I would say, it was a massive operation to capture, but on the American side, there was a DEA agent named Andrew Hogan. Just, it wasn't a high up. He was a special agent, but he was, he had the Sinaloa cartel desk at the embassy in Mexico City. He partnered with Homeland Security. They were out of Texas. So it was a joint investigation of all kinds, HSI, Homeland Security Investigations, DEA, which does the drug trafficking. But of course, they had FBI guys with so many cases. He came to me and came from an agent. Actually, this was going to be one of my own books written about him. And because he was leery of Chapo's power. I mean, this is a guy, he literally had Chapo in his arms, like in that hotel in Mazatlán. And he said, what's up, Chapo? He was carrying, they raided Chapo's safe house. And he had one, Chapo loved these like non-descript black hats and drew just crap. So he's wearing one of Chapo's hat. He's carrying Chapo's Colt Super 38 pistol, which is monogram. He literally, it's on the back of the book. And I said, so you kind of became the bad guy, right? And then it changed. The publisher kind of got involved and said, he's about six, four blonde blue-eyed looks have been like Bradley Cooper. And they said, can't he be like, this is how books work. Can he be on TV? And we got a date line segment. We did all that stuff. I don't know that that's a smart thing. So then I changed all the pronouns and it became instead of he, I, but yeah, we collaborated on it. And at first, when we sat down, he showed me the hierarchical charts of Sinaloa cartel. And I said, I'm never going to master this. He said, you don't have to know all this stuff. You just have to know what I know. So I became an expert on his investigation. And what Drew did was really a very remarkable dogged pursuit that went on for five or seven years. He started off actually with a task force in San Diego. And they were on the kind of underlings and the money laundering and getting up that ladder until the point where they broke the, the Blackberry messaging devices, they figured out this very intricate system. It's a lot of it's very high tech because it involved, Chapel was never stupid enough to direct message. They would, they called it mirroring. They would message via Blackberry to an office. And some lowly schlub guy would just retype the message into another device. So they could never really get the device that was in Chapel's hands, but they got a beat on him and they trusted the only group that they really could trust to do the rate is called Samar, which is the secretary of the marina, the Mexican marines. They are considered incorruptible. So they had to go to this admiral in Mexico city. And then they launched the mission. This is the famous mission where he escaped through a bathtub. If you saw that, it's in the book like a high draw. He had five to seven interconnected houses that I call it like a gerbil, like a habit rail or something. Like he didn't have to leave. He would go down his little tunnels and he had one with a bath with a beautiful swimming pool, La Pesina, but it was covered because he knew there were drone surveillance. He knew he was being watched and he was very careful. So it's a really remarkable gum shoe detective story, but told with all the high tech stuff that you can imagine goes into modern day gum shoe detective. And, you know, in my mind, it's like you have to really inhabit the mind of the bad guy to catch the bad guy. So he knows everything. He knew everything about Chapel's personal life, his, his womanizing the, the virgins he demanded. Like it's just, it's crazy stuff with what's in the book. So I don't want to give all the spoilers, but drew did a really remarkable thing. If anybody's watched Narcos, Mexico, a very brave DEA agent, Kiki Camarena and Ricky Camarena was murdered. And the orders of, you know, a rough out Cairo Cotero, several guys, but it was basically the Guadalajara cartel at that time. He was getting too close. They killed him. So there in the Mexican, sorry, in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, they have a big bust of him and they call it the Kiki Room. And, you know, everybody knows the spooks are on the top floor. So it's like in an embassy, you've got the CIA, DEA, Drew called a meeting and at any given time, I think there were 20 different El Chapo cases going on in Chicago. I mean, you know, in New York, FBI, and he called all law enforcement. He said, look, let's get, put our egos aside. Let's, because you guys know this better than almost anybody else. A lot of law enforcement people don't cooperate with each other because it's my case. It's my case. And he said, let's, you know, fuck the, fuck the, can I curse on the show? I can't remember. Of course. Please do. Fuck the ego, fuck the attorney general who's going to announce this. It all was overseen by a holder actually. So Drew has this big meeting where he has PowerPoint. He goes, here's what we know. Here's what some FBI guys came, some other guys, and they, they said, let's all cooperate, put all our stuff on the table because this guy was the most wanted man in the world since he broke out of his first prison escape, you know, the appointment to grandeur. I think for 15 years he was on the run and they knew where he was. They had nailed it down to a series of safe houses. Then it was just a question of can we go get him? And they were worried about what's currently happening. They were worried about a massive gunfight and only by stealth. I mean, they caught Chapo running down the, you know, he skipped through the bathtub and then fled through the sewer in his tiny whitey. He had these little go bads in every one of his tunnels. He had like, I think it was like packets of sea Alice, little jockey shorts. And because he was always naked, he was always, when he wasn't running the drug trafficking, he was fucking some girl and very safe. And, and I remember there's a funny line in the book, they said, damn, how many times do you have to slither out of your bathtub and look through the sewers that you need a go bad with your tiny whiteies? And you're like, he had the same little like, the one thing he didn't have was a gun. So he calls, they started to zero in on him in Mazatlán because he didn't have his, his pistol. And so he started to say, I need my, my colt, I need a Beretta. And then, you know, they did a raid there and they caught him in that hotel or that resort in Mazatlán. So that was the real capture. And then, of course, he tunneled out of El Diplano. And then he met with Kate, Kate Castillo and Sean Penn. And then basically they recaptured him following the exact same blueprints because they broken his Blackberry messaging system. And I mean, he was a savvy guy. He is a savvy guy. For example, he used Blackberry. Who the hell uses Blackberry? Everybody's on iPhones, right? He used Blackberry because he knew that Blackberry was a Canadian company. And he knew it'd be harder to get warrants for the wiretaps that you need. He kind of understood a lot of stuff, partly because he employed very, very, very technical people. All those tunnels like he invented the narco tunnel, right? The first tunnel in Douglas, Arizona. I mean, he would bring in engineers and architects from Switzerland. I mean, he would pay millions to make these tunnels because he realized it's a great way to get the drugs across the border. If I put 10 million into the tunnel, I'm going to make 100 million. And it's a lot safer than losing the loads. So I'm very, I was very impressed for a guy that only what does school tell he was about eight years old and is really illiterate. You can read his Blackberry messages in the book. Like he can't spell the word kitchen in Spanish. Cocina, C-O-C-I-N-A. He spells it co-K-O-S-Y-N-A. And I said, is this internet slang? He said, no, chocolate just can't spell. So they knew whether he had a device in his physical hands because they were like, it's like, I'm giving away some of the book, but it's like, it's like a tell. It's like those little things that detectives like, no, that's not condor is pilot typing it. That's chopper because only he uses he really. But having said that, he was a very savvy guy. He understood like he was trying to expand to Australia. He understood things about marketing and price points and distribution. I mean, and he was in the weeds every day of his drug trafficking with his sons. That's where we get into what's going on in the news. He had four trusted sons that while he was in that safe house, locked down essentially, he couldn't go anywhere. He would, he relied on his four key sons. He has many kids, but four of them to do the day to day, make sure certain people got bribed, make sure certain shipments got off. So, I mean, he would delegate his drug trafficking organization essentially to Los Chapitos, the little chapos, which are four of his key sons, one of whom was Ovidio. He was living a very miserable life. He was pasty white when they caught him because he couldn't even get the sum. Like I just thought this is a guy like he didn't have that heyday like Escobar did of like having a zoo. And I mean, by the time he was the wealthiest man, you know, once Forbes or whoever put him on one of the wealthiest men in the world, right, billionaire drug lord, every US agency is looking for him, right? So he didn't have that heyday to flaunt his wealth. In fact, he drove around when he did leave his safe houses in a Jetta, a Volkswagen Jetta level four body armor. So the thing was heavy as fuck because he had to, it had to have like a souped up engine, but it looked like a Jetta, you know, it would withstand gunfire and all that. And he would be raised his son's like what's with the Bugatti's and what's with the McLaren's because they would get, they would get these million dollar sports cars. Some of it was money laundering, but they were just flossing around Kulia Khan untouchables, you know, blasting off their guns and nightclubs. No, he was very, very low key. And that's how the old school narcos of that first generation did it. They knew, you know, you guys know this, you know, do you want the silver or do you want the lead? Chapo always went with silver. You never heard about him having shootouts with the police because he bribed everybody up to the president of Mexico. It came out of trial. The former president of Mexico may have accepted up to $100 million, up to $100 million. I don't think that that came up at trial in 2019, but it wasn't admissible as proof. But he understood that the further up you bribed everybody, the safer you were. And some of the his most vehement rivals were the Losethas, which are the former special forces. And a lot of those narco banners that were arranged for a while would say, you know, Mexican government, stop protecting Chapo, because everybody kind of knew he paid them all off. And these younger guys, his sons, they don't have that savvy. Either they don't have the political connections, or they don't understand it's a lot wiser to bribe the generals, than to shoot it out with the troops, because that's not going to end well. So Chapo was a very savvy guy. I don't think we'll ever see a drug lord of his stature again. It's just there's too much heat on these guys right now. And that first generation of Mexicans, you know, there was the Paldrino, which was Miguel Anjo-Felix Gallardo. I'm not a fan of narcos Mexico in terms of accuracy of everything, but they do get the players right. You know, Carro Quintero, that generation, they were they were either corrupted cops like Miguel Anjo-Felix Gallardo was a judicial police, or they were these capesinos, they were farmers like Carro Quintero, who grew the sensimilia and Chapo was just like, he would always say, I'm just a farmer. Yeah, he's a farmer of poppies and other other illicit substances. But yeah, the book, I think it's just the word El Chapo. I mean, I don't know what I think this is not German. This is Dutch. This is in Spanish, in French, it has 17 different international editions. It's the only book I've ever done. They got translated into so many languages. And I wasn't really sure why except that there seems to be this fascination worldwide with the idea of narcos. It's a cottage industry. Yeah. Right. I mean, chronicling, discussing El Chapo is an industry within itself. But my friends who are really Mexican journalists covering stuff, they don't even use, they say, I don't like that narrative of cartel, which came about like, you know, well, the war on drugs with Nixon. But when Reagan started to go after the Colombians, what I look at, these groups in Mexico are organized crime. They engage in extortion. In all of the tourist towns, there is an organized crime group. Now the power is the new generation of Jalisco Nueva Hanada, Sion de Jalisco, and a guy named Mencho. They're more powerful than Senuela. They're out of Guadalajara. And all the, all these resorts up to the little guy pretending to be Mickey Mouse and signing autographs, they all have to pay off somebody. Somebody's getting paid to keep. So they engage in extortion. They engage in murder for hire. So when I say, why are they a cartel? And a guy like Boris is a mafioso. They're doing the same thing. Boris Seinfeld was the heroin importer and a cocaine importer. They engage in all aspects of crime. And I actually think they are, I would rather call them narco terrorists in terms of what's going on, because the average person who lives in Senuela, who wants to go to work at that hotel to change the sheets or be the waitress or work at the gas station, I mean, they're being terrorized by these thugs who just basically are, you know, it was a lot smoother when Chapa was in charge, right? And just as with Escobar, they are beloved in some of these poor regions because they do provide more infrastructure than the corrupted government, you know, Escobar built the Medellin soccer team, right? Well, El Chapo had schools and recreational things that the government's not buying that in these little towns, like he's from La Tuna in the mountains. So the people aren't going to turn them in. And one of the reasons it was so hard for Drew and his Homeland Security partner to engage in this stealth, they went in with Black Hawk helicopters, they landed in the middle of the night, is that everywhere in the city of Cullincon, there are what are called halconas, hawks, means lookouts, everywhere there's lookouts. And the minute they would move, like Chapo, they would see in his Chapo's messages, the rapidos, the rapid ones, that's what they call the Marines, the rapidos are moving again, they're flying out of Baja, California. So they had to stage it, they had to look like there was military training exercises so that Chapa wouldn't panic. And then they did a false flag, they made it look like they were going after Carl Quintero, but everything they were doing, he knew it first. So, I mean, it's actually scary how high up it goes in Mexico. Like, you know, when he tunneled out of Alto Plano, it's not that I mean, it was, it was ingenious that they did a 1.5 kilometer tunnel with like a Steve McQueen super motorcycle, but a lot of people were paid not to hear the jackass, right? Let's not be, this was not just like the great escape in the World War Two, where the guys were a genius. A lot of prison officials got a lot of money to not hear what was going on. And that's the way he operated. He was a very smart guy that way. He knew who to broad and how much it would take to keep his, he just wanted the money to keep flowing. That's it. Is he a folk hero? Do the citizens of Mexico look at him in a positive light, more than a negative light? Especially after the escapes. I mean, I've talked to Mexicans I've met in New York and they'd be like, do you really think the Americans have him? I think it's a double, a body double. And so he was, he was ranked number 701 on the Forbes list. 700 first richest man in the world. All over Mexico, you find these baseball hats that say 701. It's kind of a code or you'll see people hashtag Puro 701 pure Culiacan. Like, and you're like, what the hell is 701? Oh, it's his Forbes ranking. So yes, it's a very captivating mythology that a poor, there's a very famous narco currido called El Nino de la Tuna. It's the beginning of the book. It's called El Nino de la Tuna, the little boy from his town of La Tuna. And at the age of eight, he was out of school. He was selling oranges on the side of the road to help the family survive. So to go from a barefoot kid selling oranges on the side of the road to Forbes magazine 700, that's an intoxicating mythology in a very poor country. Well, this poor man, he just did it and he sold it to the gringos. See, they don't think Mexicans are consuming the drugs. They think, look, these, these corrupt, or what do they want to say? These degenerate Americans, they want a party with the cocaine, they want the methamphetamine. Now, there is a bit of a drug problem in Mexico, but most of the consumption is abroad, right? So yeah, I mean, I think he's a, he's a sick motherfucker. Like he was having sex with virgins, like prostitutes. He would specify that this madam in Culacan sent him virgins. So they were like 14, 15. And we couldn't really say that in the book because it came out at trial after the book, but we had to say they all, they look awfully young, even though we knew they were 14. I said, this is a degenerate motherfucker. Like he's not a good guy, but yes, just the way Capone or, see, I like that a bit to John Dillinger. Dillinger's legend was partly because he escaped several times, right? And I think people like that, they love the idea. He did a bit of the Robin Hood stuff, but the fact that he was captured broke out of one prison and that second prison escape. I mean, that really made him. I mean, not just in Mexico in hip hop, the amount of freaking lyrics, I hear the talk about El Chapo and I'm, I'm motorcycling out of the cell and I'm like, dude, he wasn't living a glamorous life. If you read this book and you think his life was fun, I mean, he was in the weeds of his organization. And one thing people need to understand the days of the, the multi-ton shipments that like they used to do back in the days of Lederer and multi-ton shipments and narco subs and all that bullshit. That's gone. What they do because Sinaloa was on the coast, it's, it's way more effective and less risky than shipping several tons of cocaine to ship 350 kilos, 500 kilos. And all they do is have it being dragged behind a little fishing boat. And if the Coast Guard were to come out to them, they can cut bait and then they have a GPS on a boy, it's, it's weighted. And then they circle in their little sessions and find it. And I mean, that's, that's an ingenious thing too. Cause like, if you lose 350 kilos, it's not as bad as losing several tons. But I was astounded at like reading the line sheets. I read all of them. It was like, he won 350 kilo shipment when missing. And Chapo was just howling his guys. Where is it? That's a drop in the bucket of the tons and tons of cocaine that he should be. He kept saying, where is it? Have you found it yet? He wanted to know every detail. How much money was coming out of Toronto each night? How much, he just loved it. He loved living in the weeds. But aside from that, all he was doing was having sex with random women, especially prostitutes, never leaving, never having a kind of enjoyable life. So he didn't have that, I don't know, glamorous. I'm driving around in a Lambo and like, I think, I think people saw too much Escobar and Scarface thinking you could be a drug lord and really live it up. He couldn't enjoy all that wealth. But it was an absurd. Escobar was, you know, in the late 70s into the early 80s was doing the tourist thing. I mean, there was all these pictures of him at Disney World and then one of the White House with his family, like it just shows you how off the radar he was at that time. I mean, he was still on the radar, but. But you cannot be, this is the point I make about why he lived that way. Why would he drive around in the Jeddah or just to say like, you know, what if it was a Honda with, you can't be a high profile gangster? It doesn't work. I think we talked about it last time. Maybe Carlo Gambino's the one, I can think of one or two where a guy lived a kind of modest life and he died in his own bed. But once you're on the radar, John Gotti, I fix these juries, they're going to come after you. Ovidio goes my little bits. I shot it out. They're going to come after you. I can't think of an example of a high profile gangster who's on the cover of magazines, a Forbes list, because now you're a feather in the cap of any U.S. law enforcement that wants to come after you and say, I caught that guy with the $5 million reward on his head. So I mean, it's always best to live in the shadows. See, if I mentioned El Mencho, Mencho is the guy that's running the new generation of Jalisco. He's in his 40s. Most Americans have never heard of him. He's the power of Mexico now. I think there's only one or two photos of him. So if you're really going to be a freaking narco gangster, hide, stay in those mountains, stay on the run. It's really silly to be a folk hero. I mean, once you become that folk hero, but yeah, getting back to your original question, Scott, I have met so many Mexicans or just Latin people say, I don't think they really got the job. What do you mean? Do the DNA? I think some guy is doing the time for him in Florence. He's still free in the mountains. I think they got the job. Sorry. I don't believe in that many fairy tales. And we just did an episode a few weeks ago on Detroit Drug Lords and we talked with a high-profile criminal defense attorney. And he and Scott were talking about BMF a lot, Black Mafia family. And I think the parallel in that episode is Big Meach. I mean, similar thing like folk hero in certain communities in the United States, but so conspicuous, so flashy, so in your face. So guess what? The DEA, DEA, IRS, FBI, they had a hard on for him and they got him. I tell this story all the time when discussing Black Mafia family and Big Meach. The guy has a fifth and a 15-year run, which is pretty crazy. And for the first 12 years of that run, nobody knew who he was. I mean, even to some degree within the government. I mean, there were a couple people that knew, but he was not a priority. He was the biggest drug kingpin in America and he was not a priority. He starts putting up billboards. At some point, he said to himself, what's the point of being the biggest drug dealer in America if nobody knows who I am? And he made a decision to let people know who he was. And at that point, his days are numbered. And within two years, he's locked up for 30 years. Well, the best example, I mean, I think the Genevieve crime family in New York is considered the Ivy League. And they actually come to the West Side. I think we talked about it last time. But yeah, Chinjiganti was the power. Everybody knew he was the power. But he puts Fat Tony Slainer as the front boss and walks around in his bathroom and God, he was quoted, you know, one of the bar tips saying, why would you want to live like Chin like he's walking around on shade? I mean, because it's a great strategy. He was still living his life and he had the power. But that is the way it is now. You either have to lay low. I don't think there are enough that can help us transition to who these younger guys are. The youngsters don't understand that shit. They are on social media. They want to floss their cars. They want to be out there balling and showing the girls how much money they have. And they're not going to have that rain that Miles Mbada. So the Sinaloa cartel, which I can get whether that even exists, there are multiple drug trafficking organizations. The DEA likes to talk about details. They're all kind of independent. So Chapo's sons have theirs miles about it. They don't, they're not hierarchical and work together, but they don't undercut the price. That's why it's a cartel. And they use the same smuggling roots. So it's kind of like, and they're kind of allied by family and a lot of them are married to, but it's not like, it's not like a crime family that all. So Miles Mbada is the co-equal to El Chapo. And I think he's had one photo of him, gave one interview once to Proceso, kind of a narco magazine, but he's not, he's kind of on the outs with the Chapo's sons. I think they're kind of an ego power struggle, but that's the way you do it. You hide in the mountains and nobody sees you. And if, and in those mountains of Mexico, you could live your life out. He could have, Chapo could have lived his life out and, and died in his own bed, happy, but he had to be, he was a narcissist. He had to have a movie made of his life. He, I mean, he was trying to get a movie made of his life way before the Sean Bend thing. It's in the book. Like he was shopping a script because he was pissed off that people were telling his stories and he wanted to profit from it. And then, you know, the, I don't know if, you know, Keita Castillo, who, she comes from a very well-known acting family in Mexico City, her father, Eric de Castillo. So she sent out a tweet that was like, oh, Chapo, if you only used your money and power for good to help the people of Mexico. And this guy who's illiterate, who's from the working class, he's looking at this high class broad and he, sorry, woman, can't talk that way. And says, she likes me. So the reason he rendezvoused with her and Sean Penn was he just wanted to beg her. He thought a woman like, like that's what all the DA, they all know that meeting because he was even like, who is this, this scraggly guy that came with her? He had no idea who Sean Penn was. But the fact, and that's the kind of class thing you have to understand about Mexico. She's educated. She spoke, she comes from a very high class, or, you know, and he's not. And he, and the fact that she sent out tweets. So then they started this flirtatious correspondence. And I was like, dude, you don't meet with actresses with your narco kingpin. Like this is not. And then Sean Penn comes down there and went like, basically writes a very bad Gonzo journalistic kind of, which Chapo had no idea he was doing. He's down there kind of going, then I meet Chapo and I take a piss and I fart. Like, I read that article going, this is the most embarrassing thing. And if you really wonder what he was like, who was this guy that she brought? Like, why did he have to be there? But yeah, he wanted to get in her pants. Essentially he wanted to get in her pants because he was, he was banging off. I mean, he's got multiple women, multiple wives. He doesn't have a shortage of women, but they're not of a certain class in society. And she made that kind of overture by sending out a tweet in, I think 2012 or something saying, oh, if you used your power to help the poor of Mexico, think of what you could do. And it hit his ego and his narcissism. And I mean, it's always the downfall of these guys, right? The fact that John Gotti had his time magazine framed in the Ravenite social club. It's like, dude, that's not a good look. Like he shouldn't be on the cover of magazines, but that's what he wanted. He wanted that validation of his, you know, I made it. So I don't know. Are we off topic now? No, no, no, no, it's good. I wanted, I wanted you to talk about the book and there's, there's great stuff in there. And I agree. It's, it's clear in your book that if he would have stayed in the mountains, he was basically untouchable. But as you point out, he wanted the action. He couldn't resist. It was too boring up there. Like he's just got a handful of his henchmen and it's boring and there's nothing going on up there. And, and he couldn't take it. He would get bored. And so he wanted to go into the town and, and the, and the feds that were tracking him knew that, you know, it was only a matter of time before he would venture back into the town because there's action shopping, restaurants, women. And, but if he would have stayed in the mountains, he might still be, I mean, maybe they would have figured out a way to get him eventually. But, you know, when you talk about the region that he was from and hiding out, it's not very accessible for like the average person to, like, especially like an investigative team. Like they would stand out first of all with, with the informants, but it's also just the terrain be difficult to access. So we, yeah, I really liked when I was writing this book, I was looking at like the treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of my favorite movies. And you go into this wild country of, you know, badges, we don't need no stinking badges, right? And actually when the agent who conceived this book, he said, it's like high noon. I mean, what do you mean? It's like, you know, Gary Cooper, he's like, everybody's afraid to take off for one guy, like just focus on this one guy, don't try to make it about a massive investigation. And that's kind of a cool story. A guy who is willing to take that risk, because, you know, drew married a Mexican American woman and has, and had three sons and they were living in, in Mexico city and they were at risk. So he had his kids at risk. And it took a lot, it took a toll any time you're investigating in a foreign country where they have all that power. But yeah, in Sinaloa, it's just the geography too. Remember, before there was pot everywhere in cannabis stores, Mexican, what was it called? It wasn't Maui. Gold. Yeah, so that was grown up there in Sinaloa. It's perfect pot growing. And that's, I think they showed that in Arcos, Mexico, that I don't know, it really isn't true that Carol Kinter invented the sensimilia, like I won't, we won't have seeds in this. But they had very good pot. It's a very, it's a pot growing region. And they were smuggling that pot to the US. And then they started to just, once the, it's a very simple story. Once the US cracked down on the Miami, you know, Bahamas route, they started to be the middlemen for the, the cartels out of Kali and Medin. And then Miguel, I thought if you look, I don't know, I don't know if several of us came up with this idea, stop paying this cash, pay us some product, which was smart. They started to get volumes of cocaine, which they then had the armies of Mexican-American street gangs in LA and Phoenix, and pretty soon the Colombians were like, fine, just ship it. So, but they already had those routes from the marijuana. The reason Chapo invented the Narco Tunnel in 1990, you don't need to go that far underground for cocaine because cocaine has no smell. But if you're having bales and bales of very strong weed, it smells, dogs will find it. So he made a tunnel, it's really cool, James Bond kind of shit, under our pool table, press a button, pool table go up. And I think it was, it was, it was fairly close to the Arizona border, but it came up in Douglas. So I said, he invented the Narco Tunnel in 1989, 1990, because it's hard to get weed across the border in a tractor trailer because dogs smell it. It's a really good thing to take it underground. And so he's got that distinction. And then by the way, when Drew, I asked Drew when, when he escaped from Altiplano, and I said, were you surprised he goes, it just fit his blueprint. The tunnel was exactly like all his other Narco Tunnels. And he's got some massive ones under San Diego. Like what's, what's amazing is once they realized you just had to have an entry point somewhere in Mexico, there's, there's industrial regions of San Diego, just industrial parks, where it just, it just comes up in a factory. And unless some informant snitches, they'll never find it. So they just changed the product from marijuana to cocaine and methamphetamine and everything else. And I mean, one thing they did that the Colombians did is they just diversified it to every drug. They said, okay, if the Americans want methamphetamine, we can make it. If they want fentanyl, we can make it. I mean, cocaine was their big money thing. But yeah, it started off that region was the pot growing region. And it's, and it is the high mountains that the Sierra Madre really is treasure of the Sierra Madre. Humphrey Bogart, go watch that movie. Yeah, that's a class. Yeah, I have the Blu-ray. That's a classic. Just to set the stage. Sorry. Remember when, when the corrupt, the corrupt cops come up to him and said, we're federalists, give us the gold. And he says, if you're federalists, show us your badges, badges. We don't have no stink of it. But that's exactly where he lived in the Sierra Madre mountain range. It's very inaccessible. It's even, and if you're going to launch a helicopter raid, good luck. I mean, you got to get close. They'll flee. I mean, they, they knew that drones were watching them. Like, I mean, that's the thing. We had to be careful what we said in the book. I, there were, there was the top level of Homeland Security. So drones and, but I mean, that wasn't cleared yet. So I remember Drew, uh, Drew saying to me, can you call it high altitude surveillance? I said, what's the difference? Well, that could be a satellite, something else. But I mean, he knew stuff. They knew they were being watched, but it's still really hard to get in there fast because they can just flee mountain roads. You know, it's like back country, back country of Rocky mountains or anywhere. It's, it's tough to raid. But I know it's also sorry. I keep on interrupting. I apologize. No, I keep talking too much. It's also that the, the people of those towns of Latino where he's from, they'll never give him up. He provides a lot for them. So, um, yeah, he could have lived it all out, but I'm sure if he's thinking about it now, he probably would have said, I fucked up. I mean, I don't know. People ask me, what's he doing? I said, he's doing 400 years, multiple life sentences in Florence. And they said, any chance of his escaping? I said, did you see how John Goddy died of cancer? He has 23 hours a day in solitary one hour of wreck time alone. If any of his like members seeing that video of John Goddy Jr. going to visit his dad and the dad had cancer and it's all being videotaped. There's no messages coming up. He has zero juice. So somebody asked me, what is, what does he think of his son being arrested? I have no idea. I mean, I'm sure he's not pleased, but it doesn't affect him because he's not the power anymore. He's got nothing to, he's died. As they used to say, they're going to bury him under that prison. Well, that's some other fuck is going to get, you know, people who think, oh, well, what, how could he not tunnel out? I said, if you think about the sound, just the economy of scale, if you think about the salary of a cop in Mexico, or even a prison warden, well, maybe with tens of millions of dollars, you can do something. What would it take to bribe a high ranking US? It would take setting them up with billions of dollars on an island somewhere. Like you just couldn't find enough money. And you don't have to bribe one person. You'd have to bribe 10. 10, and you'd have to do it in a way that they didn't affect their families. Just, I mean, it is possible, like Capone corrupted Chicago, that it is possible to corrupt judges. But the money that would be required, and he's got not, they said 12 billion dollars they wanted to seize from it. That isn't liquid. He doesn't have 12 billion in cash anywhere. Anyway, but he's not the power. His sons are. He's got to bring it back to today and set the scene for the listeners and viewers. I don't know if this is irony or not, but Ovidio is back in that same prison that El Chapo broke out of famously. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Altiplano is their superman, because the highest level they have. And now a judge ruled he will not be extradited. The thing that all narcos fear more than anything else, including going back to Escobar, is extradition to the US. I'm not saying the US justice system is perfect, but they are afraid of it. They know they'll do serious time. Chapo knew when he was in a Mexican prison, he could essentially leave when he wanted to. He just would have to plan the escape and bribe the right people. But yeah, they captured him and they put him in that same prison. This judge ruled he's not going to be extradited, but that could change. I think the reason there was this ruling, because they want to calm those guys down in Sinaloa, it makes sense to kind of say, he's not being extradited. But what if there's a sudden, they moved Chapo, if you remember, in the middle of the night, it was kind of like a, oh, suddenly we're giving him to the US. And before anybody could do anything, he's on a helicopter. And there's a picture in the book. I don't know if you have all the photos, but of him, he's getting on the airplane or sorry, the helicopter. And the look of fear. It's like, there's some amazing photos here. Yeah, that's Chapo, as he's about to be brought to the US. They're shoving him and the look in his eyes. I mean, you've never seen a photo of him. He's just, he's scared. He's like, fuck, I'm going away. I'm not, he's probably already thinking, I've never come back to Mexico. This is goodbye to my country, right? So yeah, so video is there now. Backstory on him. So they caught him in 2019. If you read out how to go Chapo, he depended on several of the sons. Nobody's really sure why they call him mouse. Ovidio is his name. Guzmán Lopez. He's one of, I think Griselda is his mother. Chapo had three wives and he never really divorced them. So it's kind of big of me or, I don't know, what's multiple wives? I don't know. So, but he triggered me. I don't know when you have three wives, but he has the Groucho Marx line. Well, that's big of me. Groucho says, yes it is, and it's big of me too. So Griselda has two sons and Ovidio's 32. They call him mouse, I think because he has black eyes and kind of big ears. I don't know. Or he's slippery. He's hard to catch, but they did catch him in 2019. It was a big, they had him in a safe house. And this is when all hell really broke loose because 700 gunmen strong came out with 50 cow that shot it out and it was quite clear many people were going to keep dying. So the president of Mexico said, Mexico himself said, set him free. So they gave him back and now what changed this time? They got him in a pre-dawn raid and they quickly got him to the airport. I think that's why, why would you shoot up an Arrow Mexico flight? If people have been on social media, it's these terrified kids going, why are they shooting at us? They were trying, they shot up a Mexican military plane. I guess they were just trying to, I think in their minds of these young gunmen, if we can keep them here in Sinaloa, we can hide. Once he's on that plane, once he's in Mexico City, we don't have control there. That's not their turf and they don't have that juice to get him. And he doesn't, these younger guys, so they call them narco juniors los menores, which means in Spanish, the youngsters. Seriously, they don't have the savvy. They haven't bribed the right people. I mean, it's not a good look to have a massive military shootout. Well, I'm sorry to interrupt, but something else that we could address about the narco juniors is, which is interesting, the contrast with El Chapo's upbringing as literally a peasant, a guy who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to use that cliche, but he did. I'm not defending how he made his money, but I'm just saying he really did. It was like Horatio Elger, like Mexican peasant version. And these guys, at least the sons and the ones that they're close with and some of Chapo's lieutenant sons, they grew up in these wealthy neighborhoods and they didn't really pay the same dues, if that makes sense. And I was worried for your comment on that, how that affects their leadership or lack of leadership. Well, yeah, they were born into it. They're the second generation. All those original guys knew what it was to be hungry. They knew what it was to be due prison time. They knew what it was to be in the backseat of a car with a cop and no figured out how to bribe him. No, these kids were born wealthy and literally like Chapo would berate them for saying they had so many luxury cars. It was crazy when they did the raid to capture El Chapo. I mean, the sons were smart enough to drive to them because they had so many Mercedes. I think it was tens of millions of dollars in cars, but they drove to the really nice Mercedes dealership in Culiacano and they parked all their cars there as if they were brand new and tried to leave them there. But they did the raid and they figured out the bid numbers and stuff. They made a massive seizure of some of the nicest cars I've ever seen. But that pissed Chapo off because he was like, you don't need to be driving around in those cars. It wasn't one of Chapo's sons. One of Chapo's nephews just a few months ago was in a club in Culiacano and ripped out his gun and blasted bullets in the ceiling. It wasn't arrested. It wasn't touched. They are untouchable. I mean, they are untouchable in that state. And then you factor in the social media, the testosterone, the juice, but it's not the savvy and they never will. I think it's probably true for the American mafia as well. Nobody is ever as hungry as the immigrant generation. So that first generation of the cartel bosses, their Narco juniors are known to be hotheads. They are known to be extravagant. They are known to be not politically connected the way the older generation was. So they didn't pay their dues and they handed it to them. It's the difference between what was the line that Ann Richard said about George, you're born on third base and you thought you hit a triple. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's what I mean. And let me, I want to ask you also just logistically. So when El Chapo, his son is arrested, in terms of the pushback by the Narco juniors, is that something predetermined? Is that something that he tells his guys, if something goes down, you need to light these motherfuckers up and destabilize the situation. In other words, who's calling the shots once he's arrested? Who's making the decision? We're going to hold this town hostage until this is resolved. I mean, what's like the chain of command? I'm not sure he made the call, but so he has a blood brother. So his brother is, I'm confused because he's a full brother, but they're by different mothers, but he has a blood brother. And I'm pretty sure that he would have said, get my brother out, or don't let him get to the fucking airport. And plus there's all these guys who are lieutenants. A key role in those cartels is actually a pilot. So, because a lot of these guys fly assessments, one of Chapo's key guys, a guy named Condor, pilots, they're almost like a lieutenant because they do the flights with the actual shit on there. But no, I think the underlings also know, wait, our livelihood depends on this motherfucker. Oh yeah, good point. Good point. I mean, it's partly too. I mean, it's not just loyalty. And I mean, literally when I saw, like Scott made that point, go look at the videos. This is not a random, this is stuff you've never seen in an American city. Like this is a war zone involving law enforcement and who has more firepower. And I almost, like I said to myself, I think they just sit around playing too much at Xbox, where you can actually do it. I mean, like Chapo, karaoke, they, yeah, they whacked, they whacked Kiki Camarero, but it was like a torture. And I mean, they do that. There's a very famous video of Chapo, by the way, with a machine gun, right? And he's got a guy who he thought betrayed him or ripped him off. It's a very famous video. You can find it on YouTube. The guy is tied to a pole and he's been tortured and Chapo is walking around with a AK or whatever it may be. I'm 16. And he says, saying, are you going to make me fucking kill you? He's looking for reasons not to kill the guy. Because he actually, blood is bad for business, as they say in the Godfather, right? And he's like, he's walking around saying, I don't want to fucking kill you. Like I don't want to have to do this. Why are you making me do this? And then there's this generation, they're like, it's grab our 50 caliber machine gun and shoot it up. I almost think they sit around playing like Game of War or whatever the fucking Xbox games are. Call of Duty, right? And they think that, you know, this, this is a shooter game. I'm going to fucking shoot it up with these guys. And because it worked in 2019, I mean, it's just hate, man, the loss of values, the loss of values with the, going back to our pop culture references, does anybody think, you know, as much as Tony Soprano was like a suburban boss, you know, poor Anthony Jr. Like the softest can be trying to kill himself in the swimming pool. You know, you can't be born into that life unless you're really psychopathic. Like, I mean, I think there are some kids who grew up in that world and they kind of say, I can do this because they like hurting people and they like that. But, but if you're just doing it, like Chapa was to make money, no, they hadn't had them. They could have gone to school in Switzerland or, you know, they could have done all the, they had all the cars. And, but anyway, yeah, they took over. So the chapitos took over this wing, which was Chapo's personal drug trafficking organization. And it seems like they mismanaged it. Yeah, to get in the, the power has shifted to Guadalajara to a guy named Mencho. But yeah, these, these Narco juniors are, I remember when Chapo was missing in, after leaving El Diplano, I think it was Obidio. He was on Instagram posting shit. And it was like, with my dad, I mean, who the fuck is a top level gangster that has a social media presence? He can't do that, guys. I tell this to young kids, by the way, I said, law enforcement tell me, like guys, I know that are feds. Oh, we just love social media. Oh yeah. Yeah, the, the hip hop songs, a lot of the songs that are on social media we know that prosecutors and police are taking notes and they're using them in indictments. I mean, we know cases of where, where they're talking about incriminating behavior on the murders, selling drugs, weapons. Let this, let this be a message to all the young Narco juniors out there. But actually to everybody, like when I got divorced in New York, even if your ex-wife or you soon be able to delete something from Facebook or whatever. I remember my adverselor saying, I always tell my clients, never put something on Facebook that you don't want showing up in court, because you could always get a dilly and print it out and say, look what this social media is not a good look for somebody engaged in outlaw behavior. You're supposed to be John Dillinger. You're supposed to be running from the law. But yeah, it's a very interesting thing that you guys get into quite a bit that I think we talked about a bit about Boris. The problem is the kind of guys who don't have that impulse control and they want instant gratification. They also have this narcissist. So you've got these young guys. Yes, they could just be living with their tens of millions, but they want to floss it. They want to have that McLaren that nobody else has. They want to shoot off their gunner. I mean, maybe it's to impress girls. I'm not quite sure, but I'm going to digress for a quick second. Just throw this out there and piggyback off what Jimmy said and then tie it into what you said. In Michigan right now in Detroit, you have a federal prosecutor that is prosecuting the, they're called the Seven Mile Bloods, the SMB. And for the first time in 25 years, the U.S. Attorney in Michigan is seeking the death penalty. And it's for this SMB case. What's interesting twofold here. One is that the case was built on social media. All these mercies that were charged were either, you know, parts of the indictment are either posts that were made on social media of hit lists and threats or rap lyrics that were dropped on SoundCloud or YouTube. In some cases, freely admitting their roles in these murders. But what's interesting to me, and I want to get Jimmy's take on this too, is that when it came to this particular case study, these guys really weren't doing it to flaunt material wealth. They were doing it to brag that they had this five-mile square of northeast Detroit. I guess I have a hard time kind of reconciling that you know, what's the point? I mean, and it flies in the face of the Detroit drug kind of entrepreneurial spirit that's been a through line mostly of this Detroit's drug world dating back decades where it was a, it was an entrepreneurial endeavor. These guys were doing it so they could get a lot of money, move out of the city and flaunt their wealth. This seems almost like a regression, but it plays on the social media. Do you have any take on that? So yeah, I think it's interesting as you point out, Scott, because it's not like they're repping an empire. It's just more about like their neighborhood. And I agree with you, it's not extravagant. It's not like the black kingpins in the 80s and 90s that would rock fur coats and you're driving Mercedes. These guys are real street guys. I mean, the bloods, I mean, it's pretty hood. And so it's different. You've never had bloods before. Yeah, right. No, that's right. It's the first time we've had like an institutionalized gang in Detroit. Detroit was always known as like, it was more diffuse. It was like neighborhood by, or block by block. But yeah, it's different. But I think the connective tissue is is regardless of what what their motivation is or what what what they have access to in terms of material wealth and status, they want people to know that they're gangsters. And I think that's the connective tissue with the cartel guys is it's important to them. There's currency. There's a social currency through social media that I want you to know that I'm a bad motherfucker and I'm a gangster. And and it's it's that's not the way that like you it's the exact opposite of you referenced Carlo Gambino and some of the old some of the old Narcos to like it's very different than that which was stay lay below profile so that you the whole point is to not go to prison to get the attention. You can't replicate or educate hunger. You know, you can't replicate poverty. That that drive that the first generation of gangsters and all are, you know, Jewish, we talked about the purple gang, you're you're my sugar. Very rarely do we have second, third generations of Jewish gangsters. It's how it's a make their son sometimes like Michael Francis, but even then Michael Francis compared to sunny is like the yuppie dawn, right? It's there's a change in the guard and the change in I just want to I'm not to try to sell the book, but there's a lot. No, please try to sell your book. Go buy go buy Doug's book. I think I'll chop up. But I want literature. I just want to say one thing, just insider shit, if you guys want to know this, very few people in law enforcement or in the cartel would use like L. So chapeau just needs shorty. So it doesn't really make sense, the shorty, but that became the media thing. And they made us, you know, L chapeau is cashier. But so raton, they sometimes have been saying L raton the mouse. It's just really raton. And in these line sheets, these are intercepts. It's like raton is requesting 20 rolls. That's $200,000 for logistics and moving 20 tons of marijuana marijuana by a tractor trailer towards the US border. Chapeau tells them to tell the Kudo, who's one of his secretaries delivered chapeau reminds raton they shouldn't be having the barbecues outside of Kuli Khan because there's been a lot of military and police activity, all through these line sheets, which are direct intercepts. You hear how much chapeau depended on his sons. They were basically his most trusted lieutenants. Because I think in that cartel where blood is really, they often will cement relationships between factions, marry my niece, marry, you know, I mean, it's, that's kind of Cecilia Dois, I suppose. No, I didn't 100% right. La Barbie was able to get, you know, merit in that world. And, and his bona fides by marrying the daughter of one of the campaigns he was working for. And just so you understand, so chapeau has a funny line like who knows how many kids. It's like little Chamberlain said he had sex with $10 a moment. There's a line. So the guy, he's really the homeless security agent. He did not want, he's still with the agency. We call him Brady. His name is John. But he says to Drew at one point he goes, how many kids does chapeau have? Nobody knows. I mean, you might be living next door to one of them. Like we don't know. Like he had somebody kids, but of the sons. And there was one named Edgar Edgar and he was murdered in Culiacan in 2009. It might have been friendly fire, but he was killed in front of like a mall and there's a shrine to him there. And somebody said on his, I think it was around Christmas, it was just covered in flowers again. So he is the heir apparent and he was killed. He was being groomed by chapeau to be the next chapeau. And I think he was probably the most savvy. So it's almost like Sonny getting killed on the cause. Like the boss gets killed and then you got these other guys that really weren't supposed to be the bosses and they're not, I mean, I don't know how you get groomed in that world because it requires, I'll tell you one thing that really amazed me about chapeau because Los Zetas, the former special forces, they were really broke. I mean, they would be had all these people and they love to just terrorize. And I was asking Drew, I said, so if, so chapeau just, if you rip chapeau off, he killed you, right? You know, we found it really interesting. He said there were a couple of times we would read about, and these are through their messaging devices, something went missing. Like this happens a lot in drug trafficking. Things get captured. Things get lost. So let's say you lost, you know, millions of dollars on the shipment. They would bring the guy to Culiacan, he would land, they'd blindfold him and drive him around in circles and then he'd have a meeting in a safe house with chapeau. And I said, and then he killed him, right? He said, no, a couple of times it was really amazing. Apparently, the guy would be able to explain it and then he'd leave. And I was like, so you get driven around in circles and you get taken to chapeau and you walk, if I mean, you don't kill all your underlings and you don't kill everybody if there's, I don't really know how to explain this, but I assume in drug trafficking, yeah, things go wrong. It's not always a ripoff. So it's not like the movies where you think, man, you lost chapeau, a million dollars, boom, bullet in the back of your head, you could talk to him. He did not, as much as he's, he's credited with a thousand murders. That's not nothing, right? But apparently, he didn't like bloodshed as much as some of these people. He really wanted to let you live if he could, because I mean, it's as simple as, like Ice T said to me when we did this book with Spike, you know, Ice never wanted to bring guns on these licks to take down jewelry stores, because Doug, I mean, you know, you rob a jewelry store, 300,000, they're insured, but you take a life, they're never going to stop looking for you. So it might be that same mentality. It's like, man, if I don't have to kill you, don't make me kill you. Because then that's for, I mean, not that it's going to be a cold case in Mexico, but it's going to create a blood feud with another clan. And, you know, it's not going to end well. So what we've seen in the last few days with a video, it's a dumb move. I mean, a smart move would have been get captured, go in, pay hundreds of millions of dollars if you have it, to the right people, escape in a laundry truck as Chapo did in the first escape. I mean, there were smarter ways to do this, but no, his guys just came out there with money. Yeah, my understanding is that not to underappreciate how violent El Chapo and his organization could be. But when they started getting crazy violent was because the Zetas are the ones who escalate. They're the ones who started that escalation. When they started decapitating people and hanging people from the overpass, that forced the rival cartels like Sinaloa, they had to up their game. They had to start. And so then El Chapo's organization, then they started hiring X cops, X military, because it really was turning into now this paramilitary groups warring with each other. We talked about this with Agent Silva on our show, Leo Silva, a DEA agent. He investigated the Zetas and the Beltran Leyva cartel. And these guys were trained in counterinsurgency techniques. Some of them trained in the United States, which is really fucked up and not cool. They were trained in counter insurgency techniques, which is to your point of terrorize the population. It's not just gang land warfare of we got to take out some of their guys so that we can gain territory. It's about terrorizing the population so that there's basically paralysis, social paralysis, and then they can do whatever they want. So once they started doing that, I'm not trying to sound like El Chapo was this peace-loving guy, but they really had no choice, I think, but to also start to employ those kinds of tactics. Is that your understanding, too? That's true with Los Zetas, but there was also a very bloody war with the Tijuana. They're all cousins, but with the Tijuana, the Ariel, Felix clan, and then Sinaloa. I mean, it's all about what they call plazas. Plazas mean roots to get to the U.S. border, and there's several key ones, but so controlling a plaza is really a key thing. But yeah, Sinaloa was, again, like the Genovese family, if they were the Ivy League, they were the Sinaloa cartel, which means Chapo and Maya. They were known for having the government in their pocket, paying off the right guys. When Drew and his partner are doing, they're ready to go trust the admiral from the Mexican Marines. They see this intercept from a guy named, and now he's flipped, a guy named DeMaso Lopez. DeMaso was the prison warden who allowed Chapo to escape. He's an educated man. I don't think he's a lawyer, but they would call him Leek, which means licensed one. And he was making sure, I think Chapo said, make sure the guy in the city, Mexico City, is getting 100, a hundred to thousand monthly. We don't know if that was a politician, a general, but yeah, they were just greasing the right people. So Sinaloa was that gold standard of saying, we don't need to shoot it out with you because we've got the government. We have the people who are really in control of this country with us, like they're on our payroll. But yeah, I mean, shootouts with anybody is, can't imagine. I mean, what Chapo wanted was a steady stream of income. Like he really was, he was savvy enough. Just one little thing, if we get into the economics of it, he actually didn't. So he had a Colombian named Alex Cifuentes. His stuff was Colombian, but he actually got it in Ecuador. So his price point, when he would get it for 4,000, three to 4,000 a key on the streets of Los Angeles, of course, Mexicans don't retail, they just wholesale it. So 3,000 to 4,000 a key, he would then sell it in LA or Phoenix for 25,000 a key. But then when he found out Vancouver, it was going for 35,000. He said, exploit Canada, that RCMP up there is weak. All Canada has this one national, we have the RCMP and they have to cover the highways. We don't have the alphabet suit. The US really has dedicated agencies, DEA, ATF covers the bikers. So he saw the weaknesses in the federal system in Canada, but he also understood, it's not that much farther from LA to Vancouver. So in the book, we've got this amazing pictures of plastic bananas, like just hordes and hordes of these plastic bananas, and people would stuff like workers would stuff like a half a key into a plastic banana. Very ingenious because then they would have green bananas in a real container ship with actual bananas. And there is a rule, I think with custom seizures when it's produce, it's not like in the French connection where, you know, they got that car and they can just take apart that car. With produce, there's like a 48 hour period because, you know, you can't falsely accuse. So you've got like plastic bananas in a container, on a container ship with real bananas in the port of Vancouver. Good luck finding which bananas have to cocaine in. I mean, dogs can't smell it. So he exploited Vancouver in Canada, partly because he was like 10,000 more kilo, come on. Business savvy, definitely had some business savvy. Yeah. And he wanted stability, I think, with like political stability. I used the term last week, Scott, I think I was talking about the cartels and I think I used the term state capture. And I wish I wouldn't have said that because I don't think that's what it is. I don't think the cartels want to run the state. They just want the state to step to get out of the way and not stop them from transporting narcotics. It's not like a thing like ISIS where they literally want to capture the state and be the government or the Taliban. I don't think they're interested in governing. They just want the government to leave them alone. To leave them alone. Right. Yeah. Yep. They want the government to be their active behind the scenes partners in allowing the flow of drugs, which let's be honest, it's the demand for illicit painkillers and stimulants and all that. It's a huge demand in the United States and Canada. People getting coked up and taken fentanyl. I mean, so I was telling something on a Canadian show. I was like, this isn't like some new iPhone that they're forcing on the consumer. There's a huge demand. And when you take out Ovidio Guzman Lopez, it's like a whack-a-mole. I mean, another guy is popping up. That demand is not going. When you point your finger at Mexico and say, these drug traffickers, it's like, well, no, they're supplying what people in the United States seem to want badly, which is painkillers, stimulants, whatever. It might have got worse during COVID. I don't know, but it's like the two things have to be addressed. Addiction crisis in the United States, as well as the production of drugs in Mexico and how it gets here. But there wasn't a demand. There wasn't a demand in the United States and Canada. These guys would not be billionaires. We made them billionaires. Now, I agree that the Uncle Sam, it seems to me, if I can editorialize for a moment, has always viewed this as a supply problem and hardly ever considers it a demand problem. And I look at the markets. It's Canada, the US, Western Europe, especially the United States. But unless you address that, there's always going to be someone who is going to supply that market. And I think that's with any vice, not just narcotics. It was with booze during prohibition. Someone's going to step up if there's a demand. So what do you foresee? If the suns aren't able to hold on to control, I mean, who's the other guy? Is it Zambada? Is that the other guy? My Zambada has Incinaloa. But yeah, just Google your listeners and all that. So the acronym in Mexican, sorry, in Spanish is the Nueva Generación de Jalisco, the new generation of fulisco. They are the power. They stepped in after Chapo's extradition. I mean, there still is a Incinaloa group. But the more powerful people is this guy, Mencho. And I think he's on the wanted list of the DEA. But he was the reason there was a bunch of killings in the Playa del Carmen recently, which has always been safe in Mayan Riviera because they're trying to expand into other people's territory. There's always going to be somebody. So my Zambada, I think he's still powerful, but he's an elderly guy. I think he's even... So Chapo was born in 57. My Zambada must be 70. The older generation, I guess it's what they grew up doing. I was wondering, why did Chapo need to not stop when he had billions? And he said, it's just what he did. He loved doing it. I guess that's what gangsters do too. It's like Walter White in Breaking Bad. Like he's like, I'm really good at this. I've made enough money, but I'm really good at this. And I kind of like it. And so... Yeah, I remember when Breaking Bad was on, my buddy who turned me on to it, he said, I had to stop watching it after a while. And I was like, no, I get it. Like he's beating cancer. And I said, oh, you haven't got to where he's in remission. But then he starts liking being this guy. And I'm like, oh, no, I just thought he was doing it because he was a sports school teacher. No, no. Yeah, eventually. Yeah. And I think you're right. I mean, I don't think these guys, they don't... It's just in their makeup, but there's... I know we're running out of time here, but we're all interested in these international connections. And also the Mexican cartels, we've talked about the US and Canada, but they also have connections with the Sicilians, the Calabrians, the Russians. I mean, that's how the cocaine is getting to Western Europe. So just wondering if you wanted to talk about that just for a moment, like the other international connections. The globalization, you know, there's a big story out of the UK and the Irish woman had me on. It's the Kenahan cartel. Yeah. And I was reading about it. So it's Daniel Kenahan. I mean, they're tied to Tyson Fury. But you know what? It's just a transnational... Well, who are they dealing with? They're dealing with South Americans to get the product. They're dealing with Moroccans to transport the product into Spain. They're dealing with Spain because Ireland does not have a border. And they were talking about it being globalization of, you know, the super cartel. And I said, it's not a super cartel. This is what the Mexicans... Like, Chapo has been... I mean, he was exploring Australia as a place. My understanding is the Colombians were making more money sending it directly via Nigeria into Europe. There's so much money for the Mexicans to make in North America that I don't think they have to supply. It's... I always look at these things as geography. Just look at the US border with Mexico, of course. How many places you could have tunnels. And then look at... When I realized that a lot of these little fishing boats coming up the coast towards Seattle or LA or wherever. I mean, it's just ingenious, right? You've got little fishing boats. There must be so many of them. And they're dragging a little, whatever you call it, a buoy. There's a load there. And it's got GPS. Oh, the Coast Guard. How are you going to stop that? It's so simple. I mean, there are legitimate... It's very, very hard to... But yeah, the globalization, the partnership with, I mean, drug addiction and partying. I'm just amazed. Like, I was writing this book, Hunting El Chapo, sitting in a pub in my local pub in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, right? So I'm just sitting there and I'm still researching it and writing with my laptop. James Joyce got to me as a kid. Like, he loved to write in pubs and stuff. I'm not Irish. Scott and I are Jewish. We should be writing in Delos, right? Like, at home. But I'm saying... I should be at like Ben's Delicatessen on 37th Street, New York, which I do like to go to and get the cash at Veronica's are great, but it's still fun to have a beer. I'm sitting there and I'm typing away. And I said, what are you writing about? I said, I'm writing about a, you know, a chapeau. Did you know that all of the cocaine candidate comes from El Chapo? He had a lock that was going in through Vancouver. And of course, he's not retailing it. He gets it to Iranian gangsters and the bikers, the Hell's Angels. They get it across Canada. And I said, that's real cool. And he's the guy at the barn. And he goes, by the way, you need some? I said, what? He said, I'm writing about this and you're trying to sell me shit. Okay, no. And you know what? Like, friend of mine the other day, I said, how was your New Year's? He goes, I stopped drinking. I said, on New Year's? He goes, no, I did a three day coke bender on New Year's. And then I mean, I just can't go on living like this. And I was like, I mean, we're surrounded by people, you know, Wall Street lawyers. So I mean, my problem with the drug thing is that so many people kind of look at it like, oh, it's these degenerates, they're in the hood. They're, I mean, fucking Wall Street filled with guys using Coke. I mean, when I was fascinated with a video, like what, I don't know that much about fentanyl. I've never seen it. I've never, but I just started to look at all these ODs. Like I was like, that's what Tom Petty did. Oh, Prince had bad knees and he was, you know, with the OxyCone. Fentanyl is just this, it's our overdose crisis. So there's a pain crisis in America, right? And I remember, I think it was 60 minutes or something said, why are all these kids turning to like hillbilly heroin and well, because their parents have prescriptions and they steal a couple of pills and they like that feeling of codeine. Well, then they can't keep stealing mom's legit prescription. So they go and find a guy that's going to sell them the shit. It's coming from Mexico. So we're all using it. I mean, sorry, not personally, a lot of people using it. A lot of people are profiting from it. You know, you mentioned something about certain, you mentioned something interesting about Sinaloa not having to sell to Europe. And that, that makes sense to me because the last reports I saw the Sicilians and the Collabrians had connections with the Zetas. Now that was a while ago because the Zetas have now kind of mutated and something else because they were sort of on the decline. But then that sort of makes sense to me that the Italians connections would be with one of the other organizations because they don't have to where the Zetas might have wanted customers, right? But also just look at the geography. So you would want to be on the Caribbean coast. You'd want to be, okay, you just got that ocean. Sinaloa, it's a whole, I'm, what are you going to go through the Panama Canal? Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, great point. Yeah. I mean, that's interesting geography is interesting there. Yeah. Well, yeah, just look at the map of Mexico. It's a huge country, but Sinaloa's power is that it's really just below. It's right below California. I mean, so you've got, you can tunnel up right through the Tijuana connection or you can just go up with container ships. Yeah, I think sort of the west coast of Mexico, but I think, and what exists of the Colombians are, yeah, for what I understand, you get it through Nigeria, you get it through Spain. Spain is a big, you know, that little tiny, tiny straight between Gibraltar, between, you know, Morocco. I mean, that seems to be where it gets in, but you know, as long as there are drugs out there for your supply, but I also love this idea that, you know, Narcos, like, I think I'm going to have a podcast with a Mexican journalist friend of mine. He goes, we got to get away from this, this narrative of the cartel. Like, why is it a cartel if it's Mexicans? And it's just drug trafficking. If it's like lucky, Luciano was involved in heroin trafficking, wasn't it? You know, I mean, a lot of Italian Americans were involved with drugs, but it's, it's a kind of stigma. So when they're Latin Americans, they're a cartel or they're Narcos, but if you're a Russian gangster and you're importing heroin, you're a gangster. It's sort of like a weird narrative that we have that. So the real reporting that I know from guys risking their lives, and by the way, reporting on that stuff in Mexico is costing many journalists their lives. It's very, very dangerous. Yeah, shout out to our friend, Yoan Grillo. I think Doug, you know, you know, too. I know his work. I mean, I read Elarco. Yeah, he's good. And he's a British guy that went there and just immersed, right? But yeah, there's numbers and numbers of guys who are displaced. I have a friend who's been displaced to Canada just to write about the cartels because it's, he is a political refugee. He can't write about it safely in his own country, and he comes from a journalist family. So yeah, I mean, when I talked to him about it, he goes, Doug, they're organized crime groups. Calling it a cartel, that's part of the American media narrative that we kind of, it is a cartel in terms of, yes, if you don't undersell your fellow guys in that region's price point, and I guess it is a cartel, but they're not hierarchical. They are just mafia guys. They're also mafia the same way that, I mean, the globalization of it all, I see parallels between all these organized crime groups. They're very similar people. And the idea that the American mafia didn't traffic in drugs, I think the rule was just don't get caught, right? Like you were talking about, I mean, Scott, you were really talking about the Sicilian connections in the Cherry Hill Gambino's. I mean, and these guys were like major, major, major 100% connection was built on the shoulders of narcotics, trafficking. There's no way to sugarcoat that. So if you really want to ban against it is... When a Nell O'Dell approach was like, we won't turn over the tapes to, I mean, it was like, oh, you got caught with the drugs. And you're like, so that was the kind of weird thing with the American mafia. It's like, everybody knew, and you could kick up to the boss from your drug profits. Just don't get busted with it because you're gonna get 100 years and you're gonna flip. I think that's all they were really afraid of is the kind of time you got with heroin trafficking. May you become an informant or if I've got a state switch? And it was a bad look for people that were trying to portray themselves as these Robin Hoods looking out for the community if they were also billed as the people that were flooding that same community with powder and profiting from that. Yeah, exactly. And look at the two founders of the American mafia, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, huge parts of their accumulated gangster wealth came from narcotics trafficking. Lucky Luciano was a infamous heroin trafficker. Yeah, but so it's funny when people tell me, oh, yeah, I saw the Godfather where they say, we were against it. And I said, yeah, but do you remember that pizza connection? That was a huge case. All these pizzerias in Brooklyn. And before that, the French connection was coming from Corsicans. But you know, in fact, the Godfather is fiction. It's Mario Puzo. And also, like how about the fact that in the Godfather, they say, yes, we are going to sell drugs to the darker people because they've lost their souls anyway. So they overlooked the part that it's only Marlon Brando who doesn't want to sell drugs, literally everyone else does in the movie, including Sonny, including Tom Hagen and other bosses. A lot of money in that white powder. A lot of money in that white powder. They actually agree they have the meeting where even veto signs off on it. So it's funny, Scott. And I talked about the Godfather myth, but it's funny because it's actually a myth of something that's not even in the film. Because in the film, they actually all want to sell drugs except veto and they agree to do it. So I'm not sure how that myth was funny. Because Barney Ross, I wrote that book about Barney Ross. And if he came back from Guadalcanal, a morphine addict and then the doctor stopped giving him morphine. So he starts scoring heroin. And when he finally came out of his addiction, he started to say, look, I don't think we should be prosecuting heroin addicts. Because at that time, you say, but going after these racketeers that are bringing it in. Well, he was talking about the Jewish mafia and the Italian mafia. I'm pretty sure they were the people bringing it in. I'm talking about in 46, 46. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So when we look at these guys, a video getting back to our point, you know, I mean, it's all part and parcel of the same problem, which is people want illicit substances. Somebody's going to supply it. And that oldest drug dealer rationalization in the world. Well, if I don't bring it in somebody else's, my kid's got to eat too. You know, every drug deal I've ever met. And when I asked him, you didn't feel bad selling crack like that. Nope. Somebody else was going to sell it if I didn't. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. And these guys but I suspect what's going to, if you wanted my prediction of videos going to get actually to the United States, he'll be the poster boy for fentanyl and the flow of narcotics will not change in one bit. The exact amounts will come in. Somebody else will step into his place. I used to think it was a PES dispenser, right? But nobody knows what a PES dispenser. So I always tell people like, yeah, if you go to the Chuck E. Cheese or the whack-a-mole game, I said, yeah, cops in the DEA, they'll always say it's whack-a-mole dog. We'll catch this guy, boo. You know, El Chapo El Chapo's arrest did not change anything. And his kids can't run the business the way he did. So yeah, look up El Mencho out of Guadalajara. And he's really the power. And he's about 45 years old. Nasadio, I can't remember his real name, but yeah. El Menchito. Oh, really? Okay. Maybe. But I'm amazed at the amount of people to me. Oh, I just love that El Chapo shit. What do you mean? I just love hearing about it. And I'm like, why? The guy doesn't be generous. You know, serial rapist of underage girls is about a nice man. What is it that you love about it? I don't know the money, the power. Well, I mean, careful, Doug, because we want people to listen to our podcast. People that want to hear about El Chapo is good for it. I know. I get it. I get it. I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing. But it's fascinating to me because it is just so widespread how much people are interested in this stuff. Well, you can be fascinated by it and not condone because we were talking about in my crime and film class today how like, you know, we look at the analytics for our podcast and it's a like 95% male audience. But, but if you look at podcasts in general, it's like, it's like a lot of, it's a large female audience, but the female audience, they love the serial killer podcast. Like that, like they're not into the gangster stuff. It's a serial killer stuff. White kills husband. Yeah, right. Like the murder tape and kind of stuff. And it's not like they think that they're good guys, serial killers. It's not like they approve of it, obviously, but they find it fascinating. And I think there's a similar thing that goes up. Now, I agree with you. If there's a person who thinks that like the idolize El Chapo or Capone or any of these guys, yeah, that's some pathological shit. But, but just finding it fascinating, you know, we all do it. It's important. So, you know, I was just teasing you a little bit. No, no, no. Original gangsters is a great tell for a podcast. And it really is. I mean, I'm obsessed with them. I'm obsessed with every ethnic groups. I mean, the Irish, the Jews, these guys that were willing to say, I'm just going to do it outside the law. I don't, I will not follow the rules of society. I'm going to make it my way. And then I'm going to make my kids set up so they get like my last oops, my last he says it's under West Point, right? So it's like, I'm going to do it, but it's going to be my stepping stone because I was in America. And that, that is, I mean, no, whether it's admirable or not, it's fascinating. And yeah, I think so. Unlimited appetite for these kinds of stories. No, I think so. Did you want to add anything else, Bernie, before we wrap up? Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks again, Doug. And please, sorry, we went so long. We always do it. I mean, no, it's quite all right. It's, it's always fun chatting with you hunting out choppo. Also the last boss of Brighton and Doug's published a number of other books about Italian mafia. And we still haven't talked to him about the book with iced tea that that'll be next. Hopefully you'll return again soon. And we'll talk about that. Well, let's give it a give a little time for this one to sink in. Yeah, sure. Let's I love the podcast though. I mean, I was transfixed to the Sicilian Gambino connection. Oh, of all of the, all the family seems to have they, they, they reinvigorated their ranks with the Sicilian connections, right? Yeah, yeah, it seems like, yeah, yeah, we appreciate that. So anyhow, I wanted to remind everyone, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, please subscribe to the podcast, follow us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, maybe we have a Twitter or a TikTok account. We're not very active, but, but maybe we should because, you know, our demographics are 25. That's how we find out about podcasts is TikTok. So we're going to see if we can get Ben a social media intern or something like that. But if we are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, please follow us. Douglas Sentry, you have a website, right? Where you can find out more about your books. Uh, just go to Douglas Sentry, all one word, Douglasentry.com. And yeah, link to my books or just Google. It's an odd enough name that nothing much comes up except me writing about Vladimir Putin being a gangster or whatever. I've got a bunch of stuff out there recently. Um, but I love the show. I mean, this is, this is just my wheelhouse, whatever you guys talk about. I'm fascinated. So I really appreciate you guys having me on and anybody who wanted to know more about Narcos feel free on my website. There's, there's email. You can email me and ask me questions. Right on Doug. Thanks again. Uh, Jimmy Buccellaro, Scott Bernstein. We're out. See you next week.