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DISTRITO FEDERAL (Reforma)-.  The Sinaloa Cartel of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman paid $250,000.00 dollars to kidnap U.S. citizens in that country and bring them to Mexico to be executed.

Gabino Salas Valenciano, who was until last year the principal head of the organization in Ciudad Juarez, employed arms dealers and drug traffickers from the U.S. to eliminate debtors in the U.S. who did not pay their debts.

That was the case with Texas resident Sergio Sauceda, who supposedly lost 300 kilos of Sinaloa Cartel marijuana. In retaliation, he was kidnapped in El Paso in September of 2009 and subsequently found dead in the Valle de Juarez with his hands cut off and placed on his chest.

The price paid for his head was $250,000.00 dollars, according to Criminal Case No. EP-11CR-2817-FM, filed in the West Texas Federal District Court in El Paso, against Francisco Javier Pulido “El Pichas”, Cesar Pineda and Carlos Cuellar, all three already under arrest in Mexico and the United States.

According to the file, from the time “El Chapo” began to take gradual control of Ciudad Juarez and displace the Carrillo Fuentes clan on that border, four of its men became important in handling drugs, weapons and money.

They were Noel Salgueiro Nevarez, “El Flaco”, Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, “El Jaguar”, who started the war to grab the plaza from the Carrillos; Gabino Salas Valenciano himself, who handled shipments of drugs, and Luis Carlos Marin, a local drug trafficker.

Salgueiro was captured on October 5, 2011, in Culiacan, Sinaloa.  Torres Marrufo was arrested on February 3, 2012, in Leon, Guanajuato, and Salas Valenciano was killed on August 8, 2013, in the Juarez Valley (Valle de Juarez”). The only one still at large is Marin.

On August 5, 2009, at the Border Patrol's Sierra Blanca, Texas, inspection station, agents stopped two individuals with a trailer that was transporting 303.9 kilos of marijuana, which drug had been smuggled (into the U.S.) by Sergio Sauceda, a 30-year old U.S. drug trafficker.

Luis Carlos Marin, a lieutenant of Torres Marrufo, “El Jaguar”, had sent him the drug shipment , and it appears this loss was the last one for the recipient.

Almost a month later, on September 3, 2009, a group of masked gunmen — also from the U.S.– broke into a house in Horizon City, in the El Paso suburbs, and carried off Sergio Sauceda in a maroon-colored Ford Expedition.

The kidnappers drove to a lot in the vicinity of Fabens, (Texas), where the mobile home belonging to Francisco Javier Pulido, “El Pichas”, was located. He was a Mexican-American drug trafficker who was already being sought by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Shortly thereafter, Victor Elias, “El Chito”, Cesar Pineda and Israel Cardenas Garcia, “El Rayelo”, arrived there.

“The men, who were wearing masks, took Sauceda from his vehicle and placed him in the rear seat of the vehicle I was driving. Pulido was also there at the mobile home. I then transported Sauceda from Pulido's house to Mexico across the Fabens-Caseta Port of Entry,” Pineda testified before the U.S. court.

According to the court file, Pineda took Sauceda to a place known as “La Cabana” in the Juarez Valley, which was nothing more than a house fixed up as a weapons store house. When they got there, they delivered Sauceda to a group of 10 men.

The victim had just been delivered to Torres Marrufo, “El Jaguar”, and Luis Carlos Marin.

“Pulido informed me that Sauceda had stolen more than 600 pounds of marijuana from the organization of Luis Carlos Marin, who worked for Torres Marrufo. He also told me that the Luis Carlos Marin organization, on behalf of Torres Marrufo, had paid Salas Valenciano $250,000.00 to kidnap Sauceda,” testified Pineda.

Five days later, Sauceda's body was found on the banks of the Rio Grande, semi-nude, with signs of torture and with the hands cut off and placed on the chest.

The suspects who were involved in this crime were led by Gabino Salas Valenciano, “El Ingeniero”.

'I bought 70 assault rifles in Texas.'

In the case filed against Cesar Pineda in a U.S. court, the alleged gunman for the Sinaloa Cartel states that the leaders of the criminal organization ordered him to purchase assault rifles in the U.S. Pineda was hired in 2009 by Diego Rodriguez, now deceased, to work for Gabino Salas Valenciano, “El Ingeniero”, smuggling small quantities of marijuana into El Paso. That's when he met Francisco Javier Pulido, “El Pichas”, who supervised the transportation of drugs.

“In July of 2009, I was instructed to go to El Paso, Texas, where Pulido gave me $24,000.00. They gave me the money to buy weapons in Fort Worth, Texas, specifically AK-47s for the Salas Valenciano organization. I went to Fort Worth, where I bought seventeen AK-47s. I took part in other weapons purchases for the Salas Valenciano organization, two in Fort Worth and one in Denver, Colorado. In total, I took part in the purchase of approximately 70 weapons, of which about 50 were AK-47 and approximately 20 were AR-15s,” says Pineda.

Pulido also invited U.S. resident Carlos Cuellar to work for the organization, even though Cuellar  had previously worked for the Carrillo Fuentes organization. From June to August, 2011, Cuellar introduced 7 shipments of marijuana into the U.S., each weighing 150 kilos, according to his plea agreement.

He delivered the drug to two individuals known as Rene and Victor, in Socorro, Texas. Pulido paid him $1,000.00 per load successfully delivered.

“Pulido paid a fee to Reyna Mejia Garrido to transport marijuana through the sector that she controlled in the Juarez valley. In August of 2011, several of the persons who took delivery of the marijuana were arrested when they were trying to smuggle almost 150 kilos of marijuana into the United States,” testified Cuellar before the El Paso court.

In May of 2011, Pineda was arrested in Texas and pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit homicide in a foreign country, for which he was sentenced to 240 months in prison.

Cuellar was also arrested in October that year for trafficking marijuana. He pled guilty in February, 2012, and was sentenced to 150 months imprisonment.

Meanwhile, Francisco Javier Pulido, “El Pichas”, was captured on April 27, 2013, and sent to the Federal Prison in Hermosillo, Sonora, based on a court order for temporary detention while awaiting extradition.

The Foreign Relations Secretariat granted the U.S. petition for extradition of “El Pichas” on charges of organized crime violations; kidnapping resulting in death; criminal conspiracy to kidnap, murder and mutilate in a foreign country, and conspiracy to import marijuana.

The U.S. avoided using homicide as a basis for extradition because Mexico would have denied it, since that offense may carry a death penalty, which is prohibited in Mexico. 

www.diario.mx/Nacional/2014-05-25_384025d2/pago-cartel-de-sinaloa…