Kingpin

Two brothers, ruling a vicious drug cartel. Two agents, determined to bring them down.

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Notorious Cruelty

Heidi Landgraf was an old hand at meeting with informants. But this guy, Jose Patino Moreno, was different. It was dangerous enough being an honest prosecutor in Mexico. But "Pepe" Patino, a soft-spoken family man, had spent more than a year now working closely with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, investigating a vicious drug syndicate that was pumping cocaine into America. The two brothers who ran this cartel -- Benjamin and Ramon Arellano-Felix -- were notorious for their cruelty. Rivals were murdered and informers routinely tortured and killed. <br><br> It was April 2000, and the DEA had spent almost a decade trying to bring down the brothers -- especially Benjamin, who was the brains behind the operation. For most of these years, Jack Hook, one of Landgraf's colleagues, had spearheaded the DEA task force. Now, Landgraf was in charge, and Patino seemed to offer the best chance at a breakthrough. <br><br> She was worried for him, though.. "Aren't you afraid to work with these guys, Pepe?" she asked Patino. "Are you taking precautions?" <br><br> "Heidi, you're kind of scaring me," Patino said with a nervous laugh. <br><br> "Just be careful," Landgraf replied. <br><br> Two days later, Patino's wrecked Chevy Lumina was spotted in a steep ravine off the road from Tijuana to Mexicali. Nearby lay Patino's body, along with those of another prosecutor and a Mexican military official. <br><br> This was no car accident. All three had been severely tortured. Virtually every bone in Patino's body was broken, and his head had been crushed in an industrial press. Forensic pictures showed just one recognizable feature: his distinctive black pen was still tucked into his shirt pocket. <br><br> Patino, it was later learned, had been betrayed to the cartel by a member of his own staff. <br><br> For Landgraf and her colleagues at DEA, this was yet another devastating setback. For 14 years, the Arellano-Felix organization, or AFO, had controlled the crown jewel of the trafficking business: the 100-mile, hardscrabble southern California border area known as the Plaza, which stretched from Mexicali to Tijuana. With over 80,000 cars passing through the border each day, the Plaza had become the gateway to the world's largest drug market. The cartel was believed responsible for up to 60 percent of the cocaine on America's streets. <br><br> Only the brutal rule of the Arellano brothers could have forged this drug empire. Born to a large, middle-class family in the lawless western state of Sinaloa, the brothers inherited the Plaza from their uncle, Miguel Angel Felix-Gallardo, the godfather of Mexican narco-traffickers. With Benjamin guiding the operation, and his younger brother Ramon in the role of enforcer, the Arellanos quickly became players in Tijuana society. <br><br> The two lived fast, throwing lavish parties and strutting through the border town squalor with movie star panache. Benjamin, cool and reserved, mingled well among the Tijuana establishment. With his minions, he became the stern strategist, devising the cartel's operations. Meanwhile, his ponytailed brother, Ramon, possessed a voracious appetite for women, cars, designer clothing -- and murder. <br><br> The brothers' cartel had moved tons of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine north into San Diego, with the drugs eventually finding their way to dealers in big cities like Los Angeles and Chicago. The AFO often got their haul past the U.S. border by greasing the palms of corrupt inspectors at the customs checkpoints. <br><br> "If you paid them $40,000 or $50,000, they'd just wave you on through," says one DEA official. <br><br> If anyone got in the way of this arrangement, he paid with his life. Authorities believe the AFO murdered hundreds, letting everyone know that theirs was the Colombian style of doing business -- <i>plata o plomo</i>: silver or lead. <br><br>

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“ Give your heart to your work, but be a little more stingy with your time. Decide how many hours a week is reasonable to get your work done, add 10 percent in case you're wrong, then walk away. ”

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During my stay at an expensive hotel in New York City, I woke up in the middle of the night with an upset stomach. I called room service and ordered some soda crackers. When I looked at the charge slip, I was furious. I called room service and fumed, "I know I'm in a luxury hotel, but $11.50 for six crackers is outrageous!"

"The crackers are complimentary," the voice at the other end coolly explained. "I believe you are complaining about your room number."

-- Robert Menchin