A former US Marine used his military training and Mexican connections in a bid to become the next El Chapo, according to a federal indictment.
Leatherneck combat vet Angel Dominguez Ramirez Jr. oversaw a cocaine-dealing empire, employing dozens of workers and a skill for corrupting Mexican authorities, the US Attorney’s Office in San Diego alleged Friday.
His emerging cartel had “an unprecedented level of corruption within the Mexican government, local police departments, federal police agencies and military,” prosecutors claim.
They charged 41 people in the case and seized about 11,000 pounds cocaine, along with $9 million in drug profits, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
Dominquez was arrested in Mexico in 2016 and is awaiting extradition to San Diego for trafficking cocaine.
His outfit brought the drug from Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador, through Central America and into Chiapas, Mexico, where runners packed it onto boats, planes and commercial vehicles for delivery to the US in California and Texas.
The organization also used a pipeline to move drug money back to Mexico.
Dominguez, a dual US and Mexican citizen, was known as “Zeta 39,” a reference to his having trained as a member of the Los Zetas paramilitary cartel, which was first formed as an enforcement wing for the Cartel del Golfo, the paper said.
And he worked with many other gangs, including Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s group, the Sinaloa Cartel, along with the Beltran Leyva Organization and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion.
But just like El Chapo, he was undone by his cartel cohorts.
US investigators got wind of Dominguez after wiretapping a top Mexican police commander saying a liaison with US law enforcement officials was leaking information to the gang.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents discovered the alleged leaker’s name — Ivan Reyes Arzate — and that he was working with Dominguez, who relied on Reyes for alerts on a DEA probe.
Reyes got arrested in Chicago in 2017. He had been the highest-ranking member of Mexico’s elite Sensitive Investigation Unit.
He got a 40-month prison sentence, the report said.