Al Capone was the first.
El Mencho is the current.
Both men held the unsavory title of Chicago’s Public Enemy Number One.
There is one big difference between the city’s most wanted fugitives: at least “Scarface” Capone actually lived in the city.
El Mencho, whose real name is Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, resides in Mexico according to U.S. law enforcement, but they don’t know exactly where. Mencho is under indictment in Chicago on charges that he oversees a criminal drug organization responsible for murders, mayhem and many millions of dollars in illicit profits. There is a newly increased bounty on his head, now totaling $15 million.
NBC Chicago has been investigating how federal drug agents are attempting to land El Mencho by turning the screws on his family members.
Mencho’s runs the “New Generation Cartel”, also known as CJNG.
However, it is a business that has wiped out a generation of overdosed customers in Chicago.
Investigators in Chicago do see a glimmer of hope-with the life sentence just given to Mencho’s 34-year old son Rubén Oseguera González known as “Menchito.”
“I’m sure this this sent shockwaves through El Mencho’s organization” said Jack Riley, a former top officer at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “We’ll have to see how this plays out in terms of other capture operations that are ongoing in Mexico right now,” Riley told NBC Chicago in an interview on Thursday afternoon.
Riley famously directed the Chicago DEA office as special agent in charge.
“They’re getting a lot of pressure from the new administration. They’ve turned over a lot of people.”
There is an uphill battle for U.S. drug agents, despite a push by the Trump administration and a designation that drug cartels are terrorist organizations.
“Their tentacles go all over the place,” he said. “Military, the justice even all on the way up to the presidential palace. So this is a long entrenched fight we’re in, and I certainly hope that we keep up the pressure because I think we’re making a difference.”
GOUDIE: “Well you can’t put a tariff on the cartel product, but you can, as the president has done, designate them to be terrorist organizations.
RILEY: The terror designation is substantial, if you look at where else we’ve used that throughout the world. So I think the alarm is ringing, in the whole Mexican government.”
El Mencho’s predecessor was Joaquin Guzman, the billionaire drug lord known as El Chapo. He’s now in the Supermax prison in Colorado now serving a life sentence and Riley helped put him there. He believes successor El Mencho will find a cot there as well…in the near future.
“I’m hoping obviously sooner than later, but I would not be surprised at all if he wasn’t on U.S. soil and handcuffs by the end of the year.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
