Wives, he wrote, "have left the housework undone and husbands have slipped away from their jobs to watch." The subject of all this excitement was an unlikely one: Congressional hearings. Hours and hours of them. What made it all so fascinating was the topic: Organized crime. Gangsters. Or, as Americans were learning right there on TV, something called "the Mafia."
Early on February 22nd, residents woke up to the whirl of Army helicopters buzzing low over their houses, while those on the western edge of town heard gunshots and explosions. By eleven that morning, news broke that the operation was targeting Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, better known as El Mencho, the fifty-nine-year-old head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or C.J.N.G., and the most powerful drug lord in Mexico.
The drugs were stored inside a pair of backpacks at Palma's apartment, prosecutors said. One was hidden in a laundry hamper in Palma's bedroom closet. It contained more than 400 grams of methamphetamine, 200-plus grams of a mixture containing fentanyl, other controlled substances and digital scales. A loaded gun was found in the same pack.
More than 100 law enforcement agents conducted high-risk search warrants across three locations. The first was an active methamphetamine lab in the 8000 block of Center Drive in Valley Springs. A second site was located in the 2000 block of Golf Road in Turlock, which contained all the equipment necessary to operate as a lab but was shut down before production began. The third site, located in the 900 block of Reno Avenue in Modesto, was used by the drug trafficking organization to store and distribute illicit narcotics.
Benedetto Nitto Santapaola, a Sicilian mafia boss and one of the most dangerous figures in Italian criminal history, has died aged 87. Santapaola, who was widely believed to have been the architect of a campaign of bloodshed that scarred Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, died on Monday in a Milan prison where he was serving multiple life sentences.
The ability of criminal groups to exercise this type of power and exercise this type of violence is closely linked to firearms trafficking, said Cecilia Farfan-Mendez, an expert on Mexican organised crime. If we want to see less violence in Mexico, this is a very important conversation.
Federal and local agents say they pulled about 10 kilograms of cocaine out of New York City's drug pipeline on Wednesday, arresting one person in a coordinated operation that officials are pitching as another quiet win in an ongoing effort to choke off wholesale supply.
What comes next will not resemble a clean succession. It will be a struggle over who holds the center of gravity inside the organization, and that result is not preordained. Many Mexicans fear a troubling third scenario: a bloody power struggle that fragments the cartel, opening new fronts of conflict in an already volatile criminal landscape.
Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, consolidated one of Mexico's most powerful criminal organisations in part due to a unique franchise-based structure. According to the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the CJNG maintains a presence in every state of Mexico, with varying levels of influence, and operates in more than 40 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, and throughout the US.
The 38-count superseding indictment names defendants whom prosecutors identified as members or affiliates of the Anti-Tren gang that emerged from Tren de Aragua, which federal authorities on Jan.20, 2025 designated a foreign terrorist organization. Prosecutors used racketeering conspiracy or RICO statutes, tying groups to crimes, for a wide range of actions, including some linked to an April 15, 2024 double murder in the Bronx.
Juan Carlos Valencia González has emerged as a key contender to take over the $20 billion criminal empire after "El Mencho" died in a Mexican special forces raid on Sunday. The 41-year-old is the slain chief's stepson. According to law enforcement, his mother Rosalinda "La Jefa" González Valencia was married to the drug kingpin and was a major player on the financial side of the cartel.
Whole areas of western Mexico have been all but shut down after a surge in cartel violence sparked by a military raid that killed one of the world's most wanted drug traffickers, known as El Mencho. Schools were closed in several Mexican states, and foreign governments warned their citizens to stay inside after the drug lord, whose real name is Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, was declared dead on Sunday.
These semi-submersible boats have been used for years by drug gangs to smuggle cocaine from South and Central America. In more recent months as the price of cocaine has plummeted, gangs have changed tactics: instead of letting the boats sink on delivery, they have started to reuse the vessels, setting up a refuelling platform at sea and sending the boats back so they can make as many journeys as possible.
Mexico has sent another 37 alleged members of Mexican criminal organisations to the United States, the country's security minister said, amid US President Donald Trump's threat of ground attacks against drug cartels in the region. The handover of alleged drug cartel members on Tuesday is the third major transfer to the US in the past year and brings the total number of suspects transferred to 92.
According to his eight-count indictment, the ex-cop took more than $30,000 in exchange for transporting drugs, including approximately eight kilograms of cocaine; providing unauthorized armed protection for a drug trafficking enterprise; and submitting false reports to the NYPD to help a co-conspirator avoid repayment of a drug-trafficking-related debt. Nguyen entered a guilty plea to three of the indictment's eight counts bribery and narcotics distribution conspiracy, and a firearm charge before U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres Thursday.
Their attackers had tried to burn them to cover their tracks, but the double femicide left no doubt: it bore the mark of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization. In the wake of the crime, investigations and news reports about the Venezuelan gang followed. And arrests began. Although the Mexico City Security Secretariat tried to downplay its role, police operations proved that this criminal network, after spreading across the continent, was already operating in Mexico.