All language subtitles for Cowboy.Cartel.S01E03

[Melissa del Bosque] With the Zetas,
it was just out of control,

subjugating the population,
extorting them...

"We are the most brutal, the most awful."

"You just don't even want to counter us
because we're that terrifying."

Their calling card was... brutality.

We'd be sitting there
for hours and hours, days and days,

going, how are we gonna get these guys?

You actually have to have hard evidence...

...that you're going to put
in front of a jury.

That's gonna take a witness of some type,

and say, "This is what happened."

That's how you get the leaders.

That's how you take down the organization.

[theme music playing]

[Steve Pennington] Throughout my career,
I'd work these cases.

I would never discuss it
with family members.

This particular time,
I just mentioned to my family, it's, like...

"Why don't we teach you guys
how to shoot guns?"

They just kind of laughed it off,
like, heh, okay.

Couple weeks later, I bring it back up.

"Maybe it's a good thing if, you know,
we all learn how to shoot guns,

maybe carry guns,
maybe get a concealed license."

And, uh, my wife looks at me, she goes...

"What did you do?"

With the cartel,
you have gone after their passion,

and you have gone after their family.

It's not a matter of
if they'll retaliate against somebody.

It's a matter of when.

[bell clanging]

[horn blaring]

[Scott Lawson] In February of 2011,

myself, Jason, and Raul,
we were all in our office,

just like any other,
you know, normal work day.

And we get a call.

And what we learn is that
a HSI agent named Jaime Zapata

had been murdered in Mexico by the Zetas.

He was doing a diplomatic mission,

traveling down a highway
that was controlled by the Zeta cartel.

He was in an armored vehicle, uh,
that had diplomatic plates.

Historically, cartels,
it was part of that rule system, you know.

You see a US government vehicle,

it's best business just to let them
carry on and drive through your area.

But, once again, the Zetas were different.

They tried to get Jaime
to stop at a checkpoint.

He continued driving,
he got in a pursuit with him.

[faint machine gun fire]

Jaime eventually
was wrecked out into a ditch.

- [tires screech]
- [metal crunching]

When he put his vehicle in park...

...there was a safety feature
that unlocked the doors automatically.

[footsteps approaching]

There were Zetas standing
on the side of the car, they saw it.

[machine gun fire]

Jaime's partner was hit, and survived,
but Jaime was killed.

[TV News reporter] It has been 25 years
since that has happened,

since a US agent was killed
in the line of duty in Mexico.

These two agents were sitting ducks
and sitting targets

in what was an intentional ambush
by the Zetas.

[Avila, over phone]
This is Victor Avila. I'm from ICE.

We are shot! We are shot!

All I could see is evil in their eyes,
and they're yelling, "Get out."

[Avila, over phone] We are on the highway
of Querétaro, Mexico.

We've been shot and attacked
on the highway.

I am an ICE Special Agent.

[Avila] I'm yelling at them,
"We are US diplomats,

we are US embassy employees,
we are Americans."

This was not a case
of potential mistaken identity.

They knew what they were doing
and took an overt act to kill Jaime.

[embassy man, over phone] Highway?
What is the highway, sir? To where?

[Avila, over phone] Mexico. Querétaro.
They know where I'm at.

[faint chatter over phone]

[embassy man]
Try to remain on the line, please.

[Eric Holder, on TV] Agent Zapata's story
is one that we must not forget,

and it is one that we will not.

[Lawson] But it hit home,
and it hit us in the heart,

because Jaime Zapata had worked
on the same floor

in the same building in Laredo.

His supervisor and his partner
were the Homeland Security equivalent

to us on the same hallway,
so I worked with him on dozens of cases.

After Jaime Zapata's murder,
there was this sense of,

that is one rule,
one line that was never crossed,

and it had just been crossed.

I definitely have a place in my mind
that the cartel could,

you know, target me at this point.

[Brian Schutt] We'd been dealing
with the Zetas for a long time,

and we knew they're violent.

[autofocus beep]

Look, the Zetas have counter-surveillance.

[autofocus beep]

It's just like the military.

[camera shutter clicks]

They have all the capabilities
that you do.

We know that Miguel and Omar,

they had connections to gangs over here
in the United States.

You know, one phone call, and...

I always carried a gun, on duty, off duty.

The more we got into this,
I was like, "I think I need to get an AR."

[producer] Why did you think
you needed an AR?

More firepower.

They got stuff that go through car doors,

I want bullets that go through car doors.

[Lawson] After the death of Jaime,

all federal law enforcement agencies
wanted to make a statement back.

[Rep. Michael McCaul, on TV]
This is a huge travesty,

and this administration
needs to hold the Mexican government

and these drug cartels accountable
for what they did.

[Lawson] The emotions were really high.

Law enforcement throughout the country
wanted to send a clear response

that let the Zetas know
that they made a grave mistake.

In Mexico this morning,
police have a prominent member

of the Zeta drug cartel in custody.

Without firing a shot,
police captured Jesús Rejón,

also known as El Mamito.

[Doug Gardner]
Mamito is also known as Z-Seven.

He was one of the original Zetas
that was Mexican armed forces.

And had risen to a level
of the leadership that was fairly high.

He was one of the key lieutenants.

[Lawson] The Zetas,
with that military background,

have a very identified chain of command.

This region where Jaime was murdered

was directly under the chain
of command of Mamito.

The suspicion was that he was the one
who organized that or directed it.

And so, he was arrested
by the Mexican authorities.

Mamito was not captured.

Mamito was turned over
by the Zetas themselves.

[in Spanish] The Zetas lose their
third most important man because...

...Jaime's death places a lot of pressure
from the United States

and from the Mexican government,

there was a lot of pressure
to capture the Zetas,

and as a trophy,

they decide to hand over
the responsible person.

They leaked his location

to the Federal Police to locate him
and capture him.

They themselves leaked that information.

The other option was to kill him,
the Zetas themselves.

[Barack Obama] We thank our Mexican
partners for their close cooperation

following the murder of one of our
Immigration and Customs agents,

Special Agent Zapata.

I have reaffirmed to President Calderón
that in this cause,

Mexico has a full partner
with the United States.

Because whether they live
in Texas or Tijuana,

our people have a right to be safe
in their communities.

After the death of Jaime Zapata,

it wasn't just, you know,
a south Texas Laredo secret.

Now, they're on the national stage.

My biggest fear
was that every target I had

was gonna go to Mexico and be untouchable.

[phone line ringing]

- [Garcia] Tyler?
- [Graham] Yeah.

- [Garcia] What's up, amigo?
- What's going on, man?

[Garcia] Did you talk to José?

[Graham] Yeah, y'all are paid
through the end of June.

The July bill for José is, like, 70,000.

[Garcia] Oh good, good.

'Cause you wanted to get that straight.

[Graham] Yeah. Shit, I guess I got to now.

Now that he's planning on moving
the goddamn studs.

[Garcia] What he say now?

[Graham] Huh?

[Garcia] Did he tell you something, or...

[Graham] He told me he's building
his own stud farm.

- [Garcia] Really?
- Yeah!

Gonna build his own stud farm
and do everything himself.

- That y'all would have all y'alls...
- No?

[Graham] Y'all would have all your mares
over there next year.

[Garcia] Oh, shit, I didn't know that.

[Lawson] So I get a call from the source,
and he says,

hey, José Treviño, he thinks
he's played this game long enough

that he doesn't need
a breeding facility anymore.

He wants to buy his own
breeding facility in Oklahoma.

José had spotted out
approximately 60 acres

and purchased this land
for about 600,000 dollars.

And he told the source,
over the course of the year,

we're gonna start sending trailers
picking up our horses

and slowly transporting our horses
to Lexington.

[Pennington] José had established
this ranch in Oklahoma.

[camera clicking]

They're trying to get their
breeding services up and running,

get all the horses up there.

The stud horses and all the mares.

And eventually,
if you start breeding,

you get fees in from different people
that will pay you for the breeding fees.

You start also getting
young yearling horses

that are starting to train and race,

and those horses start to make money.

With José's ranch in Oklahoma,

it would have been much harder
to work our case

because then they would have had
clean money right into his account.

[Jason Buch] Clean money
is what matters, right?

A clean dollar is worth way more
than a dirty dollar.

At some point, this became
an opportunity to create

a self-sustaining business
for their family.

Miguel and Omar craved that legitimacy.

In some ways, horse racing was a way
into the upper echelons

of narco society and legitimate society.

But I also think to have
this sustainable operation

to set his brother
and the rest of his family up

with a long-term financial stability
was a point of pride.

When I learned that José
bought his own ranch,

I was, like, he's really
believing his own BS.

He just went from winning horses
that were handed to him on a platter

to thinking that he is ready to run

a multi-million dollar
horse-breeding facility.

This was kind of a scary time
for our investigation.

We wondered where we would be.

Did we have enough proof already?

Were we gonna be able
to gather additional evidence?

Once José runs his own breeding facility,

we were gonna lose a lot of insight
into how he was operating.

He's going to eventually get control
of all of the paperwork,

making it more difficult for us to show
the criminal roots of the money.

We just knew that our access
could be diminishing

and we needed to get on with this thing.

[Pennington] That kinda put us in a crunch

because we needed to take 'em down
before it got out of hand.

The purchase of the ranch, that, to me,
is an important investigative target.

It was a multimillion-dollar
investment and operation.

I remember my editor once said,

"How are you gonna be able to prove

that this business is illegal?"

Like, how am I gonna be able to prove
that there's laundering?

We were certainly looking at the money
that was going in and out.

We were looking at their winnings.

So I started thinking,
"How do I get inside?"

[indistinct chatter]

I was able to go
to a couple of racetracks,

talk to a couple of trainers,

taking advantage of the possibility

that people might underestimate me
and what I was doing,

and use that to my advantage.

And once I began to really make progress,

I went back and spent lots of long dinners
with the informant, who helped me.

The more I was able to show him
how much I had done, the more he gave me,

and he was in the center of all of this.

[producer] So, you don't want
to name your informant?

I don't. I'd rather not.

After that, I began talking
to DEA sources who I trusted,

who said the FBI,
they're looking at this organization,

that they're investigating
this horse farm.

I was like, okay,
that's how I'm gonna prove

that they're doing something illegal,
'cause the US is looking at them.

There's my story.

This investigation, it was overwhelming.

Just overwhelming. It was a huge puzzle.

[Kim Williams] It's difficult.

It's all paperwork and spreadsheets.

[copier whirring]

Mounds of boxes and documents.

[Pennington] You're trying to piece
all this stuff together.

It was by far the largest case
I had ever worked on.

It was very exciting, very stressful,
but highly entertaining.

[Schutt] We start getting boxes and boxes
of records from the horse sales.

Going, okay, here's a horse
they paid 50,000 dollars for.

It earned 20,000 dollars.

Through its progression,

they spent 400,000 dollars
on vet fees, track fees,

all these bills that they have
for this horse.

They lost money on this horse.

[Pennington] We knew
that the structured funds,

the money to pay the horse traders
and the vets,

we had some proof it was drug proceeds,
but not solid proof.

In the United States,
we end up giving subpoena to the banks.

We can't issue a subpoena
to a bank in Mexico.

The drug cartels and organized crime

will purposely use foreign bank accounts,
corporations, companies,

because it makes it harder
for US law enforcement to prove the case.

That was our first stumbling block.

I got absolutely no records

that were of any provable authenticity
from Mexico.

Bank or otherwise.

You know, the...

This whole case is,
they're making big heaps of money, right?

I mean, they are sophisticated.

They know what they're doing.

[producer] How did you end up bringing
Michelle into this investigation?

Um, I did not bring her on the case, uh...

I'm doing this case,
I'm sitting back there,

and Michelle's like,
"Hey, what are you working on?"

I saw this cartel case
starting to develop.

She's not shy.

I was like, "I promise you,
I will drop everything that I am doing,

and I will do this case with you."

Uh, yeah, she invited herself. [chuckles]

That's really the truth. Isn't that...

- Is that fair, Michael?
- [Michael Fernald] Yeah.

[Michelle Fernald] I wanted to know
what was going on with the money

that's coming from the businessman,
Francisco Colorado Cessa.

I mean, we needed to be able to prove,
in essence, that any of the funds

that Colorado Cessa had used
to purchase the horses

came from dirty money.

We needed another financial expert,

and I knew no one else better
than my husband, Michael Fernald.

[Michael Fernald] So I was interested
in Colorado Cessa,

and I think there was a link there
that they were missing.

I was interested in how cash rich
was Colorado Cessa,

because he wasn't buying horses on credit,
he wasn't using a credit card.

So he had to have liquidity,
he had to have cash.

I thought there were more layers,
more information to go through.

I wanted to just kind of
peel that onion back.

And then, through my analysis,

I found several accounts at UBS in Miami.

- [salsa music playing]
- [gulls squawking]

He had a line of credit,

about a twenty-six-million-dollar
line of credit within UBS.

I knew that in order
to get a line of credit,

he had to supply financial statements
from his business at ADT Petroservicios.

Once I got those financial statements,
it really opened a window into ADT

that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

ADT was a oil remediation company

and their source of revenue,
main source of revenue,

ninety percent of it at least,
was through contracts with PEMEX,

a Mexican-owned oil company.

There was a long period of time where ADT
was suspended from PEMEX contracts,

and over the course of that same period,

Colorado Cessa spent
millions and millions of dollars

purchasing, training,
breeding quarter horses,

when he didn't have a source of revenue.

They barely had enough money
to pay their expenses,

and certainly couldn't do both.

He couldn't pay the expenses of ADT

and simultaneously spend
ten million dollars purchasing horses.

Um, not legitimately, at least.

Holy crap, this is...
this is actually something.

But that by itself was not enough.

We were still missing the proof

that the money coming in
from Francisco Colorado Cessa

was dirty money from 40 and 42.

We were missing the link that showed

that was drug proceeds
flowing through the businesses

back into the United States.

- [Garcia] Amigo?
- [Graham] What's up?

[Garcia] ¿Qué pasó y cómo estás?

[Graham] Uh, what do you think...

What do you think your schedule
on your little brother is

for starting to shovel some money in here?

[Garcia] He hasn't shoveled no money yet?

- [Graham] Zero.
- What the hell?

[Garcia] I'll ask, I'll ask,
but hopefully soon.

- I think it'll be soon.
- [Graham] Yeah.

All right, well, you know,
at least a piece of it, I mean...

I'm not, just like
I told Victor the other day,

I said I'm not in any rush to...

for y'all to pick up horses
or nothing like that,

but, man, I'm starting
to get pretty far out there.

I'm needing to pay some bills myself,
you know?

[Garcia] On breeding fees
and stuff like that?

[Graham] For shipped semen
and farm fees for this year...

I mean, hell, I just bought
$70,000 worth of alfalfa, you know?

[Garcia] 70,000 dollars' worth of alfalfa?

[Graham, chuckling] Yeah.

[Lawson] José was slowly moving
all of his horses to Lexington, Oklahoma,

but he still got over 200 of their horses
at the source's ranch.

And we're now in the breeding season.

And the bills are mounting up
at Southwest Stallion Station.

They have accrued over 600,000 dollars.

And then, this new voice calls.

[line ringing]

[Graham] Hey, this is Tyler.
What's going on?

[man] Nothing. How you gonna be today?

[Graham] Uh, I'm pretty free.

[man] Are you at San Antonio?

[Graham] No, I'm in Elgin, at my ranch.

[man] I wanna... I want to explain you.

I need to give you three checks.

[Graham] Okay.

[man] I just... I just wanna, uh,
make you feel, uh, comfortable

and secure about the checks.

[Graham] Yeah, so, I mean,
do you wanna try and meet me

in San Antonio today or...?

[Lawson] The source agrees
to meet this individual,

and receive these checks
that are gonna total 550,000 dollars.

The source goes to the parking lot,
the gentleman walks around.

We're like, who is this guy
and why is he paying the bill?

[camera clicking]

And it ends up being Alfonso Del Rayo.

The same Alfonso who came to
the January 11th Heritage Place auction.

You know, who wrote $310,000 worth
of checks for José Treviño.

Another Mexican businessman in bed
with the Zetas.

They're using his accounts to send

what normally appear to be legitimate,
you know, business money

to America to buy horses
for the Zeta cartel.

I already knew that this was
another Colorado Cessa.

But what was different was,

this one was talking directly
to my source,

on my recorded line.

We were looking at it
as another opportunity

to follow the money to the cartel.

[faint traffic hum]

[dog continues barking]

Miguel and Omar Treviño
and the entire Zeta drug cartel

was being investigated by a number
of different agencies.

In particular, HSI,
Homeland Security Investigations.

HSI's main focus was catching criminals
coming over the border.

So naturally they were looking
at a lot of the same guys that we were.

Including Victor Lopez.

From HSI's perspective, they'd identified
Victor Lopez as a money courier.

Victor often took short flights,

returning one hour after arriving
at his destination city.

So HSI's plan was to follow Victor

and stop whoever he met with
in Oklahoma.

Victor flies to Oklahoma City.

He walks out in the parking garage.

He gets in a vehicle.

Victor gets out of the vehicle,
walks back into the airport.

In Oklahoma City,
HSI does surveillance on this vehicle.

They make a traffic stop.

And lo and behold...

It's José Treviño.

I was like, wow, okay. [chuckles]

I was, you know, pissed off.

I was like, we had had a conversation
about Victor before,

and kind of told,
"Hey, this is part of something bigger."

When José was stopped,
he had approximately 5,500 dollars on him.

It's not illegal to have
5,000 dollars in your pocket.

So they let him go.

You know, my biggest fear was,

man, now we had him and Victor,
after a meeting stop.

That meeting was specific
to our horse operation.

He's gonna know
that law enforcement's onto him.

With every passing day,
with this crescendo effect

of more and more agencies
knowing who these guys are,

more and more pressure
being put on the Zetas,

I just felt like the whole thing
was gonna shrivel apart.

In my opinion, it's time to go.

It's time to strike, it's time to indict.

I needed more time.

Again, I knew it was going on,

but I didn't feel I could prove it
at that point.

I always say, how do you eat an elephant?

One forkful at a time.

Steve and his crew, they've spent hours

going through the subpoena records
from AQHA,

veterinarian records on how
they're paying money, bank records...

It was, um... cumbersome. And difficult.

The drug business is actually
a multi-billion dollar industry.

The Zetas were moving
350, 400 million dollars a year.

Uh, so, quickly, three or four years,
you're into billion dollar plus.

At that point in time,
we actually documented...

- [faint machine gun fire]
- [auction bell clangs]

...twenty-six million, one hundred
and some odd thousand dollars,

I believe it was, that was laundered

in the purchase and the care
of the quarter horses.

[line ringing]

- [del Rayo] Tyler?
- [Graham] Yes, sir.

[del Rayo] It's Alfonso.

I-I-I just want to ask you

if you could give me a couple hours of...

so you can get the check done.

[Graham] Yeah, I can hold it
for a couple hours.

[Lawson] So after the source
gets the checks,

Alfonso asks the source,

I need you to please cash one a week
over the next three weeks.

[del Rayo] You're only going to be able

to cash one, or deposit one...

...this week.

- [Graham] Okay.
- Friday. And one...

[Graham] All right.

[del Rayo] And one the next week.

And I'll be in Mexico next week

because I got to fix some money

that didn't come through, you know?

- [Graham] Yeah.
- As soon as I fix that,

I'll just give you a call to let you know

and deposit the last one.

[Graham] Okay.

- [del Rayo] You know what I mean?
- Yeah.

[Lawson] I'm sitting in the wire room,

listening to these progression of calls
from Alfonso to the source.

But this felt different.

You could hear fear in his voice.

[del Rayo, stammering] I just wanna
make you feel sure

that the money is gonna be paid.

- Just...
- [Graham] Okay.

[del Rayo] Just making sure,

'cause, you know, people...
people in Mexico is pushing me.

- Asking...
- [Graham] No.

[del Rayo] ...if I already gave you,
if I already paid you.

There seems to be like a progressional
sense of despair as the calls go.

Interpreting that in real time,
it felt like

whoever was pressuring Alfonso
to make these payments

was putting a lot of heat on him.

It began to feel different

than Francisco Colorado Cessa's
bold, untouchable confidence.

This felt like a shaky man
that was in fear for his life.

That was kind of revealing to me
that, you know,

maybe Alfonso was not necessarily
a willing participant

in the situation he had found himself in.

[Graham] Hey, y'all have never talked
to Alfonso, have y'all?

[Garcia] Nope, no, never.

Did you? What about you?

[Graham] No, he won't answer
his goddamn phone.

It's kinda making me nervous.

[Garcia] Yeah, no,
everything should be okay.

Let me call the... the accountant,

see what he says.

Alfonso Del Rayo goes silent,

and we don't hear anything
from him for weeks.

So we're using all of our brains
to scheme and think

about all of these collective resources

to try and get Alfonso Del Rayo
into the US,

to track the next time
he may have to travel.

Then I just kinda started thinking,

we've got his Nextel number,

it came across
when he calls the informant.

He speaks English.

I'm just gonna try and give him a call.

Obviously I was thinking, Alfonso answers,

we say hey, we're the FBI,
we'd like to speak with you,

that he changes phones, stays in Veracruz,

and I never hear
or see from him again.

But the one thing Dad always told me,

if you want to be successful
as an investigator,

first you need some ability
to read people,

but then you need to know
that you can trust your instincts.

I do the Nextel, you know,
beep beep, till Afonso...

[phone beeps]

It was a calculated risk.

That comes with all this anxiety of,
you can't fall on your face and fail.

But there is something
about Alfonso's presentation,

both at Heritage Place
and my interpretation of his conversation,

that made me think, uh,

that he may be looking for a lifeline,

and looking for an opportunity, a way out.

[phone chirps]

He answers, and I say, "Hey, uh,
I'm Scott Lawson,

and, uh, I'm with the FBI."

And there was a slow pause, you know.

I got all these emotions
running through me,

like did I just royally screw up,
you know.

He responds back, "Uh, uh, yes," you know,
"How can I help you?" type of thing.

So I decide to basically just kinda
put my cards on the table

and say, we're interested to hear,
you know, your side of the story.

And he tells me a story
that I never would have expected.

[Del Rayo] On December tenth,
at 4:30 in the morning...

...I was kidnapped by a group
of between 12 and 15 people.

They told me that they were Zetas.

They wanted from me fifteen million pesos,

which is about four
and a half million dollars.

[grunting]

They beat me up.

They beat me up pretty bad.

I was hit all over my body,

with the end of AK-47, AR-15.

- And they broke two of my fingers.
- [bones crack]

- And I was also hit in my head.
- [grunts]

I thought I was going to be killed.

And for some reason, after nine days,

they let me free with no pay at all.

A week and a half after that,

I was called by a person named
José Guillermo Herrera Mendoza,

which at the time was Secretary
of Communications of Veracruz,

one of the top positions in the government
of the state of Veracruz.

He told me that he needed to talk to me.

After two or three days,
he got to my home with Carlos Nayen.

He started explaining to me
that I was saved by his boss,

and because of that,
I had to do, as a payback,

I had to come over to Oklahoma City

between the 13th and 15th of January
and buy a horse.

He told me that I had to do the best
to be on time to Oklahoma City,

in case if I wouldn't show,
I would be in problems again.

I flew to Oklahoma City.

They explained me the horse I had to buy.

[faint auctioneer's chant]

It was called Blues Ferrari.

They started explaining me,

you're going to have to raise your hand,

letting them know
that you're interested in that horse.

And then, someone is going to push,

and then, you have to go and push again.

Whatever reason, you gotta buy him.

Carlos, he called me back.

He told me that the things
were pretty bad,

and they needed me to get more money.

I asked him how much.

He told me that he needed
between 650 to 700 thousand dollars.

I had to come over myself and give him
those checks to this guy, Tyler Graham.

- [del Rayo, on phone] Tyler?
- [Graham] Yes, sir.

It's Alfonso.

[del Rayo] And I was told those payments
were needed for the company

which they used
to take care of the horses.

I told them that I didn't have the money,

that I would have to look around
to have to get it.

I had to look for what to sell
to get the money,

and he told me that I had to do it
as fast as I could.

I started receiving calls
from on my radio with death threats,

about if I didn't get that money...

- [impacts]
- [grunting]

...I would get killed, or my family.

[del Bosque] Alfonso del Rayo
was kidnapped

because he was a wealthy person
with political connections.

And I think Miguel and Omar realized
while they were holding him

that he would be another useful façade
for them, like Colorado Cessa,

that they could use in the US
to go and buy horses for them,

without raising any kind of,
you know, flags.

[Lawson] So I tell Alfonso,
"I give you my word

that I will take this all the way
to the prosecutor,

but I have to have you here.
You have to come here."

Alfonso said he wanted to bring, you know,
his evidence of his kidnapping.

[camera clicking]

And he wanted to bring his family.

He said, "I need a week to get
my affairs in order, and I'll come."

So then it was just a waiting game.

He's associated with the cartel,

and I was just hoping that he could
get through that week safely

and be able to make it, you know,
to the United States.

[horn honks]

[Lawson] So we're right
at the heart of the investigation,

we're running fast, running hard.

We go to lunch, come back,
and my phone is sitting there,

it's turned on, and there are
seven voicemails on the phone.

I'm like, that's kinda odd.

The very first voicemail
is from my older brother.

And, uh... he basically says,

"Hey bro, answer the freaking phone,
it's about Dad."

[sighing] So, I called him
as quickly as I could.

He's like, you know,
Dad's had a heart attack,

they're doing CPR,
and they're trying to get him stable

to put him on a helicopter
to take him to Jackson hospital.

There's not many things
that have ever made me feel, like,

uncontrollably emotional,
but, you know, with my pride

and not being weak
in front of the guys in the office,

like, all that went out the window.

I started, you know, sobbing.

[emotional chuckle] And, uh...

I landed in Nashville at midnight,
got a rental car,

drove two hours to the hospital,
and my dad was in a coma.

Um... we spent the next 12 days,
uh, in the hospital.

Never really got out of the coma,
but there was a day or two

where there could be some
hand squeezes and...

On April the 30th,
I saw the heart rate go to 180,

and being a cop for a long time,

I saw that what I call
as "rescue breathing."

I told my brothers and my sisters,
I said...

[voice shaking] "It's almost the end."

[sniffles]

And even though the heart rate was there
and the breathing was there,

I saw a tear coming
out of his eye, and he...

[trails off, trembling]
And he held my hand.

And three hours later, he was gone.

[emotional chuckle] Sorry.
I didn't know that it was gonna...

[sniffs]

[sighs gently]

My relationship with my dad was...
was unique, uh...

His father died at 61.

His brother died at 58.

I say all that to say,
I had this timetable in my head

from the time I was like, 12,

that you're gonna have your dad
till about 60.

So when other guys were
running off in college

and not taking advantage,

I took advantage of times, so...

I had this weird peace
with where we were gonna be with this,

and I still have a great peace
about it, but...

Uh...

I don't know where else to go
with that, you know.

[chuckles]

[faint traffic hum]

[Pennington] For the next month,

we were working super long hours,
and just a lot of stress.

We knew that we didn't have much time
before the next domino would fall...

...and we would potentially lose members
of the organization, or evidence.

So we kicked it into high gear.

[phone ringing]

We got the financial evidence
from the auction houses, from the banks.

We got the flow of the money,
we got the structured funds.

Truck loan, and then... Boom.

[cell phone chiming]

Texas Department of Public Safety,

the state troopers that went
up and down the interstate,

called me and said they had a guy
stopped, coming south,

from Dallas heading to Eagle Pass.

I knew that Eagle Pass was a strong part
of the Zeta organization.

Asked me if I'd be interested in coming up
and seeing what I could see.

I'm like, well, hell yeah.

Make it up there,
start documenting the evidence,

and this guy had 462,000 dollars
in bulk cash.

As I start following the leads,

trying to find out who knows what
about this guy,

a San Antonio PD officer
assigned to the DEA task force

had information
this guy's involved with cocaine.

Call him up.
He goes, "Yeah, come on down."

Travel down to San Antonio,
meet with the task force officer.

Lay out what I had
from the bulk currency,

he lays out what he has
for that connection.

I say, I think this is tied in
with another case we're working,

which involves the leader
of the Zeta cartel laundering money

through the American
quarter horse industry.

And the guy says, "Stop."

He goes, "I got somebody
you got to talk to."

This guy proceeds to tell me

that he was a member of a cell
based out of Eagle Pass

that would get cocaine
from 40 and 42.

They would transport the cocaine
to Dallas,

give it to their distributor in Dallas,

who would then sell it,
get all the cash together,

truck it back down into Mexico,

to 40 and 42's accountant.

Oh! That seems interesting.

Then he goes,
"We were taking cash

and we were paying a lot
of the horse expenses for 40 and 42,

with the drug money
we just got back from Dallas."

They were given specific instructions:

You give this cash
to this set of horse trainers.

You give this cash to this person
to buy this horse in Oklahoma.

You give this cash to this guy,

who is buying a lot of horses
for the organization.

And then after that,
I was like, holy shit.

Okay.

Step by step.

This guy was saying, "Yeah,
we were instructed to give the money,

this cash, for these horses, to Ramiro."

I'm like... that's what we need.

[Gardner] His value was to link the money
for the horses coming from drugs.

"I'm part of the cartel,

this is dirty money that I've gotten
through the sale of cocaine,

and I've been asked
by Miguel or Omar Treviño

to give that money to their brother,
for his horse racing operation."

It sort of puts all the paperwork
into context.

Now we can prove that the money
to buy the horses is drug proceeds.

And so, I get on the phone with Scotty,

and I said, "Look, you gotta hear
what this guy's saying.

We just got a huge break in the case."

[Lawson] So then, it was, uh,
my turn to talk to Poncho Cuellar.

And amazing pieces of information
started coming out.

He said, "Are you familiar
with the Ruidoso Downs victory?

The All American Futurity winner,
Mr. Piloto?"

Course we were, right?
He says, "We bribed that... that race."

[announcer] Grade one
All American Futurity.

There's an individual in each stall,

and their job is to keep
their horse's head straight,

so that when those gates fling open...

[announcer] They're running.

[Lawson] ...every horse is
on a straight path coming out.

So if you can bobble its head
just a little bit

and then bump into the horse beside it,

that's all it takes
to prevent that horse from winning.

They were paid 10,000 dollars apiece
to the gatekeepers to throw that race.

Watch it and study that film.

[analyst] The two and the three
get bumped in this race.

You'll see these go nose to nose.

[analyst] Well, the two annihilates
the one right out the gate,

and the four horse is lugging in badly.

[Junker] Mr. Piloto, he breaks right.

[announcer] Mr. Piloto,
the big longshot getting involved.

And then cuts.

[announcer] Mr. Piloto was way out,
visiting the fans on the outside fence.

"Mr. Piloto was out visiting the fans."

Why? The track was packed.

They paid off for that.

[Lawson] The grounds crew,
they were bribed

to make the outside,
where Mr. Piloto was stationed,

you know, hard and compact,

and then make it softer
for the rest of the horses.

So it's hard to get good footing,
it's hard to get started,

and really keep apace.

[analyst] The final clocking
for this year's All American Futurity,

21:55, Mr. Piloto.

- [analyst 2] Did that say 21:55?
- [analyst] 21:55.

[analyst 2] That's surprisingly slow
for this field.

The whole point of bribing the gate
starters is not just to win the race,

but have a champion horse,
which increases the value of that horse,

which increases the stud fees,

and gives the cartel an opportunity
to legitimize their horseracing business.

And then he said something
that really blew us away.

After José gets stopped by the police
in Oklahoma City,

Victor does what, you know,
a good soldier would do for the cartel.

He self-reported to Miguel and Omar.

Well, unbeknownst to him,
José is calling to Nuevo Laredo.

He's saying, there's some heat on Victor,

and Victor needs to go.

It was José who asked for Victor
to be taken care of.

So in our mind, you know,
José had taken that next step

of, you know, clean brother
to "I just got lucky with a horse"...

- [announcer] Tempting Dash.
- [announcer 2] Mr. Piloto!

[announcer] An eye-catching win.

...to "I'm walking around
with my chest puffed out"...

You've really got something
special here, don't you?

- Well, I think so.
- [laughter]

...to "I'm buying my own ranch"...

- to now he's actually...
- [gunshot echoes]

...ordering people to be murdered
that have brought heat upon him.

[Pennington] So we get our big break.

It felt great.

But Doug's like, "Okay,
we still got a lot of work to do."

We had to boil down
the immense amount of information,

trying to identify as many
of the defendants

on the indictment as we could.

Four hundred boxes...
potentially 200 witnesses...

break down that account
into its component pieces...

taking everything and putting it
in a box and labelling...

gathering all the records that every one
of the co-conspirators had...

texts, emails, photos...

trying to be methodical
on approaching this case.

I was like, "Yeah, I know."

We want to make sure
we get all the arrest warrants.

We want to try to search
everything that we possibly can.

Houses, race tracks, ranches...

So I'm just kinda going through,
I'm trying to get all the stuff,

put it in some type of order.

And then we get the word,
there's a reporter out of New York,

poking around, asking questions...

[Lawson] Folks that I had interviewed
start calling me,

and say, uh, "Who is Ginger Thompson?"

And we're like... "What?"

I had heard from one of my sources

that they were close
to putting together an arrest plan.

We said, "Okay let's reach out.

Let's reach out to the authorities
and tell them we've got this."

She calls us, says,
"I'm gonna run the story."

They wanted to put, um...

an FBI investigative director on the phone
with me and my bosses,

and could I give them
until the following week for that call,

and I said, "Oh, no. No. Um...

No. If there's something you want
to talk about, let's talk about it.

We've got a story we're ready to publish."

If she does this story
before they make any arrests,

Fernando, Carlos, José,

anybody who is on this side of the river,

is not gonna be
on this side of the river for long.

They're gone.

[Thompson] They got on the phone
with me and my editor,

and told us that there was
an investigation underway.

They were very close
to making an arrest.

They had sources,
very sensitive sources inside the cartel,

who could be hurt if we published a story
before they were ready,

and would we consider holding our story.

And we both said, "We're not sure.

We will discuss this and get back to you."

It was literally an "Oh, shit" moment.

Everybody stops, 'cause
there's three years of investigation

have gone into this case.

Hours and hours and hours
away from your family.

Boxes and boxes and boxes
of evidence.

Millions upon millions of dollars.

Putting your own safety at risk.

Fear in everyone, right?

For me, it was exciting.

Two years of this investigation.

It could all be ruined overnight.

We... we understood.

There probably were informants
deep inside the cartel.

We took that very seriously.

But we had an exclusive,
and we wanted... we...

and we managed to put it together
without much help from them.

She's got a lot of information.

She's done a lot of work,
a lot of good work,

and she's on point
with a lot of stuff she's got.

And she wants to release the story
fairly soon, and I'm like...

..."Fudgeknuckers."

["El Origen" by Hans Baumann playing]

[song ends]