Original subtitles

Gangs rule their territories through ruthless enterprises, fear, and a strict code.

Deviate from this code, or challenge their power.

Retribution soon follows.

Especially for the most powerful and dangerous

drug trafficking operation in the world,

the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal enterprise built

on terror and a devious business strategy.

Here are three stories about their quest to become the world's largest drug empire.

First, the Sinaloa cartel takes their business deep underground.

These tunnels were engineered to the max. It was a real wake-up call.

Then, a power struggle pushes the Sinaloa cartel into a deadly war across Mexico.

They would use extreme violence to make sure that

they control and send a message to their enemies.

And finally, authorities must crack the cartel's sophisticated

communication system to bring down its leader,

El Chapo. This technology really became his undoing.

These are stories from the El Chapo years of the Sinaloa Cartel.

This is Gangland Chronicles. 1985, Mexico.

The Guadalajara Cartel, one of Mexico's largest

and most brutal drug trafficking organizations, falls apart.

As the Guadalajara Cartel buckled under the pressure of U.S.

and Mexico law enforcement, that left a bit of a power vacuum.

And so we see this period of reorganization.

The Guadalajara cartel splits into three separate factions, Tijuana, Juarez,

and Sinaloa, turning former partners into competitors.

A ruthless former Guadalajara lieutenant takes control of the new Sinaloa cartel.

His name...

Joaquin Guzman Loera, aka El Chapo.

Chapo Guzman was clearly the leader of Sinaloa as it evolved and became as violent.

He really is dominating in the drug market, certainly in the United States.

I also think he's one of the most cunning criminals of our lifetime.

By 1989, El Chapo runs the Sinaloa cartel alongside

two other former Guadalajara lieutenants,

Elmayo Zambada and Hector Salazar. Beneath them,

a well-oiled machine takes the cartel's reach around the world.

They had a security department, they had a communications department,

and they had hundreds of sicarios who, when needed, would go do the dirty work.

I don't like giving them credit, but Chapo was one hell of a CEO.

The Sinaloa cartel is massive.

Not everyone reports directly to Chapo.

If there's a conflict that is serious enough where it rises to the top,

Chapo will make a decision.

Who's right? Who's wrong? Who needs to live? Who needs to die?

The Sinaloa cartel's swift violence works hand-in-hand

with their strategy to deal with law enforcement.

With police agencies, they'll pay them off, they'll bribe them,

and if they don't take the bribe, then they'll often target them for assassination.

During El Chapo's reign, Sinaloa will become the richest drug cartel in Mexico,

earning over $12 billion from trafficking drugs to the United States.

But in the beginning, the cartel has challenges reaching its number one market.

The initial methods that Sinaloa would utilize to smuggle drugs

across the border was straight through the port of entry.

Expecting to lose several of the vehicles,

hoping to get the majority of that shipment through.

The Sinaloa cartel has a better plan,

one they hope will turn their criminal enterprise into a

multibillion-dollar industry by taking it underground.

1989, Mexico.

El Chapo dispatches a lawyer to buy a home in Agua Prieta,

a few hundred yards from the U.S. border.

Then he buys a warehouse in Douglas, Arizona.

People started to notice that something's up.

And he said, oh, you know, I'm building a pool for my kids.

Instead of building a pool, his workers were actually digging a tunnel.

This isn't just any tunnel.

Excavated to a depth of 30 feet,

the tunnel stretches the length of a football field beneath the border.

Full scale, fully operational, ventilated, lighting.

They'd set up hydraulics in Mexico so that they could drop

a ton of cocaine and then put it on a rail system.

From 1989 to 1990, El Chapo moves tons of drugs into the U.S.,

all under the noses of law enforcement.

Chapo built his legend on transporting narcotics from Mexico to, say, L.A.

or Chicago or New York, and doing that within 24 to 48 hours.

Before long, he earned the nickname El Rapido, the speedy one.

The Sinaloa cartel was responsible for upwards to 75% to 80%

of all the narcotics being trafficked in the United States.

All of this success puts a target on the Sinaloa cartel.

1990, Agua Prieta, Mexico.

The Sinaloa cartel's super tunnel to Douglas,

Arizona has made them Mexico's top drug traffickers.

El Chapo is able to move a staggering amount of

drugs under the border, virtually undetected.

Now, this sort of golden age of El Chapo's tunnel success lasted only about a year.

In May, US law enforcement gets a tip about

a suspicious warehouse located in Douglas, Arizona.

US law enforcement followed a truck from Douglas up to Phoenix, Arizona,

and they found a whole bunch of kilos of cocaine.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents raid the warehouse,

while Mexican authorities storm the house in Agua Prieta.

At first, authorities are stumped.

There's nothing suspicious in either location.

But then, after hours of searching, they discover the tunnel entrance,

cleverly concealed in the most unlikely place.

On the Mexican side, it was covered by a pool table.

If you found a hidden switch, it would rise up and reveal the entrance.

It was really something.

Inside the tunnel, authorities seized 2,000

pounds of cocaine worth over $46 million.

The first tunnel brought everybody to their knees in law

enforcement because we realized a vulnerability worked.

But authorities don't realize that the Sinaloa cartel is already

at work building more tunnels from Arizona to California.

The whole art of building tunnels is much like a cat and mouse game.

The difference is we have to play by the rules.

Chapo made up the rules and has unlimited budget.

Despite the Sinaloa cartel's massive growth, El Chapo wants to make even more money.

For Chapo to control a desolate area really was not money-making for him.

He wanted to get into those high-volume corridors

and increase the volume of what was going across.

Everything was at stake here.

El Chapo sets his sights on taking control of the most lucrative smuggling routes.

Even if that means war.

1989, Tijuana, Mexico, one of the most lucrative regions

of the US-Mexico border for drug trafficking.

It is also the territory of the Tijuana Cartel,

led by the ruthless Arellano Felix Brothers.

There was some latitude for other drug traffickers to operate in Tijuana,

but they had to pay, and El Chapo didn't want to pay.

Chopper wasn't afraid to move in and infringe on that territory.

Sinaloa's brazen disregard of Tijuana's rules upsets

a fragile peace between the two cartels.

What these cartels often fight about is controlling the flow of drugs into the U.S.

and the money coming back south.

It always came down to money, greed, power, control.

In the early 1990s, there started to be these sort of

tit-for-cat acts of violence between the two crews.

The Tijuana cartel kills two Sinaloa associates.

Then they behead the wife of El Chapo's business partner, Hector Palma Salazar,

and send her ahead to her family in a box.

Cartels in Mexico are extremely violent, so beheadings,

all these other ways they would torture and kill

people was really about sending a message.

It's on now.

And retribution is really important that it happens

quick, violently, and surprise is crucial.

The Sinaloa cartel learns that the Arellano Felix brothers are

celebrating a birthday at a discotheque in Puerto Vallarta.

El Chapo sends his men to the club, armed to the teeth.

Several of the Arellano Felix brothers and their

bodyguards are relaxing, having a good time.

Outside, El Chapo and his men pull up. They're dressed as cops.

The hitmen of the Sinaloa Cartel have one mission.

Kill the heads of the Tijuana Cartel and anyone who gets in their way.

November 8, 1992, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

In an escalation of their war with the Tijuana Cartel,

gunmen from the Sinaloa Cartel charge into a crowded

nightclub to assassinate Tijuana's leaders,

the Arellano Felix Brothers.

They unleash hell on the nightclub.

A rain of bullets shooting at random.

Several people were shot, but the brothers made it out of there alive.

And they were not happy, to say the least.

On May 24th, 1993, the Arellano Felix brothers punch back after

learning El Chapo is flying out from the Guadalajara airport.

El Chapo is driving to the airport, and as he's getting out of the car,

gunmen from Tijuana jump out and open fire.

As gunfire sprays across the front of the airport,

El Chapo bolts through the baggage terminal.

On a nearby road, he hijacks a car and escapes.

Back in the parking lot, it's just a scene of carnage.

Seven people are dead.

Among the casualties is Cardinal Juan Jesus Posado Ocampo.

Archbishop of Guadalajara, a popular figure from the Catholic Church.

His death sends shockwaves across the country.

The killing of the cardinal was one of those things that set the house on fire.

The Mexican government now had to get serious.

Suddenly, El Chapo goes from being a successful anonymous drug

trafficker to being one of the most wanted men in Mexico.

And he immediately heads south, crosses the border into Guatemala. June 9th, 1993.

El Chapo is captured by the Guatemalan army and extradited back to Mexico.

He is convicted of drug trafficking and bribery and

sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security prison.

But jail has one advantage.

El Chapo is now out of the reach of the Tijuana cartel.

He solidified power while he was in jail, and at the same time,

he was protected about as much as you could be.

But there is one adversary El Chapo isn't safe from.

U.S. law enforcement.

In 2000, the Mexican Supreme Court hands down a decision to allow

extradition of drug traffickers from Mexico to the United States.

The worst possible fate to El Chapo was being extradited to the United States.

So he started to plan his escape.

After seven years behind bars in a Mexican prison,

El Chapo masterminds his escape by hiding in a laundry cart.

And this begins the second era of El Chapo's career.

After years of operating in the open,

El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel must now adapt to working on the run,

with the DEA on its heels. 2001, Sinaloa, Mexico.

El Chapo vanishes into the security of the mountains.

Chapo began plotting what was the next move for Sinaloa.

El Chapo's main business for many years had been cocaine,

but he and other traffickers start manufacturing methamphetamine

and flooding the market in the United States.

Through the 2000s, the Sinaloa cartel ramps up production

of synthetic drugs like methamphetamines and opioids,

including the deadly but lucrative fentanyl.

The Sinaloa cartel could generate hundreds of

millions of dollars right there in Sinaloa,

utilizing chemicals to generate fentanyl.

As Sinaloa cashes in on these lethal narcotics,

it creates a crisis on American streets that the DEA can't ignore.

Notre Dame Stadium holds 80,000 people. I think to myself, last year,

more US citizens died of drug overdose And it's because

of people like Chapo Guzman and his organization.

So we really understood how important it was for us to pursue

him so that the organization itself would crumble.

Not only was it a manhunt, but it was also a drug investigation.

We're not solely looking to take down just Chapo.

We're looking to dismantle his entire organization.

But with the Sinaloa cartel leader always one step ahead,

law enforcement needs to first crack El Chapo's secret weapon. 2011, Mexico.

El Chapo for years has operated the cartel on the run.

The secret to his success is in the palm of his hand.

Chapo had to have a communication apparatus that was effective

and that he could deliver his message to his subordinates.

Otherwise, they weren't going to make any money.

The Sinaloa Cartel's communication network is custom-built

by a young computer whiz named Cristian Rodriguez.

El Chapo commissions Cristian Rodriguez to set

up BlackBerrys with this encrypted technology.

The system was next to impossible to crack.

U.S. law enforcement realizes the only way to break

the cartel is to hack their communications.

The one weakness of this system was if you have

the guy who built it, you can get inside.

And so the FBI set about trying to find and entrap Cristiano Rodriguez.

The FBI track and secretly record the young encryption

expert bragging about his work for the Sinaloa cartel.

They tell him, look, man, we got you.

And Christian, after a few hours of interrogation, cracks.

Rodriguez agrees to give them the key to the software

in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

Suddenly, federal agents of the United States have

access to all of El Chapo's communications.

Before you know it, we're painting this picture of Chapo's inner

world and actually his true organization that he's running.

Was he moving drugs? Yes. Was he moving money? Of course.

The Sinaloa cartel's communications reveal the extent of their global empire.

And the secret partnership fueling their fentanyl production.

We started seeing Chinese groups and different factions

of these gangs collaborating with the Sinaloa cartel.

They were primarily bringing in the chemicals that they needed to produce fentanyl.

And by hacking cartel members around El Chapo, U.S.

law enforcement is finally able to track Sinaloa's elusive leader.

We would identify, well, who's making contacts? Who's paying bribes?

Who's receiving money? Who's delivering money to him?

And it changed our ability to infiltrate him very quickly.

But with El Chapo constantly on the move,

it takes years to pin down his exact location.

We start reading the messages of Chapo's cartel members that are

sending messages to a man that they were calling El Senor.

My partner and I were like, the communication stops here, and he's right here.

We were essentially staring Chapo in the eye.

After several near misses and escapes over a two-year period,

El Chapo is captured for a final time on January 8, 2016,

and extradited to the United States.

The fact that we were able to bring this bigger-than-life

criminal leader to face justice in the United States,

it basically said if we could do that with him, then we could do that with anyone.

Three years later, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman Loera is found guilty

on 17 charges in the United States District Court of New York.

He's sentenced to life plus 30 years.

And imprisoned in ADX, the most secure prison in the United States.

Despite El Chapo's incarceration, the Sinaloa cartel is as strong as ever.

Believed to be run by El Mayo and El Chapo's sons,

today the cartel profits up to $3 billion a year.

In the years since El Chapo was arrested, the amount of cocaine, fentanyl,

meth coming over the border has not gone down. If anything, it's gone up.

The Sinaloa Cartel has distribution cells in 47 countries worldwide.

It is a full-scale criminal organization that is very powerful and very dangerous.

I would consider Sinaloa the largest,

most influential cartel still in Mexico and probably in the world.