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World & Nation

Chasing the cartel

Reporter Richard Marosi spent several years following a Drug Enforcement Agency investigation into Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel.

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    Drivers in Mexicali wait to enter the United States at the border crossing at Calexico, Calif. The entry point is a favorite of drug smugglers because the inspection station sits almost directly on the border, without the usual buffer zone of several hundred feet, making it harder for inspectors to examine cars in the approach lanes.

    World & Nation

    Unraveling Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel

    As drug smugglers from the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico sent a never-ending stream of cocaine across the border and into a vast U.S. distribution web in Los Angeles, DEA agents were watching and listening.

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    A sidewalk shrine glows in front of Guadalupe "Lupita" Villalobos' house in Compton, Calif. The psychic offered guidance on drug shipments to Gabriel Dieblas Roman, a Sinaloa cartel cocaine smuggler who sometimes left her a $2,000 tip for a $20 reading.

    California

    The strands of the Sinaloa drug cartel web

    Channeling the Mexican cartel’s nonstop river of cocaine onto trucks bound for cities in the U.S. requires a vast labyrinth of smugglers working in L.A. And women like Lupita, a no-nonsense psychic with a short fuse.

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    A pilot flies over a mountain pass and descends towards a dry lake bed named the Racetrack inside Death Valley National Park, CA. This is the same flight route that Sinaloa Cartel drug pilot John Ward described in a prison interview as using to reach the Racetrack. He made illegal landings here to delivery marijuana he smuggled across the border from Mexico.

    California

    Flying high for the Sinaloa drug cartel

    Times were good for Carlsbad pilot John Ward as he smuggled cocaine across the U.S. for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. But the men at the other end — they worried him.

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    The estate of Victor Emilio Cazares a top lieutenant in the Sinaloa drug cartel near Culliacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. During the years he was at large he surgically changed his facial appearance. Cazares is wanted for smuggling tons of marijuana and cocaine into the U.S. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

    California

    Suspicion in Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel

    Why were drug smugglers’ cocaine shipments being seized all over the U.S.? The boss in Mexico was demanding answers. He had no idea he was being targeted by the DEA’s Operation Imperial Emperor.

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