As outlaws of the previous west and for hundreds of thousands of {dollars}: the United States accuses the Sinaloa poster of stealing in trains of its territory | EUROtoday

The picture isn’t in sepia or black and white. Nor from a film, however the story does appear out of outsiders, impressed by the previous west. In the final two years, prison teams have risen to shifting charging trains in full route via the Arizona desert, within the United States, and have docked them as much as 10 occasions. These outlaws don’t gown as cowboys, however in addition they search for a booty: Tennis Air Jordan, of the Nike model, and digital gadgets that, for his or her worth and the stolen quantity, shine like gold. According to paperwork from a court docket in Arizona, US federal brokers have seized round two million {dollars} in merchandise that’s believed to be stolen from the cargo railroads of the Company Burlington Northern & Santa Fe (BNSF). The predominant suspect, in line with Washington, is the Sinaloa poster.

The complaints of brokers of the Investigation Unit of the United States National Security Department (Homeland Security Investigation or HSI), relationship from August 2024 and January 2025, be sure that these teams of people carried out their prison operation with broad connections all through California, Arizona and New Mexico. The suspects, with the discover and complicity of associates working in warehouses or transport firms, pointed to excessive worth containers within the BNSF rail line.

They took benefit of the change of rails or a railway cease to climb to the models. Once up, they have been searching for containers with seen excessive safety locks and used reciprocal electrical mountains or shear with which metallic plates are chilly, to open the containers.

The defendants lower the air hose from the practice brake system, inflicting an emergency cease. Thus they discharged the stolen items and hid them within the plain or between shrubs adjoining to the roads. They warned, via cell telephones, concerning the location of the merchandise in order that they may acquire it in the intervening time or later, if there have been safety forces within the environment.

At the identical time, on the highway, a surveillance workforce adopted the practice hoping to know the situation of the merchandise. Once the positioning was confirmed, load vehicles, of various tonnage and mannequin, picked up the stolen and took it from Arizona to California to retailer it and promote it on platforms similar to Amazon and Ebay.

In this final wave of assault on trains, launched first by Los Angeles Timesnot less than 10 robberies have been reported since March of final yr, by which it’s estimated that roughly the worth of two million {dollars} in merchandise of the Nike sports activities model has been stolen. As a part of the monitoring operation, in some containers monitoring gadgets have been put in. Thanks to this, on January 13, totally different safety forces arrested the alleged criminals in two autos that transported greater than 1,900 pairs of footwear that weren’t but accessible out there. The worth amounted to greater than $ 440,000.

A frontrunner, many identities

Eleven individuals of Mexican nationality, some originating in Sinaloa, have been arrested in that operation. Ten of them didn’t reside legally within the United States and one was in asylum. According to the authorities on the opposite facet of the border, they’re, allegedly, a part of the as soon as prison group headed by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, aka El Chapo. “It is believed that these robberies are related to an international criminal union based in the Mexican state of Sinaloa,” says the grievance.

The senator for the state of Indiana Todd Young has affirmed that through the apprehension of those people “the researchers found links with the Mexican poster.” “Federal authorities have linked this with a federal poster that operates in Sinaloa,” he mentioned.

Although the detainees had already given earlier blows, one other HSI agent introduced that this type of theft of the BNSF trains was in control of Arturo N, aka Pollo. It was the one who managed these crews. He supplied them with autos to commit the robberies and facilitated the sale of products. According to the accusation, this man has been committing these crimes for 11 years.

The HSI data introduced that between February 2022 and June 2024, Chicken, with one among its different three pseudonyms, made financial institution transfers from the United States to Mexico by case 260,000 {dollars}.

On May 7, 2024, greater than a month earlier than his detention – which occurred on June 20 of that very same yr – the Los Angeles Police put in a tracker in one of many cargo vehicles by which Antonio N. transported the stolen merchandise. He guides them to an empty storage unit, however that had been rented below one among his aka. One of the detectives received the picture of the driving force’s license with which he rented the house. According to the outline of the picture, Chicken used a cap with the letters “JGL” and the quantity “701” with the colours of the Mexican flag. A reference to the initials of the Chapo and the place he occupied within the record of billionaires of the journal Forbes. “I know that individuals who idolize the narrative around the narco, such as JGL 701, and the criminal elements that surround it are usually involved in similar behaviors,” an HSI agent mentioned within the grievance.

That monitor allowed registration orders to be issued for 11 homes and 16 storage models in California linked To the robberies. This operation resulted within the arrest of 43 individuals, within the seizure of 41 autos, greater than 300 tons of methamphetamine and 17 firearms.

Set apart reactive diplomacy

Given the sanctions, accusations and accusations which have come to gentle by government companies of the United States, earlier than the struggle declared to the narco and drug trafficking of the Trump administration, Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, head of the North American Observatory within the international initiative in opposition to transnational organized crime, sees vital, so that there’s an optimum binational relationship, which is finished on proof facet the reactive diplomacy.

The specialist in organized crime in Mexico is anxious concerning the argument that having much less cash for the switch of migrants or as it’s harder now, “supposedly”, visitors fentanyl, prison teams are searching for different areas of revenue. “We listen to it frequently, but it is not necessarily sustained in evidence,” he explains by video name.

Within that dynamic, it highlights the significance of Mexico getting proof and publishing them. To present how these unlawful markets work and that usually, particularly within the border area, contain residents of each international locations. “It seems to me that a first step is to get out of this world where everything is reagent. Where what is being done is how to respond to the next crisis and return to this more institutional framework where you have agreed what the issues are and how they are going to work and who will work them,” he says.

The judicial processes in opposition to these detainees will proceed their course. At the second, nevertheless, trendy trains theft is in pressure in Arizona, as a result of though the sneakers or digital artifacts don’t shine like gold, for some they’re a treasure.