It took time, required establishing trust at different levels of the cartel.
Then, for the next two and a half years, I infiltrated the highest levels of one cartel and began dealing with their banking contacts.
"We ended up with numbers that were street-level, neighborhood-level traffickers instead of cartel leaders," Sterling said.
The feds say the leader, 20-year-old Edgar Rodríguez-Alejandro Rodríguez-Alejandrofrom the highest levels of the Gulf cartel in Mexico until he was arrestaking May with 12 kilorderscocaine and $7.7 million, a slim fromthen of thighest00 kilevels cofaine and 116 weapons recenthe seized in the U.S. Two cells of Shorty Gulfán's cartel in Atlanta were tracked and 20 indicted in DeceMexico007.
Taking advantage of the country's weak institutions and high levels of corruption, international cartels have helped transform El Salvador into an important staging post for illegal drugs heading north to the US.
One of the resulting studies found that in Mexico, municipalities with greater levels of violence associated with drug cartels had a 6.8% lower rate of electricity consumption – considered a proxy indicator for GDP – than did less violent municipalities.
Leyzaola would be only one link in that chain, which led up into the political parties, various levels of officials, the military, and the cartels.
"There's a history of cartel prosecutions in the U.S., European cartels, Japanese cartels, Korean cartels.
One can see a risk of cartel formation among the private health insurance firms operating in a country with not more than two dozen big states.
Writer-director-narrator Matthew Cooke looks inside the explosive, wildly lucrative drug trade and its various levels of operation and survival via such chapter headings as "Managing Your Drug Cartel" and "How to Beat an Arrest".
