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U.S. soldiers accepting cash, drugs for Mexican drug cartel contract hits
Mexican drug syndicates have been offering cash to American military members to act as contract killers in murder-for-hire plots in the United States. Experts worry this line of work will only become more enticing for vets who struggle to find civilian jobs after serving in combat zones and wary military recruits look for gang connections to potentially use their skills unlawfully.
Comments (90)BY DEBORAH HASTINGS / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2013, 5:23 PM
AP
PFC Michael Apodaca (l.), shown in his El Paso booking photo, has been sentenced to life in prison for assassinating an informant for the Juarez Cartel. Ruben Rodriguez Dorado, a U.S. informant and Juarez Cartel lieutenant, ordered the murder of another informant and gave the contract to Army PFC Michael Apodaca.
Mexican drug cartels are recruiting American soldiers to act as clandestine hit men in the United States, paying them thousands of dollars to assassinate federal informants and organized crime rivals, law enforcement experts tell the Daily News.
The most recent — and blatant — example came this summer when 22-year-old Michael Apodaca, a former private first class at Fort Bliss in Texas, was sentenced to life in prison for executing Jose Daniel Gonzalez-Galeana, a member of the infamous Juarez Cartel in Mexico and a snitch for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
The Juarez Cartel paid Apodaca $5,000 to off the confidential informant outside his home in a quiet, upscale neighborhood in the border city of El Paso, Texas. The police chief lived just a few doors away.
Apodaca, who had served in Afghanistan, calmly testified earlier this year about the day in 2009 when he emptied eight rounds into Gonzalez-Galeana, then jumped into a get-away car driven by an accomplice.
"As I shot him, I was moving, then I ran out of rounds," Apodaca said on the witness stand. Then he recounted how he telephoned the cartel member who'd given him the contract killing and reported, "I did it." The private, who was on active duty at Fort Bliss at the time, then dismantled his handgun and threw its magazine out the window.
Last September, two military members stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire after accepting a contract hit from men they thought were operatives of the ultra-violent Los Zetas drug syndicate. They actually were undercover federal agents.
The soldiers volunteered they were skilled in "wet work" (a euphemism for covert assassinations) and not only would they kill for money, they also would provide military training and weapons — including grenades, assault rifles and body armor, according to a federal criminal complaint filed by the DEA in Laredo, Texas.
Federal officials have denied comment beyond the court filing. Repeated interview requests from the Daily News to ICE seeking comment on the Fort Bliss case went unanswered.
Law enforcement experts warn that such incidents may only increase as highly trained military members struggle to find civilian jobs after mass deployments to killing zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Where better to offer high-paying killing contracts than to low-paid soldiers trained to and out of work, they say.
JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES
Mexican drug cartels move billions of dollars of drugs into the U.S. and have begun hiring U.S. soldiers to kill on their behalf in deadly narcotics wars.
"The cartels operate like corporations. They have the money to go out and hire the talent they need to get the job done," said Ricardo Ainslie, who has documented drug cartel violence and culture as an author and a filmmaker.
"They are very aware of how highly trained the U.S. military is and that the skills they've learned in the military don't readily translate to civilian life," Ainslie, who wrote "The Fight to Save Juarez: Life in the Heart of Mexico's Drug War," told the Daily News.
And the deadly Zetas are well versed in military operations. Its founders were members of the Mexican military's special forces division who deserted their elite combat units to reap illegal billions while operating with relative impunity in Mexico's Wild West drug trade.
Some also received U.S. military training at Fort Bragg, N.C., in counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics techniques during the 1990s.
It's impossible to quantify how pervasive cartel contract killing is among the American military — there are no statistics and the players, most notably confidential informants and their federal handlers, operate in an often surreal, secretive world with the blurred morality of a John le Carre novel.
That was most evident in the Fort Bliss case, where a U.S. confidential informant and Juarez Cartel lieutenant successfully ordered the assassination of another U.S. confidential informant working for the same cartel. The murder occurred while both snitches were reporting to the same ICE agent, according to court testimony.
PFC Apodaca, the triggerman, was hired in 2009 by ICE informant (and double agent) Ruben Rodriguez Dorado to kill Juarez Gonzalez-Galeana, after the latter had been outed as an ICE snitch. Ultimately, Dorado pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire charges and received a sentence of life in prison. Wheelman Christopher Duran got 20 years.
Their trials proved embarrassing for ICE, which initially refused to cooperate in the Texas criminal trials, frustrating both prosecutors and the judge. Ultimately, ICE agent Pete Loera, the handler for both informants, was allowed to give limited testimony. The agency knew there was a contract out on Gonzalez-Galeana, Loera said. But he did not know that Dorado had issued it, he testified.
The highly unusual case gave a rare glimpse into the cold-blooded workings of Mexican organized crime and a particularly blundering effort by U.S. agents to infiltrate it, experts said.
STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Mexican cartels, notorious for assassinating enemies and civilians, are soliciting American soldiers to do their kills in the U.S. The above photo shows some of 72 migrants mowed down by cartel members in 2010 in Tamaulipas state.
"Not only was (Apodaca) on active duty, but he whacked an ICE informant who lived on the same street the El Paso police chief did," said Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence for Stratfor, a global intelligence and security firm based in Texas.
"Running human assets on drug smuggling is one thing," said Burton, who also is the former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service. "But running human assets who are killing people is another."
El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen, who told local reporters he heard shots being fired that day while standing in his backyard, denied an interview request from The News.
Burton said there is extensive chatter among intelligence officials about military servicemen being recruited by Mexican cartels, often through gang connections, but there are no hard numbers.
"I've seen lots of security reports saying this is a trending issue," Burton told the Daily News. "But it's based on intelligence that we don't see and only hear about … This issue is really hard to pin down. The military struggles with this on many levels."
One key issue involves U.S. gang members who enter military service to gain weapons and battle experience, then return to gang life after mustering out. And gangs, increasingly, act as sub-contractors to Mexican drug cartels, providing muscle, weapons training and ferrying narcotics, human beings and illicit money across the border, according to federal drug agency reports.
After dealing with huge deployment numbers required by fighting in Iraq and in Afghanistan, military recruiters are now checking the backgrounds of enlistees for gang activity and looking for gang-related tattoos.
The most recent FBI statistics show that 53 gangs have been identified with members who have served in or are affiliated with the U.S. military. Those gangs include MS 13, Latin Kings, Crips, Bloods and Barrio Azteca, some of the most notorious and nefarious outlaw groups operating in the U.S. and Mexico.
WIKIPEDIA
Fort Bliss Army Base, located near the Mexican border, was home to PFC Michael Apodaca, who was hired as a hit man for the highly violent Juarez Cartel.
Michael Lauderdale, a criminal justice professor at the University of Texas at Austin who also chairs the city's Public Safety Commission, said hiring service members as assassins is really a matter of tapping into a certain skill set. "Many of them have most certainly killed people and they certainly know how to do that."
That was apparently true of the Colorado soldiers who were willing to kill and transport drugs for the Los Zetas cartel, according to the federal criminal complaint filed in Laredo.
First Lt. Kevin Corley, who was on active duty at Fort Carson, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder following his 2012 arrest by federal agents in the Texas border town.
Corley, then 29, told undercover agents, in a series of meetings and phone calls, that he could provide military training for cartel members, put together a team of assassins and supply weapons stolen from his base.
He sold two AR-15 assault rifles to the agents he believed were Los Zetas cartel members in March 2012, and delivered five flack vests to prove his point. He also agreed to murder a rival cartel member and collect 20 kilograms of stolen cocaine, the complaint says.
In return, Corley asked for $50,000 and five kilograms of coke. His hit team included Sgt. Samuel Walker, 28, with whom he'd served in Afghanistan, his cousin, Jerome, and Army Reserves member Shavar Davis, 30.
Corley told the undercover agents he'd recently bought a Ka-Bar military fighting knife so he could carve a "Z" — the calling card of the Zetas — into the rival's chest. He also said he had a hatchet to dismember the body.
The heavily armed hit team was arrested after federal agents swarmed their car in March 2012 while they were on their way to the intended hit. Jerome Corley was shot to death in the take-down.
Walker was sentenced in June to 15 years in prison. Davis received a sentence of 10 years. Corley has yet to be sentenced. The target of the contract was an invention of federal agents.
"War is war," said author and documentarian Ainslie. "And somebody needs to do these (killing) operations. Afterwards, some lose their moral compass. They can't see where the line of necessary use of violence falls between good and bad."
With News Wire Services
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