US Treasury targets ‘Mayito Flaco’ network, including Baja California governor’s ex-husband
The Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions 21 collaborators and 25 entities in Ismael Zambada Sicairos’s network, considered facilitators for the Sinaloa Cartel
The U.S. Department of the Treasury struck on Tuesday at the criminal network led by Ismael Zambada Sicairos, alias Mayito Flaco, leader of a criminal organization operating in Sinaloa, Durango and Baja California, among other regions of Mexico. The son of longtime Sinaloa cartel boss Ismael Mayo Zambada, Sicairos appears as a person of interest to the U.S. government, which has sanctioned a total of 21 individuals, as well as 25 companies linked to the network.
Among the 21 individuals, in addition to the organization’s leadership, is Carlos Torres, the former husband of Baja California governor Marina del Pilar Ávila, of Mexico’s governing party Morena. Torres and Ávila have been at the center of one of the great controversies in the country’s public life since last year. In May, the governor and her then-husband announced that the United States had canceled their visas. Rumors about Torres’ ties to organized crime began to emerge in the media. At the end of the year, Del Pilar announced her separation from Torres. In January, Televisa’s N+ Focus reported that the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) was investigating Torres for alleged links to organized crime, a situation that was later confirmed.
After their separation, Ávila and Torres tried to cushion the blow. Torres said that “it is not an investigation based on facts.” For her part, the governor pointed out that “Carlos has already issued a position. I am convinced that the Attorney General’s Office is an extremely serious institution that is going to carry out an in-depth investigation and the facts will be clarified.” The US Treasury statement now contends that “this Sinaloa Cartel-enabled narco-corruption has reached the highest levels of the Baja California state government. At the center of this narco-corruption scheme is the ex-husband of the Governor of Baja California, Carlos Torres, and his brother Luis Torres.”
The OFAC accuses Carlos Torres of using “his political influence to facilitate cartel activities and protect the Sinaloa Cartel from government and law enforcement intervention in Baja California.” The agency says that Torres has an alliance with Juan José Ponce Félix, alias El Ruso, the strongman of Mayito Flaco in Mexicali, a city east of Tijuana and one of the strongholds of his criminal group in Baja California. In addition, it says that Torres received payments from the criminal group through Pedro Mendivil, former director of Public Security of Mexicali, arrested in July for crimes of forced disappearance, vehicle theft and criminal association. Mendivil was later released.
U.S. authorities also link Torres to Rafael Buenrostro Marín, a former Customs official assigned to Chihuahua and former legislative advisor to the Baja California state government. The Treasury places Buenrostro near another of the leaders of the Mayito Flaco faction, Jose Angel Rivera Zazueta, alias Don Flaco, arrested last week in Mexico City. At the time, the authorities said that Zazueta is viewed as a coordinator and financier of an organization dedicated to the transfer of chemical precursors from China to Mexico and the United States.
Following the publication of the OFAC statement, the Mexican government’s Financial Intelligence Unit announced that it will include “the subjects included in OFAC’s designation,” including Torres, “to the Blocked Persons List (LPB), as a preventive measure of an administrative nature.”
Beyond Torres, El Ruso, Zazueta and Sicairos himself, the OFAC statement describes for the first time in detail some of the most important circles of the organization. For example, it establishes the criminal leader’s close circle, made up of the Mendoza Uriarte brothers, Jorge Luis and Francisco, workers that Sicairos inherited from his father. Jorge Luis, alias Güero Chompas, “is now the head of security for Los Mayos,” according to the agency. Also included in that group is Hildegardo Gastelum García, alias Aldo, “one of Mayito Flaco’s most trusted advisors, as well as a significant narcotics trafficker, and the owner of a Culiacan-based hotel business who uses his illicit revenue streams to finance Los Mayos’ war against the Chapitos.”
The aforementioned war refers to the conflict between the two groups following the arrest of Mayo Zambada in July 2024 in Culiacán, after the sons of his old partner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, betrayed him and handed him over to U.S. authorities. That movement opened an unbridgeable rift between the two families – Los Mayos and Los Chapitos – and their influential groups, which has left thousands of people murdered and disappeared in the state since then. Until now, the group hardest hit in the war seemed to be Los Chapitos, also besieged by the authorities. The arrests of members of the opposing group in recent times have also increased, although the war does not seem to be ending.
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