Word: santacruz
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...their admirers, they are Horatio Alger heroes, poor boys who worked their way out of the slums and backwaters of the Cauca Valley. Onetime delinquent Jose Santacruz Londono studied engineering, went into construction and emerged as Don Chepe, a billionaire whose marble citadel looms high above the sugarcane fields of Cali, the country's third largest city...
Drug-enforcement agents believe the architects of Cali's takeover are Santacruz, 47, and Gilberto Rodriguez, 52. Santacruz was the hands-on designer of worldwide trafficking networks; Gilberto Rodriguez handled the finances...
...1970s, while Medellin's cocaine cowboys were monopolizing drug sales in Miami, Santacruz was sewing up Manhattan. Today the DEA estimates that Santacruz, the Orjuela Caballero brothers and the Pacho Herrera organization import 4 of every 5 grams of cocaine sold on the streets of New York City. From that base, Cali operatives have fanned out across the U.S. and deep into Mexico. The Rodriguez Orejuelas are generally considered partners in Santacruz ventures, but they sometimes appear to operate independently. Their cousins, the Orjuela Caballero brothers, are also major dealers in Los Angeles. DEA agents say the Urdinola brothers work...
...Cali families are now focusing their efforts on cornering the market in Europe and Japan. Last year Dutch officials seized 2,658 kg of coke packed in drums of passion-fruit juice from Cali, the biggest single bust in Europe. Santacruz bank accounts have been found across Western Europe and as far afield as Hungary and Israel. DEA informants report that Cali is looking for sales representatives to man branch offices in Japan, where the going wholesale price for cocaine is as high as $65,000 per kg. "If the Cali cartel makes an alliance with the yakuza ((Japan...
...Gordo" (the Fat Man), as Santacruz is known, is a legend in the New York Latin underworld. The word making the rounds is that every so often he materializes in the middle of a drug deal and exchanges a few pleasantries with the customer. Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he is gone again...