Federal prosecutors in Texas allege that a Chinese national helped supply Mexican drug cartels with tons of fentanyl precursors by transporting the chemicals from China to the United States, then smuggling them into Mexico, where the cartels manufactured the drug.
This week, Mingsu Fernando Fang, 48, appeared before U.S. District Judge Diana Song Quiroga in Laredo, Texas. The judge formally notified Fang of the criminal charges against him. The four-count indictment accuses Fang of conspiring to import and transport controlled chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl. According to court documents, Fang has been in federal custody since June 19, when authorities arrested him in New York as part of the case.
According to a criminal complaint filed the day before Fan’s arrest, federal agents had been investigating Fan since August 2023, when they seized 10 boxes of chemicals in New York that were sent via UPS as being bound for Texas. The boxes were falsely labeled as coming from California but actually came from China.
During the investigation, agents found that Fang was bringing the chemicals to Laredo, from where he arranged to smuggle them into Mexico for the drug cartels he allegedly worked with. Authorities tracked hundreds of shipments from China that Fang allegedly arranged. Federal prosecutors alleged that he was able to avoid most inspection measures by classifying them as other substances and listing the charges as less than $800.
During the investigation, authorities obtained messages between Huang and subordinates in charge of arranging the shipments, including one in which he said a customer in Mexico was going crazy over the seized shipments and was trying to kill him.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist at Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. twitter and FacebookContact details: email address.
Brandon Darby is Managing Director and Editor in Chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart executives. twitter and FacebookContact details: email address.
