It’s not every day you hear the words horses and deadly drug cartels in the same sentence.
Apple TV+’s new documentary series, “Cowboy Cartel,” examines the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas and its takedown, led by rookie FBI agent Scott Lawson.
The Zetas were once known as one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels, led by brothers Omar Treviño Morales and Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, but then the four-legged creatures became involved.
In January 2010, the FBI office in Laredo, Texas, received information that the Zetas were involved in money laundering operations in the United States involving Quarter Horses.
Man convicted in Texas for laundering drug cartel money through Oklahoma race horse business
Omar Treviño Morales is escorted by soldiers during a press conference about his arrest in Mexico City on March 4, 2015. (Reuters/Henry Romero)
After their 2013 sentencing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas announced that the pair’s other brother, Jose Treviño Morales, engaged in a dummy game involving millions of dollars’ worth of dummy purchases and transactions to hide drug funds through the sale of quarter horses and horse racing prize money.
The scheme included structuring cash deposits of less than $10,000 to avoid the bank’s mandatory reporting requirements, officials said.
Zetas’ inside story revealed in cartel horse racing trial
On June 12, 2012, the FBI searched the home and horse stable of Jose Treviño Morales in Lexington, Oklahoma. (Associated Press)
For Lawson and his team, the most difficult part of the case was proving that the crime was, in fact, illegal, and doing so before the brothers and the Zetas returned to Mexico.
The FBI eventually raided Jose’s home and stables on June 12, 2012, which resulted in Miguel and Jose’s arrest in 2013 and are currently serving 20-year sentences in federal prison.
Federal authorities: Horse trading was a front for cartel funds
Jose Treviño Morales greets spectators at the All-American Futurity horse race on Sept. 6, 2010, at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico.
Most of the other Zetas members were eventually arrested and are currently serving time in prison, although some have defected to other cartel groups.
The four-part series features for the first time interviews with Lawson and local and national law enforcement investigators who helped expose the brothers’ illegal activities.
Lawson, an agent based in rural Tennessee, infiltrates this violent cartel to uncover an international money laundering operation.
“My boss told me, ‘We’re in the business of fighting the Zetas,'” said Lawson, the lead investigator on the case.
Federal government says Oklahoma, New Mexico and race tracks have ties to Mexican drug cartels
On June 12, 2012, police officers removed a horse from a stable at Ruidoso Downs Racetrack and Casino in Ruidoso, New Mexico. (Ruidoso News/AP)
Lawson also gave insight into other key information about the arrest of the brothers and their accomplices, revealing that 1,200 law enforcement officers converged on the same day to make the arrests in a complex investigation that lasted more than three years.
Others involved in the crackdown and involved in the series of operations include IRS Agent Steve Pennington, Irving Police Officers Steve Junker, Brian Schutt and Kim Williams, Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Gardner, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Ginger Thompson, and Joe Tone, author of Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream.
“Anyone who resists them will die,” says one of those interviewed.
“Anyone who stands up to them will end up dead.”
This handout photo, released at a Mexican government press conference on July 15, 2013, shows a series of photographs of Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales. (Reuters/Government Office)
From 911 calls from special agents who were shot and attacked on a Texas highway to footage of a car on fire, experts on the case are analyzing how gangs use violence to claim territory.
Click here to get the FOX News app
“All cartels use violence to achieve their goals. The Zetas have taken it to another level,” the law enforcement source said.
“All cartels use violence to achieve their goals. The Zetas have taken it to another level.”
“When I think of drug cartels, I think of drugs, violence and money,” says another, as we watch footage of masked men with guns counting cash. “But I don’t think of horses.”
