‘Vicious, Violent’ Drug Cartel puts Chicago Area on ‘Mexican Border’
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 | 
By: Frank Main
Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago’s new Scarface is a shadowy Mexican drug kingpin nicknamed Chapo — “Shorty” in Spanish.
His cash crop is marijuana, which his cartel sells by the ton and protects with horrific violence.
If you thought Chicago’s Italian mob was the worst of the worst in organized crime, think again, federal agents say.
“Chapo Guzman would eat them alive,” said Jack Riley, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Chicago.
The 5-foot-6 Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman rules the Sinaloa Cartel, which allegedly smuggles marijuana and other narcotics in planes, trains, ships, trucks, cars and even submarines.
Most of Guzman’s leafy product comes from Mexico, but some is grown alarmingly nearby — deep in Wisconsin’s North Woods, whose pristine lakes and pine forests are a paradise for weekend campers, hunters and anglers. Authorities suspect much of that Wisconsin-grown pot is destined for here.
Although Chicago is in the U.S. heartland, in the marijuana trade, “We are on the Mexican border,” Riley said.
Mexican marijuana dominates the Chicago market at a time when local police and prosecutors are trying to devise a better way to deal with the tens of thousands of people arrested here every year for possession of small amounts of pot. Most of those misdemeanor cases get dismissed in court, so several area towns, including Chicago and Carpentersville, either have recently proposed or passed ordinances allowing officers to write tickets for minor marijuana possession.
But police and prosecutors say they won’t stop trying to prevent cartels such as Guzman’s from shipping their huge loads of marijuana to Chicago.
“The Mexican cartels have totally taken over the majority of the marijuana trafficking here,” Riley said. “It’s their cash crop. It’s the drug that really allows them to do all of their other criminal enterprises: heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine. That’s why it’s so important to us.”
North Woods pot
A man scouting locations to hunt bears near the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest stumbled upon one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s secret North Woods marijuana operations, officials said. The hunter called authorities, who notified the DEA.
A federal investigation uncovered about 10 grow sites that ranged in size from a suburban backyard to a football field in the national forest and other remote areas of northern Wisconsin. Suspected cartel workers were tending to about 10,000 plants that would have been worth millions of dollars on the street, officials said.
Twelve men were nabbed last year in the investigation and all the plants were destroyed. Agents also recovered an AK-47 and other weapons.
These backwoods pot farms — first discovered about three years ago — are more sophisticated than what local cops there have encountered in the past.
Trees were clear-cut to 3 feet tall and marijuana was planted in between the stumps. Workers dug water wells and ran irrigation hoses to the plants.
The men slept and cooked under plastic tarps, where they stored their pots and pans, sleeping bags, fertilizers, pesticides and trash. They lived on the sites until harvest. “Luncheros,” or supply workers, brought them food and growing supplies.
National Forest Service district ranger Jeff Seefeldt said he has suggested that fellow employees bring along law enforcement officials on visits to remote areas of the 130,000 acres of forest he oversees. Oconto County Sheriff Michael Jansen said he doesn’t know of any cartel-related violence in his rural community. But he’s worried that other heavily-armed marijuana grow operations might move into his backyard.
“The national forests in the mountainous states — Oregon and California — have been dealing with this for years,” Jansen said. “They’re looking at a map and seeing other national forests besides those out West. And they’ve put their finger on Wisconsin.”
Mexican drug cartels are growing marijuana in the Chicago area, too, but on a lesser scale, said Larry Lindenman, executive director of the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group.
Lindenman suspects a cartel was responsible for a marijuana field discovered in 2008 in Waukegan across the street from property owned by Abbott Laboratories.
“They had tents. They would work and live on the site. They even made a building out of plastic bags and used a generator-powered heater to dry the harvested plants before shipping,” he said.
The operations the feds have busted in Wisconsin and northern Illinois are proof Mexican cartels will grow marijuana anywhere they can to ensure an uninterrupted supply of marijuana makes it their best-selling markets, including Chicago.
Still, their local grow operations are a sideline — just a “small part of the pie” — in the drug business, Riley said.
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Chicago Sun-Times
This is a photo of the base camp where the workers ate and slept near a marijuana plot discovered in the North Woods of Wisconsin. Authorities eradicated the pot last year.
Chicago’s new Scarface is a shadowy Mexican drug kingpin nicknamed Chapo — “Shorty” in Spanish.
His cash crop is marijuana, which his cartel sells by the ton and protects with horrific violence.
If you thought Chicago’s Italian mob was the worst of the worst in organized crime, think again, federal agents say.
“Chapo Guzman would eat them alive,” said Jack Riley, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s office in Chicago.
The 5-foot-6 Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman rules the Sinaloa Cartel, which allegedly smuggles marijuana and other narcotics in planes, trains, ships, trucks, cars and even submarines.
Most of Guzman’s leafy product comes from Mexico, but some is grown alarmingly nearby — deep in Wisconsin’s North Woods, whose pristine lakes and pine forests are a paradise for weekend campers, hunters and anglers. Authorities suspect much of that Wisconsin-grown pot is destined for here.
Although Chicago is in the U.S. heartland, in the marijuana trade, “We are on the Mexican border,” Riley said.
Mexican marijuana dominates the Chicago market at a time when local police and prosecutors are trying to devise a better way to deal with the tens of thousands of people arrested here every year for possession of small amounts of pot. Most of those misdemeanor cases get dismissed in court, so several area towns, including Chicago and Carpentersville, either have recently proposed or passed ordinances allowing officers to write tickets for minor marijuana possession.
But police and prosecutors say they won’t stop trying to prevent cartels such as Guzman’s from shipping their huge loads of marijuana to Chicago.
“The Mexican cartels have totally taken over the majority of the marijuana trafficking here,” Riley said. “It’s their cash crop. It’s the drug that really allows them to do all of their other criminal enterprises: heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine. That’s why it’s so important to us.”
A photo taken inside the train car shows packages of marijuana
North Woods pot
A man scouting locations to hunt bears near the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest stumbled upon one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s secret North Woods marijuana operations, officials said. The hunter called authorities, who notified the DEA.
A federal investigation uncovered about 10 grow sites that ranged in size from a suburban backyard to a football field in the national forest and other remote areas of northern Wisconsin. Suspected cartel workers were tending to about 10,000 plants that would have been worth millions of dollars on the street, officials said.
Twelve men were nabbed last year in the investigation and all the plants were destroyed. Agents also recovered an AK-47 and other weapons.
These backwoods pot farms — first discovered about three years ago — are more sophisticated than what local cops there have encountered in the past.
Trees were clear-cut to 3 feet tall and marijuana was planted in between the stumps. Workers dug water wells and ran irrigation hoses to the plants.
The men slept and cooked under plastic tarps, where they stored their pots and pans, sleeping bags, fertilizers, pesticides and trash. They lived on the sites until harvest. “Luncheros,” or supply workers, brought them food and growing supplies.
National Forest Service district ranger Jeff Seefeldt said he has suggested that fellow employees bring along law enforcement officials on visits to remote areas of the 130,000 acres of forest he oversees. Oconto County Sheriff Michael Jansen said he doesn’t know of any cartel-related violence in his rural community. But he’s worried that other heavily-armed marijuana grow operations might move into his backyard.
“The national forests in the mountainous states — Oregon and California — have been dealing with this for years,” Jansen said. “They’re looking at a map and seeing other national forests besides those out West. And they’ve put their finger on Wisconsin.”
Mexican drug cartels are growing marijuana in the Chicago area, too, but on a lesser scale, said Larry Lindenman, executive director of the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group.
Lindenman suspects a cartel was responsible for a marijuana field discovered in 2008 in Waukegan across the street from property owned by Abbott Laboratories.
“They had tents. They would work and live on the site. They even made a building out of plastic bags and used a generator-powered heater to dry the harvested plants before shipping,” he said.
The operations the feds have busted in Wisconsin and northern Illinois are proof Mexican cartels will grow marijuana anywhere they can to ensure an uninterrupted supply of marijuana makes it their best-selling markets, including Chicago.
Still, their local grow operations are a sideline — just a “small part of the pie” — in the drug business, Riley said.
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