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The Case Of A Confidential Informant Gone Wrong

29.07.10

The El Paso Customs support (Customs later became Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE) had never gotten much identification. Now, with Lalo on quarter, agents set their sights on a Juarez kingpin known as the Swing: Heriberto Santillan Tabares.

Bencomo says the agents were told that Santillan was the No. 3 man in the Juarez cartel.

But as that inquest started, ICE's prized snitch came under notion. At a Border Patrol checkpoint, Lalo got caught smuggling more than 100 pounds of marijuana stuffed into the wheels of his pickup. The Medicament Enforcement Supervision blacklisted him. ICE kept Lalo on its payroll, and even worked with a federal prosecutor to get his antidepressant charges dropped. In hindsight, Bencomo says, the pot in the pickup should have been a caveat sign.

"That was the first happening that I ever came across that he was working both sides," Bencomo says.

Soporific smuggling turned out to be the least of Lalo's exploits. He was climbing the ranks of the knock out cartel and was becoming a trusted unite to Juarez's third in instruct.

Killings Caught On Seal

In the fall of 2003, Santillan and a tie of crooked Mexican the Old Bill officers went on an eight-month lawlessness spree — execution, kidnapping and torturing medicine rivals in Juarez. And Lalo was with them.

According to documents obtained by NPR, Lalo kept his ICE handlers enlightened of the murders piling up in Juarez. In actually, Lalo secretly recorded the first do in — and admitted that he held the injured party's legs while the man was being brutally strangled, suffocated and beaten with a shovel. Former means Bencomo remembers listening to the strap.

Source: NPR