The criminal trial against Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is gaining complexity as witnesses are continuing to share their testimonies with the court. One of the drug lord's former employees has come forward with new information concerning the means of transportation they had employed within the operation.
Ex-Sinaloa cartel member turned informant Tirso Martinez Sanchez, testified on Monday. He claimed that Chapo had a train route that brought cocaine into New York City directly from Mexico. “Chapo decided who could use the train route,” Sanchez said, according to the New York Post. Sanchez said he started his new gig as the convoy operator in 2000. The person who held the position before him had ended his life, shooting himself in the face. Another person who had been in this position had also died, though accidentally as they passed during "plastic surgery."
The cars they used came to Mexico through as a legitimate business. The cartel would empty out their tanks from the cooking oil, swapping the original contents with kilos of cocaine. Oil would be added later in case the train would be stopped by legal authorities and their drug-sniffing dogs.
Sanchez claims to have stepped away from the operation after police raided three of the cartel's warehouses. He felt ‘too much pressure,” after their loss of cocaine valued at $100 million.
“They wanted to kill me because I had lost the train route, that means of transport,” he told jurors. “I just didn’t want to keep going.”
He fled, leaving Guzman and his associates behind. In 2014, Sanchez was arrested and extradited to New York where he entered a guilty plea for importation and distribution charges.