MCALLEN, Texas, (Reuters) – U.S. authorities said they arrested seven members of one of Mexico’s largest drug cartels on Tuesday and accused them of laundering money in the United States by buying, breeding and racing American racehorses.
The case points to the increasing corrupting influence in the United States of the billion-dollar illegal drug trade across the border in Mexico, a U.S. official said.
The leader of Mexico’s brutal Zetas drug cartel, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, and 13 others, including his brothers, used false businesses to conceal the true owners of the horses, according to charges in an indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Austin on Tuesday.
Federal authorities arrested seven of the 14 defendants in California, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. They include one of the drug lord’s brothers, Jose Trevino Morales and his wife, Zulema Trevino, the Justice Department said in a statement.
