Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes
Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, commonly referred to by his alias El Mencho, is a Mexican drug lord and top leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, an organized crime group based in Jalisco. He is the most wanted person in Mexico and one of the most wanted in the U.S. The US government and the Mexican government are offering rewards of US$15 million and MXN$300 million, respectively, for information leading to his arrest.
He is wanted for drug trafficking, organized crime involvement, and undocumented possession of firearms. El Mencho is allegedly responsible for coordinating global drug trafficking operations. Under his command, the CJNG became one of Mexico's leading criminal organizations.
Born into poverty in Mexico, El Mencho grew avocados and dropped out of primary school before immigrating illegally to the U.S. in the 1980s. After being arrested several times, he was deported to Mexico in the early 1990s and worked for the Milenio Cartel. He eventually climbed to the top of the criminal organization and founded the CJNG after several of his bosses were arrested or killed.
His notoriety is also a result of his aggressive leadership and sensationalist acts of violence against both rival criminal groups and Mexican security forces alike. These attacks brought him increased government attention and an extensive manhunt. Security forces suspect he is hiding in the rural terrains of Jalisco, Jamay, San Agustín, Michoacán, Nayarit, and/or Colima, and is guarded by mercenaries with former military training.
In February 2022 unconfirmed reports began to surface stating that El Mencho had died from respiratory arrest while undergoing treatment in a private hospital in Guadalajara.
However, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Kyle Mori, who heads the search for El Mencho, denied rumors of his death in an interview he gave to KFI AM's in March 2023.
Early life
Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes was born on 17 July 1966 in the rural community of Culotitlán in Aguililla, Michoacán. His first name is cited as "Rubén" and/or "Nemesio". He has alternative aliases like "Nemecio", "Rubén Acerguera Cervantes", "Lorenzo Mendoza", and "Nemesio Oseguera Ramos". Some sources state that his birth-given name was Rubén but that he changed it to Nemesio in memory of his godfather. He is widely known by his alias "El Mencho", a nickname that derives from the phonetic derivation of Nemesio. Another nickname is "The Lord of the Roosters", said to be derived from his love for cockfighting.El Mencho grew up in a poor family that cultivated avocados. He had five brothers: Juan, Miguel, Antonio, Marín, and Abraham. He dropped out of primary school in fifth grade to work in the fields. At the age of 14 he started guarding marijuana plantations. A few years later, he decided he wanted a better life for himself and immigrated illegally to the U.S. state of California in the 1980s. To conceal his identity in the U.S., he used different names and combinations, like "Rubén Ávila", "José López Prieto", "Miguel Valadez", "Carlos Hernández Mendoza", "Roberto Salgado", among others.
Time in the U.S.
In 1986, he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was arrested by the San Francisco Police at the age of 19 for stolen property and carrying a loaded gun. Two months after his arrest, his first child was born. According to border entry records, El Mencho crossed the U.S.-Mexico border several times during the late 1980s under other aliases. The DEA and Mexican investigators believe that it was during this time that he became involved in meth production and trade in Redwood City, alongside his brother-in-law Abigael González Valencia.In 1989, El Mencho was arrested again in San Francisco for selling narcotics. He was deported to Mexico several months later, but re-entered the U.S. and resettled in San Francisco. In September 1992, he was arrested again, this time on federal drug charges in Sacramento, California. According to court records, El Mencho and his brother Abraham were at a San Francisco bar known as Imperial to carry out a heroin deal: five ounces for US$9,500. Abraham was in charge of the transaction, while El Mencho acted as a lookout. El Mencho was 26 years old at that time, much younger than Abraham, but was savvy enough to recognize that the transaction was a set-up by the police. He told his brother that the men to whom they gave the heroin handed over perfectly stacked dollar bills instead of loose ones. Through a wiretap conversation, the police overheard El Mencho warning his brother to never do business with them again since they were undercover cops.
Arrest and deportation
Three weeks after the incident both men were arrested by the police. In court, El Mencho insisted that he was innocent. He said he was not involved in the heroin deal and that the undercover agents were lying about him handling the drugs. The prosecution insisted that both siblings were working together. El Mencho was left with few options; if he pleaded not guilty, his brother Abraham—who already had felony drug sentences in his record—would probably face life in prison. His defense understood that if he decided on a jury trial, he would likely be convicted. He decided to plead guilty and protect his brother from life imprisonment. He was sentenced to 5 years and imprisoned at the Big Spring Correctional Center in Texas, which houses a large population of illegal immigrants.After three years he was released from prison on parole and deported to Mexico at the age of 30. In Mexico, he joined the local police forces of Cabo Corrientes and Tomatlán in the state of Jalisco. After some time he left the police and joined organized crime as a full-time member of the Milenio Cartel. To strengthen his relationship with the Milenio Cartel, El Mencho married one of the clan leader's sisters, Rosalinda González Valencia. It was in this criminal group where El Mencho would become a leading figure in organized crime.
Rise to leadership
In the Milenio Cartel, El Mencho started as a member of the assassin squad that protected the drug lord Armando Valencia Cornelio. On 12 August 2003, his boss was arrested by Mexican authorities. Around the same time, a rival criminal group known as Los Zetas, with the backing of the Gulf Cartel, carried out an armed offensive against the Milenio Cartel in Michoacán. The attack forced the Valencia family to exile in Jalisco.El Mencho relocated in the state capital, Guadalajara, with his father-in-law José Luis González Valencia and Román Caballero Valencia. In Jalisco, El Mencho and the Milenio Cartel formed an alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel subgroup headed by Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel, a high-ranking drug lord and ally of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Under Coronel, El Mencho and his group managed the Sinaloa Cartel's drug operations, finances, and murder activities in the states of Colima and Jalisco.
On 28 October 2009, the Milenio Cartel's top leader Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia was arrested. On 6 May 2010, his brother Juan Carlos was arrested too. Two months later, Coronel was killed in a shootout with the Mexican Army. Following their downfalls, the Milenio Cartel began to rupture and El Mencho tried to take over its leadership structure.
One sect within the Milenio Cartel wanted to appoint as the leader of the group Elpidio Mojarro Ramírez, who worked closely with Óscar Orlando and Juan Carlos before their arrests. Érick Valencia Salazar, one of the clan members, wanted El Mencho to take command. El Mencho then asked the other Milenio bloc to hand over Gerardo Mendoza for killing a group of men that reported to him in Tecomán, Colima. The other division refused El Mencho's request, prompting an internal war.
The Milenio Cartel split into two. One side was known as La Resistencia, the other was Los Mata Zetas, headed by El Mencho. La Resistencia accused Los Mata Zetas of turning in Óscar Orlando to the authorities. A war ensued, and the two groups fought for the drug smuggling turfs in Jalisco.
To legitimize its presence, El Mencho's group launched a propaganda campaign against its enemies, denouncing extortions done by rival gangs against civilians, businessmen, and government authorities. Los Mata Zetas eventually won the war and consolidated their influence in western Mexico. The group then changed its name to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Leadership tenure
As leader of the CJNG, El Mencho solidified his position and grew his organization through territorial expansion and by corrupting government officials. The CJNG went from being a small, offshoot criminal gang to one of the leading criminal groups in Mexico. Throughout the process, El Mencho established himself as one of Mexico's most-wanted criminals. His rise to fame is due to a number of factors, including the aggressive and sensationalist displays of public violence by the CJNG. The direct attacks of the CJNG against Mexico's security forces earned El Mencho a reputation among authorities as "principal enemy" of the state and as a dangerous criminal. In addition, the fall of Mexico's former top crime bosses cleared the way for El Mencho to gain visibility and status.He consolidated his operations in Jalisco and its adjacent states by fighting off incursions from criminal groups like Los Zetas and the Knights Templar Cartel. According to government sources, he is responsible for overseeing the CJNG's entire drug trafficking operations in the states of Jalisco, Colima, and Guanajuato, where he created a bastion for methamphetamine production and trade.
Their operational capacity in Mexico is concentrated in 8 states: Jalisco, Colima, Guanajuato, Nayarit, and Veracruz, where it holds a firm grip of drug trafficking operations, and Morelos, Guerrero and Michoacán, where it fights competing rival drug groups. Between 2014 and 2016, the only region in the country where the CJNG lost its territorial presence was in Mexico City. Internationally, the CJNG reportedly has ties with criminal groups in the U.S., the rest of Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. On an international scale, the CJNG is mainly focused on trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine.
El Mencho was able to make the CJNG one of Mexico's most profitable criminal gangs. The government estimates that El Mencho's group has about US$50 billion in total assets. This success was shared with Abigael González Valencia, his brother-in-law, who headed a drug trafficking group known as Los Cuinis, allied to the CJNG. Abigael was arrested by the Mexican Navy on 28 February 2015. Part of El Mencho's success in the drug trade had to do with his ability to strategize market and consumer changes. Initially, the CJNG produced methamphetamine, but then he moved to heroin production when the consumer demand changed.
In 2019 Kyle Mori, the head of the DEA team tasked with locating El Mencho, stated in an interview with Univision that he believed El Mencho had a net worth of at least $500 million and he could also be worth over $1 billion.