US law enforcement officials announced a $20 million reward for the newest member of the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitive list, Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the media reorted.
Caro Quintero, a senior leader in the Sinaloa cartel, was charged with conspiring to murder Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique Camarena Salazar in 1985 as part of a continuing criminal enterprise in a federal indictment unsealed on Thursday in Brooklyn, reports CNN.
Caro Quintero is “considered one of the Mexican godfathers of drug trafficking”, FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said at a news conference late Thursday.
“Caro Quintero remains in hiding and we need the public’s help in finding this violent fugitive who is currently a menace to society.”
Salazar was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in retaliation for a raid in 1984 of Caro Quintero’s 2,500-acre marijuana farm by Mexican authorities, the DEA said.
Caro Quintero, whose exact age is not known but is believed to be in his 50s or 60s, is accused in the indictment of trafficking methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and marijuana through last year.
In a recently released video interview, Caro Quintero appears as an old man and claims that attempts to arrest him are “misplaced vengeance” and “conveniently rewriting history”, said the DEA’s acting administrator, Robert Patterson.
“He’s not just an old man trying to live out his final days. He’s an individual that continues to run a criminal organisation,” Patterson said.
The #FBI names Rafael Caro-Quintero as the 518th addition to its “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” List. Up to $20 million reward offered by US Department of State’s Narcotics Rewards Program. View English/Spanish posters, read a story, and listen to a Podcast: https://t.co/cHHS44CQbG pic.twitter.com/hXRwTbS9WO
— FBI Most Wanted (@FBIMostWanted) April 12, 2018
The hefty reward is sponsored by the State Department’s Narcotics Rewards Programme and is among its highest offers, according to James Walsh, a deputy assistant secretary, reports CNN.
Caro Quintero had been jailed in Mexico for his role in the murder but was released on a technicality in 2013, and he quickly returned to the drug trade, Bowdich said.
Bowdich declined to discuss the “number of efforts underway” to find Caro Quintero, but he is believed to be in Mexico.
Some 484 out of the 518 fugitives on the top 10 list have been captured or found since its inception in 1950.