The Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) recently added Alán Gabriel Núñez, a man of Mexican origin for whom the US State Department is currently offering a reward of up to $1 million, to its list of the ten most wanted criminals.
The anti-drug agency accuses Nunez Herrera of being one of the key players in drug trafficking to the United States as one of Los Chapitos ‘ main operators in the region.
It was between October and November 2022 that, through undercover operations, the DEA found key clues against Núñez Herrera.
It was between those months that the Los Chapitos operator delivered to an associate and co-conspirator, Julio Marín González, approximately 20,000 fentanyl pills and approximately five kilograms of powder of the same substance.
Unbeknownst to him, Marín González sold the drugs to an undercover DEA agent in different locations in California. This provided one of the first hard pieces of evidence in the investigations.
About five months later, in March of this year, there was a period of high activity by Núñez Herrera, who in that month negotiated the delivery of multiple additional kilograms of fentanyl powder from Mexico to the U.S., according to the anti-drug agency.
As part of those conversations, on or about March 18, 2023, Nunez Herrera agreed to deliver fentanyl to Los Angeles through an associate.
Also, in the parking lot of a restaurant in the same state, Alan arranged to deliver approximately nine kilograms of fentanyl powder.
It should be noted that the DEA eventually seized all the drugs following intelligence work.
Thus, just on April 4, 2023, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York indicted Alan Gabriel Nunez Herrera and others for conspiracy to import fentanyl, conspiracy to traffic fentanyl, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and money laundering conspiracy.
With Núñez Herrera’s name added to the US government’s most wanted list, there are now eight Mexicans in the sights of the US anti-drug agency.
Among the current priority targets are El Mayo Zambada, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, and Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, all figures linked to drug trafficking in the country, which is currently experiencing a severe health crisis due to fentanyl consumption.
The “persecution” of Los Chapitos
The list was updated in April of this year, shortly before Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán’s sons, better known as Los Chapitos, cleared themselves of the accusations against them regarding drug trafficking, especially fentanyl.
In a letter delivered on May 3 to Milenio journalist Azucena Uresti, El Chapo‘s sons disassociated themselves from the Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organization founded by their father.
In the first instance, they accused the presence of organized crime under the name of this criminal cell in Sinaloa due to “countless small and large groups that have their base of operations in the state or are made up of people from the region” who supposedly use their father’s legacy to “work with impunity.”
Along with these accusations, Los Chapitos reproached the DEA because although they recognized the presence of fentanyl in the state where they are from, they denied that they work with this opioid. In this sense, the Guzmán brothers have accused them of being turned into a “scapegoat.”