An accused leader of Sinaloa cartel assassins was flown from Mexico to New York last weekend. Like his reputed bosses — four sons of “El Chapo” who face drug-trafficking charges in Chicago — he had a multimillion-dollar bounty for his capture posted by the U.S. government.
Nestor Isidro Perez Salas, 32, was arrested last year in Mexico after the State Department offered a $3 million reward for his arrest. An indictment in New York on drug, gun and witness-retaliation charges accuses him of killing two Mexican cops and a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant.
According to U.S. authorities, Perez Salas worked for sons of Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, who’s serving a life sentence in a maximum-security federal prison in Colorado. Four of Guzman’s sons, known as the Chapitos, or Little Chapos, were accused in federal charges filed last year in Chicago of running his drug empire after El Chapo was captured in 2016 in Mexico. Three are fugitives and have multimillion-dollar U.S. bounties for their capture.
According to U.S. prosecutors, Perez Salas oversaw sicarios, or assassins, for the Chapitos, killing their enemies with everything from machine guns to rocket launchers. They say that, in 2017, he and two Chapitos tortured and killed two Mexican law enforcement officers and that, last October, Perez Salas and his associates killed eight people, including a DEA source authorities said was killed for cooperating with authorities.
The State Department, which offered the reward for Perez Salas, won’t confirm whether the money was paid for his capture last November in Mexico.
“The status of a reward payment is not made public to protect the integrity and identity of those individuals furnishing the information,” a State Department spokesperson told the Chicago Sun-Times. “Depending on the information provided, multiple rewards may be paid out for a single designated target.”
More than 90 suspected criminals have been captured under the federal Narcotics Rewards Program and Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program since 1986, according to the State Department, which says it “has paid more than $180 million in rewards for information leading to apprehensions and other qualifying outcomes.”
Rewards routinely are paid overseas to locate suspects in DEA cases, including the longstanding federal case filed in 2009 in Chicago against the Sinaloa cartel, according to a law enforcement source. The source says he doesn’t know whether a reward was paid for the capture of Salas.
The State Department has posted a $10 million bounty for the arrest of El Chapo’s sons Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar and as much as $5 million for Joaquin Guzman-Lopez. All are wanted in connection with the Sinaloa case in Chicago. They’re accused of being major importers of fentanyl, a drug responsible for thousands of deaths in Chicago in recent years.
Ovidio Guzman-Lopez, another El Chapo son, was extradited to Chicago last year. A $5 million reward had been posted for his capture.