♪ ♪
(rapid gunfire)
(sirens)
(shouting)
REPORTER (over TV): Shake this square world and blast off for Kicksville.
NIXON (over TV): Public enemy number one is drug abuse.
NANCY (over TV): Just say, "No."
REAGAN (over TV): Halting the drug problem in America
is like carrying water in a sieve.
BUSH (over TV): Take my word for it,
this scourge will stop!
WOMAN: There's now an understanding that the War on Drugs
was an abject failure.
MAN: You have to stop and ask yourself,
how did we get here?
TRUMP (over TV): We will build a wall.
(theme music plays)
(crowd cheering)
MAN (over loudspeaker): It's good to see y'all.
Happy St. Patrick's Day.
Chicago's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade.
MIA: Growing up in Chicago, we had a great life.
We came from great families.
MAN (over loudspeaker): Chicago's finest.
Nice welcome to Chicago's finest.
MIA: Our fathers were police officers.
Our whole family is in law enforcement.
We grew up in a blue collar neighborhood where
city workers lived.
They were all striving to do the same things.
They would send their kids to private schools.
You don't really run into drug dealers or gangs.
And Peter and Junior moved down the block from me.
MIKE: The Flores twins were born as Pedro Flores and
Margarito Flores Junior.
Almost nobody called them that,
they were referred to as Pete or Peter, was Pedro,
and Margarito went by Junior or Jay.
OLIVIA: Well they are identical twins,
so they just stood out,
out of everybody in the whole neighborhood.
My father did tell me to stay away from 'em,
but when we turned 18, 19 years old we became closer.
MIA: Peter and Junior would go to extreme measures to just
put a smile on our face.
And even though I come from a family of law enforcement,
I was always attracted to these bad boys.
So I ended up falling in love.
JACK: The Flores twins, Margarito and Pedro,
if you saw 'em on the street you wouldn't think twice about 'em,
because they're very slender, small.
They looked like kids, punks.
I mean they were.
Not what you would picture as a major kingpin.
MIKE: Without a doubt the Flores twins became the
biggest drug dealers in the history of Chicago.
Chicago sits at, at the crossroads of many interstate highways,
many rail lines.
For decades, big corporations, FedEx, Amazon,
companies like that used Chicago as a transit hub.
Cartels use it for the exact same reason.
So the drugs that made it from Mexico to Chicago could then
very easily be transported to other US cities.
The Flores brothers were more or less born into
the drug trade.
Their father was a marijuana trafficker,
so from the earliest age they were put in car seats on top
on loads of marijuana that their father was moving back
and forth across the Mexican border.
And they had an older brother in a gang in Chicago.
So through those role models they learned drug trafficking.
MIA: At a young age Peter and Junior worked at McDonald's.
The process of McDonald's, the fry guy does the fries,
the burger flipper does the burgers,
they took this experience into the drug world.
All their workers only did one job.
So the money counter counted the money.
The courier delivered the drugs.
Nobody ever would cross paths, so there wouldn't be a problem
if one got caught.
They always bounced ideas off each other and they'd always
try to come up with something better.
MIKE: They graduated from hiding drugs in cars to hiding
drugs in trucks.
They graduated from hiding drugs in trucks
to hiding drugs in massive semis that could carry in
excess of 200 kilos of cocaine or heroin every time.
JACK: They were moving a 1,000 kilos a month of pure cocaine.
A kilo was goin' for about $60,000.
You can do the math.
MIA: I went into a stash house.
I seen money stacked up to the ceiling.
That's when I really knew how big they were.
OLIVIA: We were very young.
We were very flashy.
When we would go out we would go to clubs
and it was like we were popping bottles of Crystal
and we were just living that life.
I was known as the Million Dollar (bleep),
just because like, you know, I was the first girl to get my
boobs done and always wore designer clothes and
I was very flashy.
You know, this was a whole other level.
It was obvious to see what they were doing
and how much money that they were making.
I mean they were two twins,
driving around the neighborhood
in a Bentley and they were only 22‐years‐old.
MIKE: They built themselves up from sort of neighborhood
dealers to a criminal enterprise that existed on a,
on a truly national scale.
OLIVIA: Everyone in Chicago knew where the drugs
were coming from.
The drugs they were getting were coming
from the Sinaloa Cartel.
From Chapo.
Even though they didn't owe him directly,
indirectly they had to pay him.
WOMAN (over TV): Mexican drug lord, Joaquin Guzman.
MAN (over TV): The man known as El Chapo, aka, Shorty.
MAN (over TV): The top drug dealer in the world.
MAN (over TV): Who runs the world's largest drug cartel.
♪ ♪
MAN: He's the tunnel king.
He's responsible for more sophisticated tunnels
than I think any other criminal in history.
♪ ♪
CROWD: Chapo, Chapo!
JACK: He's supposedly this Robin Hood, you know,
takes from the rich, gives to the poor.
Building soccer fields, churches.
That's all (bleep).
I never saw any of that.
He's nothin' but a stone cold killer.
MAN (over TV): Tens of thousands may have died in the US and Mexico
because of him.
JACK: My name's Jack Riley and for 32 years I was with DEA
and my man Chapo Guzmán became my obsession.
In my opinion Chapo's hand‐in‐hand
with Osama Bin Laden.
The only thing is I think Chapo's killed tens of
thousands of more people.
He's a mass murderer, make no mistake about it,
but he's also one hell of a corporate CEO.
MAN (over TV): El Chapo's cartel is believed responsible
for an estimated 25% of the drugs entering the US.
MAN (over TV): Yeah, this guy's been on the loose since
escaping from a maximum security prison back in 2001,
reportedly by hiding in a laundry cart.
JACK: I hate the guy.
I hate everything he stands for.
He put a bounty on my head and wanted my head cut off.
So that kinda changed it, that made it personal for me.
So I said, okay, let's see who wins this.
MAN (over loudspeaker): This is what Chicago is all about.
I always want the City of Chicago to be remembered as
the best city in this United States.
MIA: Anyone from Chicago knows it's the place you really
don't leave unless you really have to.
I can never go back to Chicago.
MIKE: In 2004, the twins were very much a known quantity
in drug trafficking.
They were indicted, they learned of that indictment
and that's ultimately what caused them to, to flee to Mexico.
MIA: We were basically on the run,
hiding from the US Government.
We moved to Guadalajara and we were just thrown
into this narco world.
But Peter and Junior continued to run their infrastructure
as if they were in Chicago.
MIKE: Once the Flores brothers were in Mexico
and were operating on this truly international scale,
where, where they were moving hundreds of millions of
dollars of cocaine and, and heroin into the United States each year,
they began to interact directly with more and more
senior members of the Sinaloa Cartel.
OLIVIA: I think they felt invincible.
(phone ringing)
When you are taking drugs from the cartel,
you're taking drugs on consignment,
you owe millions and millions of dollars.
Making the smallest mistake can cost them their lives.
(phone ringing)
MIKE: In 2005 Guadalupe Ledesma,
one of the twins sources of supply,
declared that the twins owed to him a, a massive drug debt
of several million dollars.
Guadalupe ultimately received his drugs from Chapo.
(ringing)
OLIVIA: I remember the day when Junior's phone rang.
(ringing)
Peter had been kidnapped.
MIA: I seen the devastation in my brother‐in‐law's eyes.
He was hurt beyond belief.
He knew exactly what he had to do to get my husband home.
OLIVIA: Junior says that he's gonna go to Sinaloa
to try to get to Chapo.
I was so frightened.
I didn't think that Peter was gonna come back alive.
♪ ♪
MIKE: In 2005, Chapo is already one of the most wanted
people on the planet.
It's hard to overstate how dangerous it is for Chapo to
meet with a stranger that could be bringing
the Mexican Marines with them.
OLIVIA: He was allowed to go up to the mountain top
and see Chapo.
A lot of people that go to the mountain top,
they don't return.
He had to get on a Cessna.
MIKE: To go meet with Chapo,
you effectively surrender yourself to, to Chapo's sicarios.
OLIVIA: They landed on a manmade strip.
Junior is greeted by Chapo's army.
They have AK‐47s, they're like ready to go to war.
That's when he met Chapo.
Chapo told him that he can have him killed
with his brother.
Junior asked him for permission
to pull out these ledgers.
It was forensic detail of their business.
Every drug shipment they'd taken,
every payment that they made to the cartel.
As Junior's flipping through these ledgers,
Chapo realizes the amount of drugs that they're moving.
MIA: The way they set it up and the way they still run
their infrastructure from Mexico,
he was amazed.
JACK: He sized up the ability of the Flores twins to
navigate and to understand the American market.
Chapo just couldn't do it and he didn't really have anybody
who knew how to do it either.
OLIVIA: At that point he knew that he was going to utilize
them to expand his infrastructure.
MIKE: Chapo was convinced that this drug debt
wasn't their fault.
Effectively that Guadalupe Ledesma was lying to Chapo.
And so Pete was released.
Under Chapo's order, Ledesma was executed.
From that point on,
Pete and Jay began dealing directly with, with Chapo.
JACK: I think it's at that point that Chapo made it
pretty clear to them,
if they chose to buy from other people
they were gonna be dead
and their family was gonna be dead.
OLIVIA: Junior was getting his brother back alive
and they were gonna be able to work directly with Chapo Guzmán.
JACK: This was just a massive way of them evolving with a
supplier that had an endless amount.
OLIVIA: So everything began to change.
OLIVIA: I feel like every drug dealer's dream
is to have a zoo.
So of course our husbands had a zoo.
They had the tigers, we had flamingos running around.
That right there is putting a stamp on that
you made it in the drug world.
Chapo really gravitated to Junior and Peter.
He loved the way that they ran their business.
He actually treated them like his sons.
They were utilizing tunnels to get the drugs from Mexico to the US,
they were using tractor trailers,
they were using airplanes.
Chapo had a fleet of 747s, he used submarines.
When you're talking submarines, I was like,
holy (bleep) this is next level.
MIKE: So 2005 to 2008 the Flores brothers were importing
into the United States approximately two tons of
cocaine per month.
They also distributed massive quantities of heroin.
JACK: If you had to take two field representatives to
represent your organization,
the twins were it.
They would be your star salesmen.
So I think he thought from an early point with the Flores twins,
he could trust them.
OLIVIA: Mia and I found out that we were both pregnant.
MIA: It was very scary to realize that we are gonna
bring up our children in this drug world.
We realized how this cycle was, was just going on and on
from generation to generation.
From my father‐in‐law to my brother‐in‐law
and then to the twins.
OLIVIA: When you're working for Chapo Guzmán and
you're bringing in the money, $2 billion in their case,
he was never gonna let them stop.
I started telling Junior that I couldn't do this anymore.
"What do you mean?
Like, we can't stop. Like, we're good.
Nothing's gonna happen to us.
No, there's gonna be no end game for us,
like it's not gonna happen."
MIKE: The twins saw people that were chained up
and, and beaten.
They saw people that were dismembered.
They, they saw exactly what could happen
if they ever lost Chapo's trust.
It was either, they'll probably die in Mexico
or work with us and try to find a better path forward
for their family.
OLIVIA: I think it's the hardest decision that they
ever made.
They basically went against everything that they ever
learned their whole life.
I honestly looked at my husband like he was the
bravest man in the world.
He knew that this is the only way to save our family.
MIKE: We were not aware of a single legally admissible
recording of Chapo, period.
Full stop.
The twins presented that opportunity.
♪ ♪
If a recording device was discovered during a face‐to‐face meeting,
they would have been killed.
Instead, we tried to get Chapo on the phone.
MIA: It was a Saturday evening.
Chapo called.
(ringing)
Peter and Junior go upstairs and
Olivia and I both know what they're doing.
(phone ringing)
MIA: They got it.
MIKE: There was somewhat of a sense of, of disbelief.
We had a powerful admissible recording of the
world's biggest criminal.
OLIVIA: I knew at that point that life was gonna change.
I knew that our husbands were going to have to turn
themselves in to the US Government and that
they were gonna go to prison.
♪ ♪
MIKE: Now, the focus of the case shifted to actually
capturing Chapo and have this tape mean something.
JACK: The evidence that was gained from the Flores twins,
it was evidence you couldn't refute.
I knew this guy had to go
and I was determined we were gonna get him.
♪ ♪
MAN (over TV): Guzmán was quoted calling Chicago
his home port.
DAVID (over TV): He's responsible for 80% of the drugs
on the streets of Chicago.
JACK: I grew up on the south side of Chicago.
I hate what Chapo did to my hometown.
Homicides were through the roof,
gang activity was unabated.
It was very clear Chapo
established a stronghold there.
But, what shocked me was he was able to understand the
prescription drug issue.
WOMAN (over TV): Nationwide, nearly seven million people
abuse pharmaceuticals.
MAN (over TV): The pills are what people initially become hooked on.
Now you have doctors giving out fewer prescriptions for opioids.
MIKE (over TV): I got like five painkillers left.
WOMAN (over TV): What happens after that?
MIKE (over TV): I don't know.
May have to go on the street and get 'em.
JACK: Chapo capitalized on all of that.
Doctors won't give you the script, what do you do?
Well it's an opioid so you walk down the street to a
local gang member and you get high potency cheap heroin.
Fentanyl can be produced 24‐7
and it's 40 to 50 times stronger than street level heroin.
MAN (over TV): This influx of heroin cut with fentanyl
is killing people.
WOMAN (over TV): Overdose death rose to
more than 63,000.
JACK: He didn't care how many people he killed,
he just wanted to make literally billions of dollars.
Is everybody ready?
Okay.
I decided to go to the Chicago Crime Commission
and push them to name Chapo Guzmán Public Enemy Number One.
MAN: We're using this title which we first gave to Al Capone in 1930,
because of the viciousness and because of the evil
and because of the power of this man,
American's most wanted criminal.
JACK: There's one thing that these people fear,
comin' to the United States and facing our justice system
where they can't buy their way out,
they can't bribe their way out.
We're not backin' down.
The good guys are not rollin' over.
We're comin'.
DREW: Being labeled Public Enemy Number One
puts a target on your back.
My name is Drew Hogan, I'm the former DA Special Agent who
led the investigation of Chapo Guzmán in Mexico.
He certainly had connections at, at very high levels
and he was always one step ahead.
Always.
JACK: Chapo built the communication,
his security apparatus, that literally took the best minds
in the world to try to break into.
DREW: The infiltration of that sophisticated communication
structure took us a lot of time,
but as we did that we were able to open new doors
and new windows into Chapo's world.
Once we had his patterns established over the course of several months,
it was time to go after him.
(banging)
(banging on door)
DREW: I walked in, into the bathroom.
I saw the bathtub propped up at a 45 degree angle
with a tunnel beneath it and we knew.
Chapo had escaped.
He didn't even have time to grab his clothes.
We were told that he escaped in his underwear.
And it was at that moment puttin' frustration and, and,
you know, that anger aside, that it was like, alright,
you know, well the hunt is on.
We ended up getting intelligence that he fled down
to Mazatlán, Sinaloa.
It was a place called Hotel Miramar.
We were exhausted.
Nobody had slept in, in days but we had to give it our all.
So as we pull up to the front gate,
the Marines flooded the inside of the hotel.
I looked up and I could see the, the lights start to come on,
room by room.
All of a sudden the radio chatter picked up.
We've got the target, we've got the target.
It's like, oh my God, they've got somebody, but is it him?
I remember running right up to him and seeing
and it was Chapo Guzmán.
Couldn't believe it.
We got him.
Woo!
MAN: Woo!
DREW: The world's most wanted drug kingpin.
There it is.
The escape artist.
There she is.
It was unbelievable.
MIKE: Chapo was the symbol of the cartel.
He was the boogeyman of the cartel.
Capturing him was a, was a massive victory.
The evidence that we had built over those six years would
finally be used in a courtroom where we could seek justice
for the world's largest drug trafficker.
(speaking native language)
♪ ♪
MAN (over TV): Reaction coming in from the White House.
We congratulate the Mexican Government on the capture.
This is a significant achievement in our shared
fight against organized crime, violence and drug trafficking.
MAN (over TV): He faces multiple indictments in the US,
but will the Mexicans ever really let him go?
♪ ♪
DREW: My wife sent me a text message,
Chapo had just escaped a maximum security prison.
Surprise, surprise, via another tunnel.
WOMAN (over TV): Top drug lord Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán
has escaped prison a second time.
MAN (over TV): This freedom tunnel was an
engineering marvel.
A mile long.
MAN (over TV): This prison had ways of blocking cell phone signals,
heavily armored vehicles,
they even had three foot walls and yet El Chapo found a way
to burrow out right under the noses of Mexican authorities
and go completely free.
How did he manage to do that?
(singing in native language)
JACK: I can remember the morning that I got the phone call.
It was the worst day of my life.
I was so angry.
This guy just rode a motorcycle
right out of prison?
(singing in native language)
It's just unbelievable.
Ventilation, electricity, it's truly a, a work of art.
I remember tellin' our guys,
"He cannot be on the ground
floor and he cannot stay in the same cell."
He was in the same cell
for nearly a year on the ground floor.
And he's known for tunnels.
It was clearly an inside gig.
A lot of people had knowledge of it
and did absolutely nothing.
I knew if we didn't stay in the fight with a firm hand,
this guy wasn't gonna get caught.
♪ ♪
Chapo felt invincible.
He'd escaped twice.
He felt like everywhere he went he owned his surroundings.
I think it was his arrogance.
He made some mistakes.
We developed information coming from a cell phone that
we were able to pinpoint the location and it's from there
the Marines made the assault.
(rapid gunfire)
DREW: Chapo escaped again out of a tunnel,
through the sewer, popped up, hijacked a car.
But they were stopped by the Mexican Federal Police
and he was done for, once again.
MAN (over TV): A dramatic capture,
the world's most wanted, most dangerous drug lord.
WOMAN (over TV): Captured again.
JACK: When he was captured the second time,
they put him right back in the same prison he escaped from.
I couldn't believe it.
And I knew right then we had to do everything we could to
get this guy to the States to face prosecution.
MAN: He was a man known for no other life than a life of crime,
violence, death and destruction
and now he'll have to answer to that,
as I'm pleased to announce the
extradition of Chapo Guzmán to the United States from Mexico.
WOMAN (over TV): Security surrounding the case in
Brooklyn will be unprecedented.
WOMAN (over TV): Yesterday the court heard from Chicago's infamous twins,
Pedro Flores and his brother Margarito.
OLIVIA: We knew that our husbands would have to testify
and we knew the whole world was watching.
DREW: Chapo had grown to this mythic figure.
The trial broke all of those walls down.
The, the trial showed that, that nobody is above the law.
WOMAN (over TV): Good day everyone.
We're coming on the air with breaking news,
a verdict has been reached.
JACK: I knew the evidence.
MAN (over TV): It took the jury six days to
reach a verdict.
JACK: I knew he was goin' away for good.
MAN (over TV): Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán was just found
guilty on all counts.
JACK: I'm tellin' you it's one of the best feelings
I've ever had.
It felt that I was done.
That my career meant something.
I was completely exhausted
but there was an inner sense of joy.
I'd like to see him try to get out of the jail he's in now.
That's not happening.
♪ ♪
OLIVIA: Chapo getting sentenced I feel like this was
resolution to what we started 12 years ago.
Thank you, oh my gosh.
MAN: (inaudible). MIA: Oh, how sweet.
OLIVIA: Even with them being in prison we just got these roses.
This is like what they do.
Basically it's a sentence for life.
We're always gonna be hunted,
but we do it for the protection of our family,
for our children.
This is gonna be our life forever.
MIKE: The trial itself was a fantastic victory.
But the trial was largely symbolic.
It certainly does not end anything,
it doesn't end the Sinaloa Cartel,
it doesn't end the tons of, of heroin and, and cocaine
that pour over our border.
Since Chapo has been convicted the, the Sinaloa Cartel
keeps humming right along.
Now his sons are, are massively important within the cartel.
WOMAN (over TV): Like father, like sons,
the children of infamous drug lord El Chapo are running his empire.
WOMAN (over TV): A heavily armed drug cartel ambushed the
military and police,
masked gunmen lighting cars on fire to keep police back.
♪ ♪
JACK: These cartels are like military organizations.
If the general's removed or killed there's someone
likely to step up.
MIKE: There is no alternative.
If the US government didn't pursue people like Chapo,
we would just have lawlessness.
It, it doesn't change the reality that Chicago is still
devastated by drugs.
Devastated by violence.
You can prosecute all of the Chapo's in the world,
but our drug problems are as, as bad now as they have ever been.
And it just highlights that alone is never, ever,
ever going to be enough.
JACK: The whole mantra of the war on drugs drives me crazy,
because it's depicts a beginning and an end.
They'll be no end to this addiction, to the violence,
to the death that associates it.
But it's how we choose as a society to confront it.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.