Notorious drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman told authorities that he is just a farmer that makes 20,000 pesos ($1,500 US dollars) per year, according to a transcript of statements he gave the day after being arrested last month.
Guzman's Sinaloa cartel is Mexico's dominant drug trafficking organization. It supplies an estimated 80% of the heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine (street value: $3 billion) that enters the Chicago region each year.
A former army commando who served as Guzman's bodyguard and secretary for the last few years told a very different story after the two were captured in the seaside area of Mazatlan on February 22., Tim Johnson of McClatchy notes.
Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramirez, known as El Condor, told authorities that he and Guzman had been using tunnels and drainage ditches to move between five safe houses in the city of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, over the past three years. Ramirez also reportedly said that Guzman always had two planes on standby to fly him anywhere and switched his Blackberry cellphones every week.
The 56-year-old reported used top-of-the-line gadgetry to avoid surveillance for more than a decade.