Feds: Cartel turns to radio waves to avoid police detection

The Gulf Cartel and the Zetas have established a sophisticated radio communications network that stretches hundreds of miles and has stymied recent law enforcement advances in monitoring cellular phones, according to court documents obtained Monday.

U.S. federal investigators believe the groups — who refer to themselves collectively as “The Company” — now rely on a daisy chain of linked local radio frequencies stretching from Guatemala to the Tamaulipas border to monitor movement of their drug loads and cash payments.

The system — as described in federal court filings in a case against its architect — allows cartel members to keep in constant communication over an ever-shifting series of public bandwidths while making it extremely difficult for authorities to listen in, the documents state.

As authorities on both sides of the border continue their campaign against narcotics smuggling, Mexico’s drug cartels have increasingly turned toward technology to better avoid detection.

A federal indictment unsealed against several of The Company’s top leaders in June describes the complex record keeping program deployed on laptops and USB flash drives to monitor the organization’s shipment amounts, payroll and bribes made to law enforcement officials.

The cartel has also been known to use wirelessly monitored hidden cameras to watch certain residences, stash houses and meeting locations.

The radio network is particularly impressive because it exceeds the capability of federal law enforcement monitoring by several years, officials said.

The system relies on a backbone of dozens of towers and signal-extending repeaters that stretch across almost every Mexican state, according to documents signed by Jose Luis Del Toro Estrada, a Rio Grande Valley resident credited with building it for The Company.

U.S. federal agents arrested him in September 2008 as part of a nationwide sweep of Gulf Cartel members and associates. But few details about his case had been released until he pleaded guilty to one count of drug smuggling conspiracy in a Houston federal court last week.

His attorney, Jack Wolfe, declined to comment for this story, but a plea agreement struck with prosecutors lays out how Del Toro built the radio system from the ground up starting in 2006.

In some cases, the cartel installed new towers to handle its communications, while, in others, existing structures — including local police antennas — were used.

Local bosses in cities like Reynosa, Matamoros and Miguel Alemán were required to purchase the necessary equipment for the system and share in the cost of setting it up.

But once it was up and running cartel members could communicate across almost all of Mexico using hand-held, walkie-talkie like devices — which typically have a limited geographic reach — and avoid easily wiretapped cell phones and land lines, the document states.

Local agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency said Monday that they were not aware of the radio system described in Del Toro’s plea agreement.

“Most of the people we’re targeting are still using cell phones and push-to-talk phones,” said Special Agent Will Glaspy, referring to walkie-talkie like mobile phones that send their messages over cellular networks. “If it’s radios down in Mexico, it’s not something we’re monitoring.”

But Howard Campbell — a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas-El Paso, who studies drug trafficking — said such a development would hardly be surprising in the ongoing tit-for-tat between drug smugglers and authorities.

“It’s such a cat-and-mouse game,” he said. “Every advance made by law enforcement is countered by the cartels.

“It’s boundless creativity.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.