Indiana beauty queen Glenis Zapata arrested in raid on Mexican cartel that included one of the most wanted fugitives

US News

By Chris Eberhart, Fox News

An Indiana beauty queen was arrested in a major drug raid for links to a Mexican drug cartel that had been forming over the years.

Glenis Zapata, 34, who was named Miss Indiana Latina in 2011, is accused of using her job as a flight attendant to smuggle drug money from Chicago to the southern states and Mexico, according to a federal indictment.

She is accused of two counts of money laundering stemming from a cash transport of $170,000 on August 7, 2019, and at least $140,000 on September 10, 2019.

Zapata was one of 18 suspects arrested when federal police arrested their main target, Oswaldo Espinosa, who was one of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) most wanted fugitives.

Zapata, along with two bank employees – Zapata’s sister Ilenis Zapata and Georgina Banuelos – were the last people arrested in the Drug Enforcement Task Force against Organized Crime’s arrest of Oswaldo Espinosa.

Espinosa is the alleged leader of a multimillion-dollar drug ring based in Mexico that flooded U.S. streets with thousands of kilograms of cocaine, according to the federal government’s latest indictment on May 16.

From 2018 to 2023, Espinosa recruited seemingly ordinary, low-profile workers like Zapata as part of his alleged criminal enterprise that used warehouses and garages throughout the Windy City to hide money and drugs.

Cash and cocaine were loaded into semi-trailers and planes that transported the drug stashes in the Midwest to the South and Mexico, “including by commercial flight and with the assistance of Glenis Zapata,” the indictment states.

According to court documents, Espinosa was the head of his own Mexican international drug trafficking organization (DTO), called Espinosa DTO.

The final file, which also included the charges against Zapata, listed eight drug trafficking operations from 2021 to 2023 and 15 cash transports between November 2019 and March 2022.

The investigation into Espinosa was led by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which was created to combat major drug rings in the United States.

The ESPINOSA DTO is a small cartel compared to heavyweights like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel, which control almost all of Mexico and its seaports and extend their tentacles throughout the United States.

Overall, researchers estimate that there are about 150 cartels of varying sizes in Mexico with about 175,000 “active members” (as of 2022), according to a September 2023 study in Science magazine.

And many of these organized crime syndicates are expanding their illegal operations into the United States, smuggling drugs and money across the border.

A DEA report in May said Mexico’s “most powerful and ruthless cartels” – the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels – are active in all 50 states.

The main products of both cartels are meth and fenantyl, according to the report, which says the Mexican cartels have “caused the worst drug crisis in U.S. history.”

One of the federal authorities’ primary goals is to break up large drug trafficking operations.

In 2023, law enforcement agencies within 150 miles of the border made nearly 600 seizures of cash valued at $18 million, the DEA report said.

“DEA’s top operational priority is to relentlessly pursue and dismantle the two Mexican drug cartels … that are primarily responsible for the current fentanyl poisoning epidemic in the United States,” the report said.

The operation “will direct resources into the United States’ most violent and overdose-ridden cities to target the violent dealers who kill thousands of Americans each week with fentanyl and guns.”