| Operation Bishop | |
|---|---|
| Operation Name | Operation Bishop |
| Type | Anti-gambling effort |
| Scope | Domestic and Brownsville, Texas, U.S |
| Roster | |
| Mission | |
| Objective | to end illegal gambling and assciated money laundering schemes in the border city of Brownsville, Texas. |
| Timeline | |
| Date begin | April 2013 [1] |
| Date end | Ongoing (as of 2016) |
| Results | |
| Accounting | |
Operation Bishop [1] is the codename for a long-term effort by state and federal police forces to end illegal gambling and associated money laundering schemes in the border city of Brownsville, Texas. Since its beginning in April 2013, Operation Bishop has focused on "eight-liner" establishments, where customers play inexpensive slot machines, known as "maquinitas", and so far have made over 60 arrests, seized over $1,000,000 and dozens of slot machines, in more than 70 police raids. It has been speculated that the illegal gambling operations in Brownsville may be used by Mexican drug cartels in the area to launder large quantities of illegitimate revenue. [1] [2]
Texas authorities report that the "eight-liner" industry produces approximately $300,000,000 annually, and is then believed to exit Cameron County or even Texas altogether. [3]
In late September 2015, during the 50th raid of Operation Bishop, Cameron County officials seized 35 motherboards used in the maquinitas and more than $1,000 at a site on King's Highway in Brownsville. In October of the same year, investigators "uncovered a series of [illegal] gambling operations set inside re-purposed 18-wheeler trailers." [1] [2]
Police in Brownsville busted three more illegal gambling operations in raids on March 15, 2016. [1]
Tomás Jesús Yarrington Ruvalcaba is a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party. He held office as the Mayor of Matamoros from 1993 to 1995, and the Governor of Tamaulipas from 1999 to 2005. Yarrington sought nomination for the presidential elections for the PRI in 2005.
The Chaldean mafia, or Chaldean organized crime, is a collective of criminal organizations composed of Chaldean Catholic Assyrians which emerged in the United States during the 1980s. Chaldean organized crime is active primarily in Detroit, as well as in San Diego, California and Phoenix, Arizona.
The Vagos Motorcycle Club, also known as the Green Nation, is a one percenter motorcycle club formed in 1964 in San Bernardino, California. The club's insignia is Loki, the Norse god of mischief, riding a motorcycle. Members typically wear green.
Joint Operation Nuevo León-Tamaulipas is an anti-drug joint operation in two Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo León by Federal Police and the Mexican Armed Forces. The objective of the joint operation is to eliminate Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel operations in the area. So far, many cartel members have been either killed or arrested. Recently Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel have broken relations and started fighting each other.
Timeline of Mexican Naval anti-drug cartel operations during the Mexican drug war are listed below:
The Siderno Group is a criminal association in Canada, Australia and Italy related to the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia-type organization in Calabria. The association is labelled the "Siderno Group" because its members primarily came from the town of Siderno on the Ionian coast in Calabria and migrated to Canada and Australia in the 1950s.
A. J. Irwin is a former federal agent who performed covert operations domestically and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, resulting in the prosecution and dismantling of criminal organizations involving alien smuggling, narcotics trafficking, weapons trafficking and other illicit activities. Additionally, he managed anti-terrorism and anti-smuggling enforcement operations for the Department of Homeland Security for the central corridor of the U.S. He is currently the managing director of Investigations for Yarbrough Strategic Advisors (YSA) in Dallas, Texas.
Legal forms of gambling in the U.S. state of Texas include the Texas Lottery; parimutuel wagering on horse and greyhound racing; limited charitable bingo, limited charitable raffles, and three Native American casinos. Other forms of gambling are illegal in Texas.
The Armenian mafia is a general term for organized criminal gangs that consist of ethnic Armenians. In Armenia, the structure is organized in clans called yekhpayrutyuns.
The Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office (HCSO) is a local law enforcement agency serving the nearly one million residents of Hidalgo County, Texas, United States. It is headquartered in Edinburg, Texas, the county seat of Hidalgo County.
Special Task Force On Organised Crime (STAFOC) (Malay: Pasukan Tugas Khas Melawan Jenayah Terancang) was the specialized operation armed response units of the Royal Malaysia Police.
Operation Kruz Control was a twelve-month, multi-agency investigation of a drug trafficking organization in southern Arizona, between December 2012 and December 2013.
Project Shadowfire was an American police investigation in early 2016 that resulted in the arrest of 1,133 people, 915 of whom were suspected members of "multinational organized criminal gangs", involved in murder, racketeering, drug smuggling and human trafficking from Mexico and elsewhere. The majority of the arrests took place in Los Angeles and San Francisco in California; El Paso and Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. 70,000 US, 150 firearms and more than 20 kg narcotics were seized.
Project Wildfire was a nationwide, multi-agency investigation of various transnational criminal gangs in 2015 that resulted in the arrests of 976 individuals, representing 239 different organizations, in 282 cities in the United States mainland and Puerto Rico. Eighty-two firearms, 5.2 kilograms of methamphetamine, 7.8 kilograms of marijuana, 5.6 kilograms of cocaine, 1.5 kilograms of heroin, US$379,399, counterfeit merchandise with a suggested retail price of US$547,534 and five vehicles were also seized.
On March 14, 1989, University of Texas at Austin student Mark James Kilroy was kidnapped in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, while vacationing during spring break. He was taken by his abductors to a ranch where he was tortured and sodomized for hours before being murdered in a human sacrifice ritual. Kilroy was killed with a machete blow and then had his brain removed and boiled in a pot. His killers then inserted a wire through his spinal column, amputated his legs at the knees, and buried him at the ranch along with 14 other people who had been killed there before him. Adolfo Constanzo, the leader of the cult, told his followers that human sacrifice granted them immunity from law enforcement for their drug smuggling operations. The killing drew worldwide media attention and initiated an international police manhunt because of the unusual circumstances of the crime.
Carlos Landín Martínez, also known as El Puma, was a Mexican former police chief and convicted drug lord. He was a high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and worked as the second-in-command of the cartel in Reynosa from 2005 to 2007. Landín Martínez was a trusted enforcer of the kingpin Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa. Among his responsibilities included managing international drug trafficking shipments from Tamaulipas to Texas, collecting taxes from independent traffickers who operated in his turf, and managing money laundering operations. Landín Martínez was also a commander in the Tamaulipas State Police, where he headed the homicide taskforce. According to a witness who testified against him in court, Landín Martínez worked for the Gulf Cartel while still employed by the state police.
María Antonieta Rodríguez Mata is a Mexican former police officer and convicted drug lord. She worked as a Tamaulipas State Police officer from 1992 to 1996. During her tenure in the police, she was subject to several investigations by the National Human Rights Commission for alleged human rights violations. In the late 1990s, she became involved with the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico, after being hired to work under the kingpin Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. She was responsible for coordinating drug trafficking shipments from Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico to the U.S. The drugs were often guarded by corrupt policemen and smuggled overland through Reynosa and McAllen, Texas. Her role in organized crime is unusual since she held a leadership role in the male-dominated Mexican drug trafficking industry.
Abel Briones Ruiz is a Mexican business owner and suspected drug trafficker for the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico. According to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, between 2005 and 2014, Briones Ruiz and his network were responsible for cocaine trafficking from Mexico to the U.S., smuggling the cash proceeds back into Mexico, conducting money laundering from these earnings, and structuring financial activities to hide the illegal nature of his earnings. He did this through his family-run gasoline company, Combustibles Briones, S.A. de C.V. A fugitive from U.S. justice, Briones Ruiz faces up to life imprisonment and up to US$10 million in fines from his drug trafficking activities alone.
