The $60M Horse Ranch That Laundered Cash for the Zetas Cartel

A Dallas bricklayer became America's hottest quarter horse owner. The FBI found out why. José Treviño Morales laid brick in a Dallas suburb until 2008, when he started outbidding oil money at horse auctions in Ruidoso, New Mexico. By 2010 his ranch, Tremor Enterprises, had won the two biggest races in the sport. Federal agents traced the money back to his half brother Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, the Zetas cartel boss known as Z-40. For three years, an IRS analyst and an FBI case agent built a financial map connecting champion horses to $60 million in cartel drug proceeds. On June 12, 2012, agents raided a ranch in Lexington, Oklahoma, and seized more than 400 horses. This is how a wiretap on a horse auction and one analyst's stubborn attention to currency reports unraveled one of the largest cartel laundering operations ever run through a legitimate American industry. #FBI #TrueCrime #CartelInvestigation #MoneyLaundering #cartel Subscribe for more federal investigations