El Chapo and The Vanguard both to be tried in Brooklyn

El Chapo might want to try for bail and keep his guarantors secret - and has about as much chance of making bail as Keith Raniere.

Joaquin Archivaldo Guzmán Loera AKA  “El Chapo,” 61, the king of the Sinaloa Cartel, which distributed coke, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana into America, is going on trial in Brooklyn.

He is housed in the same prison as Keith Alan Raniere AKA Vanguard, 58, who distributed world salad, tax evasion, extortion, fraud, and sex trafficking is going on trial in March.

For decades, El Chapo directed a billion-dollar enterprise, first from his mountainous stronghold in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, then, following his 1993 capture, from prison. After a 2001 escape, he kept the machine moving while on the run, hiding for 13 years. He was caught, in 2014, then made another escape.  He was recaptured in early 2016 — and extradited to the United States in 2017.

For decades, Raniere directed his cult from the suburban stronghold of Clifton Park NY. Following the launch of an FBI investigation, Raniere fled the USA for Mexico in late 2017. He kept the cult moving while on the run, hiding for six months in luxurious villas in Monterrey and Puerto Vallarta. He was caught on March 25, 2018 — and deported to the United States the following day.

Both men have been held in detention at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center.

The trial against El Chapo is set to start in Brooklyn federal court, with jury selection set to start Monday, and opening arguments set for November 12th. The trial is expected to last from two to four months. He faces a 17-count indictment for his role as the head of the cartel, including money laundering, and firearms and murder-conspiracy charges.

The Vanguard. The judge refused to grant him bail.

The trial against The Vanguard is set to start in Brooklyn federal court, with jury selection set to start in early March and opening arguments set for Marc8. The trial is expected to last from six weeks to two months. Raniere faces a 7-count indictment for his role as the head of the racketeering and sex trafficking syndicate and the specific charges include money laundering and forced labor charges.

The El Chapo trial has been repeatedly delayed, as Chapo’s defense attorneys requested the trial date be pushed back in light of the mountains of evidence being brought by the prosecution. The latest hold-up came as lawyers for the defense complained to Judge Brian Cogan that a last-minute dump of some 14,000 pages of new evidence warranted yet another delay, as they needed time to translate it into Spanish for their client and review the evidence.

The Raniere trial has been repeatedly delayed because of a superseding indictment and because of Raniere’s and the other defendants’ defense attorneys” arguing over privilege issues in light of the mountains of evidence being brought by the prosecution. The latest hold-up came as lawyers for the defense complained to Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis that the prosecution is delaying turning over some 12 terabytes of evidence from 80 electronic devices that were seized from the home of Raniere’s alleged co-conspirator Nancy Salzman.

On Tuesday, Cogan admonished the prosecutors for bringing more to the table than they needed to convict him — including accusing him of direct involvement with at least 33 murders.

Garaufis admonished the Raniere defense team for remaining silent, thus refusing to agree to a delay in one hearing and then agreeing to it at the next hearing.

El Chapo made a name for himself concocting new ways of getting coke and heroin out of the fields of Colombia and Mexico and into the veins of eager customers up north.

Raniere made a name for himself concocting new ways of getting women to be enslaved, including branding them on their pubic region.

In one particularly gory paragraph, prosecutors claim a Sinaloa sicario specially outfitted a murder house with plastic sheeting for the walls and a drain specifically designed to catch blood from murder victims.

In one particularly gory paragraph, prosecutors claim Raniere lured a slave woman blindfolded to a shed and had another slave perform cunnilingus on her.

Central to the El Chapo case is likely to be the testimony of Chicago-born drug traffickers named Pedro and Margarito Flores, who have been under government protection for nearly a decade, ever since their decision to flip on El Chapo.

Pedro and Margarito Flores, identical twins raised by a drug-trafficking father, built a massive trafficking network that supplied wholesale shipments of narcotics to dealers in Chicago, with the drugs spreading out across the country from there.

Central to the Raniere case is likely to be the testimony of Nancy and Lauren Salzman, who have been under house arrest for three months.

Nancy and Lauren, mother and daughter, were shared by their sex -trafficking Vanguard, built a massive MLM network that stripped heiresses and slender actresses out of their wealth, and teen girls out of their virginity.

Hogan, the DEA agent who stared Guzman in the face in a Mazatlán parking garage on the morning Mexican Marines pulled him out of bed in 2014, cautions against underestimating El Chapo.

“He’s where he belongs, but you can guarantee he’s thinking about the next step,” Hogan says. “What that is, I don’t know. But his mind’s always running.”

Frank Parlato, the blogger who first broke the Raniere branding story and predicted his arrest before Mexican police pulled him out of his Mexican sex lair, cautions against underestimating Vanguard.

“He’s where he belongs, but you can guarantee he’s thinking about the next step,” Parlato says. “What that is, I don’t know. But his mind, which he says is the smartest mind in the world, is always running – most likely in the direction of trying to throw his co-defendants under the bus.”

 

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Frank Parlato

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Heidi
Heidi
5 years ago

Haaaaa! Just the thought of El Chapo and Keith in the same prison that Carlos Salinas would do anything to keep his son out of…🤣😆🤣!!

Big J
Big J
5 years ago

That picture always gets me. His head is so lopsided.

V is not Me
V is not Me
5 years ago

Comparing El Chapo to Vanguard is interesting. El Chapo is worse but on the other hand I’d rather be like El Chapo than El Vanguard.

The Eyes Have It
5 years ago

Another similarity is the eyes. One of them has beady eyes and the other is cross eyed.

Ponce de Leon
Ponce de Leon
5 years ago

Well at least Frank has properly recognized that “central to the case” will be “Nancy and Lauren’s testimony”.

In my many travels for King Ferdinand, I have rarely seen a more valuable pair of witnesses than Nancy and her lovely youngin Lauren.

Sooz (formerly Gobsmacked)
Sooz (formerly Gobsmacked)
5 years ago
Reply to  Ponce de Leon

Lol Ponce has a crush

About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” Parlato was also credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premiered on May 22, 2022. Most recently, he consulted and appeared on Tubi's "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM," which aired January, 2023.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankreport76@gmail.com

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