Carlos Rosales Mendoza

Criminal career

Rosales Mendoza was born on 12 February 1963 in the municipality of La Union, Guerrero in southern Mexico.

Reports suggest that Rosales Mendoza's organization can be traced back to the 1980s and that was possibly a vigilante group to counter corruption and local crime, but the organization eventually became involved in the production and distribution of narcotics throughout the Mexican state of Michoacan. In the year 2000, Rosales Mendoza broke relations with Armando Valencia Cornelio of the Milenio Cartel and founded his own organization in Michoacan called La Empresa ('The Business'), a criminal organization that was the direct predecessor of La Familia Michoacana, some sources state that La Empresa and La Familia Michoacana are essentially the same thing, mainly because they share the same members but not the same allies. He also formed an alliance with Osiel Cardenas Guillen, then leader of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, and merged with his organization. This alliance was intended to displace the Milenio Cartel from Michoacan state, and provoked a series of assassinations in area until the 2003. With the alliance Rosales Mendoza became a Gulf Cartel operator and Cardenas Guillen dispatched two lieutenants of Los Zetas, Efrain Teodoro Torres (Z-14) and Gustavo Gonzalez Castro (The Erotic One), to help him to train his men and protect the drug trafficking corridors in Guerrero and in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas. He soon gained the trust of Cardenas Guillen and became one of the leading lieutenants for the Gulf Cartel in western Mexico, where he commanded a training camp and taught over 50 gunmen military tactics and how to carry out prisons breaks to free Cardenas Guillen, who had been captured and imprisoned in 2003. After Rosales' arrest in 2004, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez seized control of the gang and in 2006 severed ties with the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas in an effort to take control of Michoacan from any external influences, marking the birth of an independent La Familia Cartel and Starting a turf war against their former allies.

Arrest

While preparing to liberate Osiel Cardenas Guillen from prison, a squadron of about 150 soldiers in the Grupo Aeromovil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), the special forces unit of the Mexican Army, arrested Rosales Mendoza in capital city of Morelia, Michoacan on 24 October 2004. His capture was a result of the collaborative effort between the Mexican Army and the PGR.

Upon his arrest, Rosales Mendoza was taken under custody to Mexico City and kept in La Palma prison until he was taken to Puente Grande, a maximum security prison in the western state of Jalisco, on 28 October 2004.

His capture resulted in new organizational leaders: Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas and Nazario Moreno Gonzalez.

Release and re-arrest

On 22 May 2014, Rosales Mendoza was released from prison in Jalisco after fulfilling his ten-year sentence for illegal possession of firearms, organized crime, and drug trafficking. On 5 August 2014, he was arrested again by state authorities at a restaurant in Morelia, Michoacan.

Kingpin Act sanction

On 24 March 2010, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Rosales Mendoza under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (sometimes referred to simply as the "Kingpin Act"), for his involvement in drug trafficking along with fifty-three other international criminals and ten foreign entities. The act prohibited U.S. citizens and companies from doing any kind of business activity with him, and virtually froze all his assets in the U.S.