One story made international headlines. The other barely blipped on the media radar.

For those following the international narcotics trade, which historically has had many links to Las Vegas, both hold the promise of intrigue and insight into the flow of cartel drugs and money through the valley.

The first is the made-for-tabloid television tale of the ‘cartel princess’ Emma Coronel Aispuro, the former beauty queen and wife of imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, whose glamorous life was interrupted with her February arrest on charges of conspiring to distribute large quantities of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine.

The mother of twin daughters made a nightly star turn in New York during Guzman’s 2017 drug trafficking and racketeering trial, during which it was revealed that she had played an integral role in the Sinaloa boss’s 2015 escape from a Mexican prison. Instead of keeping a lower profile, she courted the spotlight with an appearance on a cartel-themed reality television show, Cartel Crew and in 2019 launched a Chapo-themed clothing brand.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement authorities have long tracked Sinaloa traffickers and operatives to Las Vegas, which is recognized as an active distribution hub for the cartel.

Mike Vigil, the former chief of International Operations for the DEA, tracked Sinaloa’s ever-expanding influence in the drug world for many years. Although he’s now retired, Vigil brings a rare insight into the Coronel arrest. All the glitz aside, her cooperation could devastate the cartel. She’s not just another pretty face.

“Emma Coronel is not somebody that penetrated a criminal organization,” he says. “She was born into the drug trade. She grew up in the mountains of Durango, and her father, Ines, and her brother, Omar, were drug traffickers. She was knowledgeable of the drug trade, and then she met Chapo Guzman and married him in 2007. She became the primary confidant of Chapo Guzman. Because like in any criminal organizations, the biggest thing that they value is trust. Who do they trust more than family members? No one.”

Trust goes a long way. But under the threat of 40 years in prison, and with the future of young twin daughters in the balance, she can be expected to cooperate, Vigil believes. What could she provide?

“Chapo Guzman would confide in Emma Coronel,” he says. “She has a very keen understanding of the entire infrastructure of the Sinaloa Cartel, who the members are, how they operate, the drug routes, and then more importantly she knows what officials the Sinaloa Cartel is paying. She would do things for Chapo Guzman that placed her squarely into a conspiracy case here in the United States.”

In the U.S., some of those routes run right through Las Vegas.

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Surely Coronel would also understand the complex connections between the Sinaloa cartel’s money laundering connections to Las Vegas and whether they still exist in the wake of the notorious case of Zhenli Ye Gon, whose high-rolling gambling on the Strip at the Venetian and other resorts unsuccessfully masked his role as a major Sinaloa methamphetamine precursor chemical trafficker and money mover.

You don’t have to search far on the Internet to find the now-famous (at least in investigative reporting circles) photograph of the secret room inside Ye Gon’s home outside Mexico City that contained $205 million in cash, some of it still in Venetian casino wrappers. The Chinese national born in Shanghai was a Mexican citizen at the time of his 2007 arrest. He was extradited to the US in 2016.

The Las Vegas Sands in 2013 agreed to pay a $47.4 million fine to avoid criminal charges stemming from a money laundering investigation.

Much less reported but no less intriguing is the February federal grand jury indictment in the Eastern District of Texas charging eight persons with crimes related to what the Department of Justice is calling a complex international drug trafficking conspiracy. Among those charged are Debbie Mercer and her daughter Kayleigh Moffett of Oklahoma City, Federico Machado of Florida, and Carlos Villaurrutia of Texas.

The case is the result of an interagency effort led by the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and Homeland Security Investigations. According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly purchased and registered thousands of aircraft under foreign corporations and individuals for export. As owners of Aircraft Guarantee (also spelled Guaranty) Corporation, it’s alleged that Mercer (listed in business filings as Mercer-Erwin) and Moffett registered the aircraft at a mailbox in Onalaska, Texas, a town of 2,800 that surely has much to offer its residents.

What Onalaska doesn’t have, investigators noticed, was an airport.

Authorities allege the planes were used by drug traffickers from Mexico to Colombia, seven countries in all, to haul multi-ton shipments of cocaine north to the insatiable US market and back south with piles of cash to Mexico. Planes were typically purchased, according to the indictment, by wiring funds from casa de cambios (money exchange houses) and traditional banks in Mexico to US shell corporations.

Thanks to Nevada’s uber-friendly incorporation and LLC laws, there’s a Las Vegas connection to the case. As early as 1996, Mercer’s name has been associated with Nevada LLCs Aircraft Guaranty Financial Corp., Aircraft Guaranty Holdings, and Cirrus Air Ag, according to the secretary of state’s website and Corporationwiki.com.

The federal criminal investigation picked up steam in 2019 following a report from Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA that raised questions about the propriety of Mercer’s aircraft registration operation. Along the way, investigators uncovered evidence of a $560 million Ponzi scheme that moved investor funds from the U.S. to Mexico. And none of it made much news outside the region.

With law enforcement and the DOJ hoping to make substantive investigative inroads from the information gleaned from defendants who now find themselves compelled to cooperate or risk spending the rest of their lives in prison, the secrets of Sinaloa figure to reverberate far from sunny Mexico.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR. His newest book—a biography of iconic Nevada civil rights and political leader, Joe Neal— “Westside Slugger: Joe Neal’s Lifelong Fight for Social Justice” is published by University of Nevada Press and is available at Amazon.com. Contact him at [email protected]. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith