An alleged Sinaloa cartel leader who was wanted by US authorities on suspicion of operating the “world’s largest known fentanyl production network” was killed by the Mexican military on Sunday.
Pedro Inzunza Coronel, better known under the alias “El Pichón,” allegedly attacked members of the Mexican Navy during a drug raid in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, Omar Garcia Harfuch, Mexico’s security secretary, wrote on X.
Harfuch wrote that Coronel “lost his life” during the raid, though the exact manner of his death is unclear.
In May, the US Department of Justice charged Coronel and his father, Pedro Inzunza Noriega, with narco-terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering committed while the pair ran the Beltran Leyva Organization, a faction with the Sinaloa cartel that has since been shut down.
The father-son duo were accused of shipping tens of thousands of kilograms of fentanyl into the US. The Mexican government additionally seized more than 1.65 tons of fentanyl from the faction’s holdings.
It is, to date, the single largest seizure of fentanyl in the world, according to the DOJ.
The indictment was a “first in the nation to charge” that the DOJ said was only made possible through President Trump’s executive order that designated the Sinaloa cartel as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The DOJ released images of the fentanyl and cocaine shipments that had been seized and connected to the pair.
Some of the images showed small blue pills stowed away in clear trash bags. Others captured entire bricks of cocaine with popular brandings pasted onto the front, ranging from logos for “The Incredibles” to Louis Vuitton, according to a release from the DOJ.
Ronald Johnson, the US ambassador to Mexico, celebrated the mission and highlighted additional crimes levied against Coronel in Mexico, including “murders, kidnappings, torture, and violent debt collection for drug trafficking.”
“These results reflect what our nations can achieve when they work together against those who pose a threat to our citizens. Justice will prevail!” Johnson wrote on X.
