https://chicago.suntimes.com/movies...evino-morales-los-zetas-mr-piloto-horses'Cowboy Cartel' tracks how FBI linked horse ranch to ruthless drug traffickers
As compelling Apple TV+ docuseries details, Oklahoma quarter-horse operation was laundering money for Los Zetas cartel.
In the 2010 All-American Futurity at Ruidoso Downs — the quarter-horse equivalent of the Kentucky Derby — a 22-1 longshot named Mr Piloto pulled off a stunning, photo-finish upset, winning a $1 million purse and exponentially increasing its value as a champion stud. Little did the betting public, the horse racing world or the expert handicappers know that Mr. Piloto was one of dozens of quarter horses that were being used as part of a money-laundering operation funded by one of the most ruthless and notorious cartels in modern history.
How that operation came to be, and how an FBI rookie agent was instrumental in cracking the case, is the subject of the compelling, four-part Apple TV+ documentary series, “Cowboy Cartel.”
Keeping track of a years-long, paperwork-heavy investigation involving multiple law enforcement organizations and a series of nefarious characters is no easy task, and there are times when “Cowboy Cartel” gets a bit lost in the weeds of bureaucracy, but directors and executive producers Dan Johnstone and Castor Fernandez do an impressive job of holding our attention. Through the winning formula of relying on restrained dramatic re-creations, archival footage and interviews with key players in the case, “Cowboy Cartel” for the most part holds us in its grip.
'Cowboy Cartel'
A four-part documentary available Friday on Apple TV+.
As racehorse breeder and Track Magazine publisher Ben Hudson explains, “The quarter horse is the horse of the American West. It’s the horse that America’s kids have grown up on. ... It’s the cowboy’s horse.”
So named for its ability to hit blazing speeds in a quarter mile, this breed headlines a grittier, faster line of racing than the thoroughbreds, but the business can be quite lucrative for owners and breeders. In 2009, a rookie FBI agent named Scott Lawson received a tip about a bricklayer and Mexican immigrant named José Treviño Morales who was making millions on a quarter-horse racing operation, seemingly out of nowhere.
An FBI raid on José Treviño Morales' property is re-created in “Cowboy Cartel."
An FBI raid on José Treviño Morales’ property is re-created in “Cowboy Cartel.”Apple TV+
Turned out that José was the brother of Omar Treviño Morales and Miguel Treviño Morales, leaders of the terrifying Los Zetas, a military unit trained at Ft. Bragg to combat the cartels that eventually flipped and joined the Gulf Cartel before branching out on their own. As Los Zetas broke every unwritten rule of the cartels, killing anyone who stood in their way and expanding their operation to include not only narcotics but extortion, kidnapping, migrant smuggling and human trafficking, the FBI’s Lawson works tirelessly to establish admissible evidence linking the expanding quarter-horse operation in the States to the Zetas cartel in Mexico.
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Additional federal agencies, as well as local Texas police officers, get involved in the case. Undercover informants work to get key intel. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ginger Thompson of the New York Times is about to break the story but agrees to hold it for a brief time so as not to endanger lives. Major busts are made, and Los Zetas becomes fragmented, its horrific powers and influence diminished.
As for Mr Piloto: The feds say the All-American Futurity was rigged, with drug money used to bribe race gatekeepers. Ruidoso Downs officials deny those allegation. As one of the 400 horses from an Oklahoma City ranch seized in connection with the investigation, Mr Piloto was sent to a ranch in North Texas and allowed to breed.
As was the case with every horse racing-related scandal in history, the horses are just being their magnificent selves. It’s the humans around them that cause all the trouble.
