Toll collector for drug cartel goes on trial in McAllen

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Security was tight as the federal trial opened for a former Mexican police commander who is believed to have switched sides and become second-in-command for the Reynosa, Mexico, leg of the Gulf Cartel.

Prosecutors say Carlos Landin-Martinez, 52, collected "pisos," or tolls, that the cartel collected from smaller drug gangs crossing through its turf. Reynosa is across the Rio Grande from Hidalgo, a border city a few miles south of McAllen.

Landin-Martinez was arrested in July when a Drug Enforcement Administration agent spotted him buying a watermelon at a supermarket in Texas.

Landin-Martinez and 13 co-defendants face multiple counts of conspiracy, narcotics smuggling and money laundering in a federal indictment issued in May 2007.

The defendants are linked to two drug busts in 2005 and 2007. Landin-Martinez allegedly oversaw the Gulf Cartel's collection of tolls from smaller smugglers.

"The individual in charge of collecting the taxes was Carlos Landin-Martinez," Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Cook Profit said in court Monday.

Defense attorneys said the government has built its case on the words of unreliable drug smugglers. Four of the six co-defendants in custody have pleaded guilty and could testify during Landin-Martinez's trial. One co-defendant pleaded not guilty and will also be tried.

...

He did not say why his client's words might be just as "unreliable." This case may mark one of the most memorable watermelon purchases in history. It gives you some idea of just how arrogant the cartel has become that one of its "tax collectors" would be strolling down the isles of a supermarket in the US. Of course, it could be just one of the benefits of NAFTA. The Mexicans certainly like to shop on the US side of the border now.