When Henry Zamora lost 6 kilograms of heroin in 2014 to cops in DeKalb, his bosses in an international drug-trafficking operation commiserated on their BlackBerry devices, federal authorities say.
“Dude that sucks. Just when it was going so well,” Franco “The Magician” Lombardi of Honduras allegedly told his supervisor Amado Chavez of Mexico.
But Chavez reassured him, “this business is like that. Selling is hard. . . . You’ll make up for it.”
Their brief exchange provides a glimpse into the workings of a ring that has helped feed the voracious appetites for heroin in the Chicago, Atlanta and New York areas in recent years, officials say.
A transcript of the conversation was included in a court filing on Monday in federal court in Chicago. Authorities are seeking to transfer Zamora and his alleged partner, Harry Madrid, to Newark, New Jersey, to face federal drug charges there.
Lombardi, according to news reports, is accused of being a top financial operator for the Sinaloa cartel headed by jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Lombardi was arrested in April in the resort town of Roatan, Honduras, where he was living.
Chavez was shot to death on June 16 at a gas station in Cancun, Mexico, authorities say. Rival traffickers are suspected in the killing.
Authorities say they have seized more than 22 kilograms of heroin from the ring and have identified more than $20 million in drug profits that it laundered through banks. The ring had connections in Mexico, Honduras, Colombia and Nicaragua, officials say.
Zamora and Madrid lived in the Chicago area in 2014, delivering narcotics and laundering cash for the ring, prosecutors say. On Nov. 21, 2014, Zamora allegedly picked up a heroin shipment at a Wal-Mart parking lot in DeKalb, about 64 miles west of Chicago.
He was supposed to deliver the drugs to Lafayette, Indiana. But officers stopped his pickup and recovered 4 kilograms of heroin from a hidden compartment. Two more kilos of heroin, along with $33,000 and a gun, were found in a “stash house” in DeKalb, authorities say. Zamora and Madrid were arrested on drug charges in DeKalb County. They were charged in federal court in Newark on Dec. 1.
Last month, Lombardi pleaded guilty to money laundering in Miami and faces up to 20 years in federal prison in that case, records show. He faces separate drug conspiracy charges in federal court in Newark.
Other alleged ring members who have been charged in Newark with conspiracy include Madrid’s brother, Wilson Madrid, who had lived in the Atlanta area; and two men from the New York area who were arrested on Christmas Eve in 2014 after police stopped their car on a New Jersey highway and allegedly found 15 kilograms of heroin in a secret compartment.
