The woman played an active role within the Chapo organization, but was an FBI informant for a year, which led the boss to hire the Hells Angels to kill her.
“Mr. Guzmán, as I apologize, I forgive you, and I hope you can forgive me”: Andrea Fernández Vélez worked for Chapo, betrayed him by cooperating with the FBI and he wanted to kill her. In the captain’s sentence, he recounted his improbable story.
Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, who minutes after Vélez’s testimony was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for trafficking hundreds of tons of drugs in the United States over 25 years, looked at her seriously. second, before concentrating on his wife, the young Emma Coronel.
Tall, thin, with long brown hair up to her waist and gathered in a ponytail, Vélez stopped about four meters from the Chapo and explained that “an empathy arose” between the two when they worked together. in a project for a film about the life of the famous capo.
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“I deeply admired Mr. Guzmán (…) I came to see him as a good, polite person, who cared for me, kind and charismatic. At one point I felt that he was from my family,” he said. explain.
But “I’m a miracle of God, because Mr. Guzmán tried to kill me (…) He offered a million dollars to the Hells Angeles to end my life,” Velez argued in reference to the gang of motorcyclists.
“Hell” Rescue
Federal police and Brooklyn prosecutors “literally rescued me from hell,” said the unknown-aged woman, dressed in a sober black dress and black jacket, and high heels.
Velez was charged with drug trafficking offenses in May 2012 in a New York court, but apparently was never in prison.
FBI agent Steven Marston explained at the Chapo trial that Vélez was approached in Colombia in September 2012 to work as an informant in the investigations against Chapo and Alex Cifuentes.
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Velez agreed not to go to jail, the FBI paid him $ 290,000, and when his life was at risk in 2013, he was transferred to the United States and given a special visa by cooperating witnesses.
The woman hinted that she is now part of the U.S. government’s witness protection program and has a new identity.
He stated that he wanted to tell his story to “stop being a faceless name.”
“I lost everything”
It all started with the friendship between Vélez and the Colombian narco Alex Cifuentes, a partner of the Chapo.
Cifuentes, a prosecution witness at the Chapo trial, reported that Andrea was his most trusted person. He met her through a Colombian actress, and as he had nowhere to live, he offered her his apartment in Cancun.
Andrea quickly became his secretary, spokesperson and right-hand man. He handled all his little box, bought her clothes, her watches and all her personal things. Up to “$ 500 sheets,” according to Chapo’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman.
According to the Latinus portal, the images will be published on the night of January 8, 2016, the day Guzmán Loera was captured alongside his chief assassin, Orso Iván Gastélum “El Cholo Iván”. Photo / Video capture Latinus
He coordinated his agenda and contacts, and as his spokesman, met with members of the Colombian FARC guerrillas, with narcos from Canada or Ecuador, or with corrupt military.
He also had a modeling agency in Mexico City, a front-end company to supply prostitutes to Mexican military, all paid for by Chapo.
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“I confess I sinned, but for that I paid a high price,” Velez said in the sentence. For “my dream of greatness I lost my family, my friends, I became a nameless shadow. I had everything and I lost everything, even my identity.”
Without telling him the truth, Chapo used it in 2013 as bait to kidnap Ecuadorian army captain Telmo Castro in a restaurant “with a squadron of men armed with AK47”, an incident that still causes Vélez “nightmares.”
By this time, at the behest of the Mexican capo, Vélez offered an unidentified Mexican general $ 10 million to stop chasing the Chapo, but the Chapo turned down the offer. Chapo, furious, said Vélez was lying and decided to kill her, Cifuentes said.
All indications are, however, that Velez collaborated with the FBI for more than a year, and Chapo may have learned she was an informant.
“She betrayed my boss,” Cifuentes said.
Chapo Guzmán the day he was taken to the maximum security prison. photo AFP
The Colombian narco explained that with Chapo they decided to hire the Hells Angels to kill Vélez when she was in Canada.
But in November 2013, the day he was due to meet with a gang leader to adjust the details, Cifuentes was arrested by Mexican police and jailed.
At the hearing, Velez said he suffered in some way from Stockholm Syndrome, and that his friends transformed into “his captors.”
“They reminded me that if I went alone I could do it in a plastic bag and with my feet in front.”