Margarito Flores and Pedro Flores are the infamous twin brothers that in 2008 made international news for secretly recording notorious Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, in collaboration with the DEA, to incriminate the kingpin in the billion-dollar drug enterprise.
The Flores twins used to be part of Guzmán's supply operation, moving tons of narcotics out of South America. Business was doing fine but in 2008 it all began to crash when the Beltrán-Leyva and Sinaloa cartels warned the brothers and they decided it was too dangerous to stay in Mexico.
Due all the complications and a still-pending indictment in Milwaukee, from previews years, the twins decided to be part of an undercover federal operation with the U.S. law enforcement. The twins' cooperation led to the convictions of about 40 distributors, dealers and couriers in Mexico and Chicago, including "El Chapo" and his Guzmán-Loera Organization.
According to the Chicago Tribune, by working with the U.S authorities, Pedro and Margarito reduced the life sentences they could have faced, to just 12 years each in prison. They are off-the-radar in a federal Witness Security Unit prison. The families of the twins were granted with protection within the United States. In 2009 the twins' dad decided to make a trip to Mexico to take care of personal business, but got killed.
Now in 2017, with "El Chapo" behind North American bars, the twin brothers' wives decided to write and publish "Cartel Wives: A True Story of Deadly Decisions, Steadfast Love, and Bringing Down El Chapo." The book, available in Amazon and written by Olivia Flores and Mia Flores, is described as an astonishing, revelatory, and redemptive memoir from two women who escaped the international drug trade.
According to the book, Olivia was born in Chicago in 1975 and is daughter to a Chicago police officer. She married Margarito Flores in 2005 and now lives in hiding with her two young children. Mia was born in Chicago in 1980, and she is also daughter to a Chicago police officer. She is married to Pedro Flores.
Dressed all in black, in armored car and heavily escorted by security personnel, the twins' wives told their versions and spoke about their book in an exclusive interview for Univision. They told the journalist Tifani Roberts how they live their lives in anonymity. "It's very hard. Mia and I live in fear,“ tells Olivia to the reporter. For protection, both women wear a wig, their faces are covered and their voice is distorted. During the interview, Olivia also says that they know people will be looking for them for the rest of their lives.
Married to the two most hated drug traffickers, both women and their families, are protected by the US government, since the twins are the main witnesses of the US government against the 2018 trial against "El Chapo.”
Olivia and Mia recount that in the only way that the trafficking business went unnoticed with the Flores brothers, it was because they used houses located in prestigious neighborhoods and all workers dressed in casual business attire. According to Olivia, in these exclusive neighborhoods the police didn’t look for drugs. She also told Univision that through Google Earth, the brothers carried their network without any problem guiding the workers through the city, also finding storages and security houses.
Mia says in the interview that it is difficult for her to be the daughter of a police officer who wakes up every morning to fight criminals, and she is married to a man who used to fill the streets with drugs. The women affirm that the leaders of the Cartels were regulars to their houses in Guadalajara, Mexico and that there was a good relationship, especially with "El Chapo," until the Cartels started fighting against each other putting the twins in the middle of the war.
Find below the full interview.
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