American officials in Virginia in December arrested Dámaso López Serrano alias "El Mini Lic," an influential figure in the Sinaloa cartel organigram who used to be a close ally of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and his sons.
López Serrano had been arrested in 2017. He spent five years behind bars in an American prison but was released in 2022 after agreeing to cooperate with law enforcement, revealing key information about El Chapo's sons and the Sinaloa cartel.
At the time of his second arrest, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum described the capture as a "very important" hit against drug cartels, but little to no information was revealed surrounding the operation.
Nearly two months later, investigative journalist Luis Chaparro revealed in a podcast that López Serrano was trying to return to Mexico illegally before his arrest in Virginia.
"He was allegedly planning on going back to his ranch in Mexico. He had less than a year before his parole ended," Chaparro said in the podcast.
According to the journalist, the FBI decided to advance El Mini Lic's arrest due to hints that the former Sinaloa cartel member was trying to rejoin the criminal group and flee back to Mexico.
The arrest warrant said López Serrano was accused of fentanyl trafficking, a crime that carries a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. But due to his criminal record, El Mini Lic could face a longer time behind bars, with the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Chaparro added that his relapse in fentanyl trafficking violated the agreement reached with American officials during his parole. "They gave him a lot of benefits because he turned himself in and because he gave them information that led to the arrests of Ovidio Guzmán and other key members of their organization," Chaparro said.
At the time of his first arrest, officials said that he was the highest-ranked member of a Mexican drug cartel to surrender voluntarily.
El Mini Lic as a whistleblower
During his two years outside of prison before his second arrest, López Serrano gave multiple interviews to Mexican journalists in which he revealed intel about the Sinaloa cartel.
In one of them, El Mini Lic talked about an alleged letter from El Chapo Guzmán in which he ordered the cartel to be divided into two: one faction led by El Chapo's son's and the other by the Dámaso family.
"He wanted my dad to be the leader. And I remember that, in the letter, he asked my dad to take care of his sons," López Serrano told Vice in 2023.
But despite Guzmán's wishes, his sons did not want any protection from the Dámaso family, which prompted an internal dispute between both groups.
In another interview with investigative journalist Anabel Hernández, López Serrano revealed that the Sinaloa cartel and its factions have been involved in fentanyl trafficking since at least 2014, when they learned that other criminal groups in the states of Jalisco and Michoacán were trafficking a drug known as "synthetic heroin" that left much more revenue to cartels.
"They sent a person to China to investigate what was going on," López Serrano said in the interview. "They got in contact and told us about the process, about the costs...El Chapo was the first one to produce fentanyl," he added.
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