Thread by @alanfeuer

Chrisitian Rodriguez, the IT guy who helped the US take down El Chapo, just finished his direct testimony @ Chapo's trial. Rodriguez helped the feds crack into the kingpin's secure phone network and, amazingly, get the texts he sent his wife & mistresses.
nytimes.com/2019/01/09/nyr…

Not suprisingly Rodriguez said working for a narco-lord, especially one as paranoid as Chapo, could be a little weird. Chapo, for instance, came to him one day w/the assignment to intercept every message being sent from every internet cafe in Culiacan. Rodriguez tried but failed.

The job could also be dangerous, he said.
Not long after the internet cafe assignment, the Army raided Chapo's mountain-top hideout while Rodriguez was up there w/the boss. The IT guy had to go on the lam w/the narcos, walking for three days through the mountains.

The gunmen, Rodriguez said, were carrying "large weapons" & "very large weapons."
After three nights, they were finally able to return to the city.
Chapo, Rodriguez said, "was always very calm, very sure, very tranquil."
And how was the techie feeling?
"Very badly," he said.

After that, Rodriguez put "some distance" between himself and Chapo's organization, training two guys--Charly & El Gordo--to run Chapo's comms on a daily basis. Remarkably, the entire time he worked for the crime lord he only made about $500,000, he said. (Peanuts in this world.)

It wasn't long after that the FBI came knocking on his door. Two agents, he said, approached him one day in Bogota, told him they knew he worked for Chapo Guzman and said he was "in serious trouble."

He agreed to cooperate and help the feds crack into Chapo's comms by the end of the day. At first, he went into the servers himself and downloaded the calls that Chapo made emailing them to the FBI.

Later, he said, he installed recording software in the server that automatically sent copies of all of the calls to a separate server every day at midnight. He also gave the FBI the user names & passwords of all the FlexiSPY accounts that Chapo had installed on various phones.

Then one day he heard a call between Dolly Cifuentes & her brother Alex (who worked w/Chapo) saying they had figured out he was cooperating w/the FBI. The feds pulled him out and brought him to the US where he turned his attention to capturing Dolly & Alex's other brother Jorge.

Rodriguez had set up a similar server for the Cifuentes' & devised a way to remotely install a GPS location tracker on Jorge's phone w/o him knowing. Jorge was eventually captured.

But Rodriguez didn't fare well even in the US. In 2013, he had a nervous breakdown from the stress of his undercover work. He was hospitalized and received electro-convulsive therapy. Now he's in witness protection, taking his meds and seeing a shrink.

Stay tuned, the next witness this afternoon could be good.

In April 2007, Alex Cifuentes' brother, Pacho, was murdered in a drug war hit. Pacho was a famous narco said to have once flown planes for Pablo Escobar. But Pacho left behind more than his reputation. He left debts. Alex and other brother Jorge needed to raise $10 million.

They turned to an old friend, Chapo Guzman. A few months after Pacho's death, Alex introduced his widow (one of Pacho's 5 wives) to the kingpin and the two soon hatched a deal to ship 3 tons of coke up the Pacific from Colombia to Mexico.

In other meetings Alex introduced Pacho's favorite cocaine cook to Chapo & the men discussed plans to make as much as 10 tons of coke a lab in Mexico. Alex also hatched another plan in which his niece's husband would help Chapo move $40 million a month--in cash--down to Colombia.

It was in this way, Alex testified on Thursday, that became close to the kingpin--so close, he said, that Chapo like to call him "My right-hand man and my left-hand man." Alex eventually moved into the mountains w/Chapo serving as his aide-de-camp and secretary.

Alex did virtually everything for Chapo.
He did coke deals for him in Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Bolivia. He bought farms in Costa Rica to use as "pivot points" for shipments north to Mexico. He sold coke & heroin in NYC. He even interpreted at meetings in English.

Alex is just getting started as a witness (he's back Monday) but he's a hoot.
He's not only from the most colorful Colombian drug family imaginable (even mom was involved); he's funny.
Appearing on the stand, he remarked that the trial was 1st time he ever saw Chapo in a suit.

Alex is in custody b/c his brother, Jorge, was arrested first. He recalled how Jorge called him when they were both in prison--Alex in Colombia, Jorge in the US-- saying he should turn himself in.
"Jorge said, 'With the Americans, I should confess the way I confess to God."