Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales (born 18 November 1970), commonly referred to by his alias Z-40, is a Mexican former drug lord and former leader of the criminal organization known as Los Zetas. He was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords until his arrest in July 2013.
Born into a family with six brothers and six sisters, Treviño Morales began his criminal career as a teenager, working for Los Texas—a local gang from his hometown of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. His fluent English and experience of moving contraband along the U.S.–Mexico border enabled him to be recruited in the late 1990s by the drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who headed the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas. Around 2005, he was appointed as the regional boss of the Gulf Cartel including Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo and was given the task to fight off the forces of the Sinaloa Cartel, which was attempting to take over the lucrative drug trafficking routes to the United States. After successfully securing these routes in Nuevo Laredo in 2006, Treviño Morales was moved to Veracruz and appointed as the Gulf/Zeta leader in the state after the death of the drug lord Efraín Teodoro Torres. Two years later, his boss Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano sent him to Guatemala to wipe out his competitors; after completing the task successfully, he appointed Treviño Morales as the national commander of Los Zetas in 2008. In 2010, Los Zetas gained their independence from the Gulf Cartel, their former allies, and both organizations went to war with each other.
As the national commander of Los Zetas, Treviño Morales earned a notorious reputation for intimidating officials and citizens throughout Mexico. The Mexican authorities believe that he is responsible for a significant part of the violence in Mexico, including the murder of 72 migrants in 2010 and the massacre of 193 people in 2011. A common torture method of his was known as el guiso (stew), in which victims would be dumped into oil barrels, doused with gasoline or diesel fuel, and burned alive. Following the death of his boss Lazcano Lazcano in October 2012, Treviño Morales became his successor and the top leader of Los Zetas drug cartel amid an internal power struggle within the organization.
Mexican Marines arrested Treviño Morales on 15 July 2013 in the state of Nuevo León without a single bullet being fired. At the time of his capture, the Mexican government was offering up to a 30 million pesos (US$2.3 million) reward for information leading to his arrest. However, there is evidence that on December 4, 2012, an individual identified as "Miguel Treviño Morales, AKA Z40" was arrested in Texas. According to the record from the Texas court, the detainee is of "Mexican" nationality and was held at Bastrop County Jail on charges of "Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering." The United States Department of State was offering, and continue offering, up to US$5 million for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Authorities on both sides of the border believe that he was succeeded by his younger brother Omar Treviño Morales, a man who was also on the most-wanted list. On February 27, 2025, Morales and his brother would be extradited to the United States.
Early life Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales was born on 18 November 1970 in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. His parents, Rodolfo Treviño and María Arcelia Morales, created a large family with six daughters and seven sons, including Miguel. Like many families along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Treviño family travelled from Mexico to the United States and vice versa, where they bought properties and opened several businesses. His father abandoned his family at a very young age, forcing Treviño Morales to single-handedly raise the whole family. Treviño Morales grew up in a lower-class neighborhood in Nuevo Laredo, but as a teenager, he worked for the wealthy by fixing their yards and washing their cars. He also did chores for the local drug lord Héctor Manuel Sauceda Gamboa (alias El Karis), who later became his mentor; Treviño Morales eventually replaced him as Gulf Cartel leader in Nuevo Laredo. Treviño Morales grew up disliking Mexico's class disparity and developed so much resentment as to partially explain his violent behavior as an adult. Treviño Morales frequented Dallas, Texas with his family. In 1993, he was apprehended in Dallas County and charged with avoiding police arrest, after he had tried to evade the police in a car chase that ended in a street dead end. He paid a $672-dollar fine and was subsequently released from the county prison. Few details are known of Treviño Morales's life in Dallas; the U.S. authorities believe he learned about "power, money, weapons and the vast consumer market for illegal drugs" while living in Texas. They also believe that he perceived an anti-Mexican bias among Americans, and especially towards Mexican immigrants like him. However, Treviño Morales considered Dallas his home because of his large family network that lives in the surrounding areas. According to U.S. investigators, he was last seen in the Dallas area in 2005 after entering the United States illegally, where he visited his family and was said to have been at a strip club.
Criminal origins and ascension As a teenager, he began to work for Los Tejas, a gang that ran the criminal activities in his hometown of Nuevo Laredo. From washing cars, running errands, and stealing car parts in Nuevo Laredo, Treviño Morales turned to the drug trade, starting with small-scale drug retail sales and smuggling. Unlike the first members of Los Zetas, he was never in the military. He was hired by the Gulf Cartel in the late 1990s for his experience moving contraband across the border. His fluent English and his criminal contacts on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border allowed him to gain the trust of the then-leader of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén. When he joined the Gulf Cartel, Los Tejas, the local gang he once worked for, was absorbed by Los Lobos or Grupo L under the leadership of Treviño’s at the time direct boss, El Karis. Around 2005, Treviño Morales became the regional boss of Nuevo Laredo, replacing Sauceda Gamboa; he was in charge of fighting off the incursions of the Sinaloa Cartel, which was attempting to take control of the smuggling routes in the area. The Laredo–Nuevo Laredo area is a lucrative smuggling route for narcotics because of the Interstate 35 highway, which serves as a strategic pathway to San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas for future drug distribution. While in power, he orchestrated a number of assassinations in American cities and in Mexico by young U.S. citizens whom he put on his payroll. Treviño Morales was good at identifying and grooming young teenagers who he believed had the potential to become professional assassins for Los Zetas. These recruits, sometimes called Zetitas ("Little Zetas"), usually joined organized crime as young as twelve-years old to work first as smugglers and later as paid assassins.
By 2006, the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas managed to defeat the forces of the Sinaloa Cartel in Nuevo Laredo. The latter organization concentrated its efforts in northeastern Mexico, becoming dominant there. Los Zetas started to expand into other criminal activities beyond drug trafficking. Under Treviño Morales, the organization smuggled immigrants to the United States, carried out extortions and kidnappings, sold bootlegged CDs and DVDs, and intimidated and/or killed residents who failed to cooperate with them. Treviño Morales remained in charge of Los Zetas in the state of Nuevo León and in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, until March 2007. He was reassigned to the coastal state of Veracruz, shortly after high-ranking Zetas leader Efraín Teodoro Torres (alias Z-14) was killed in a gun battle at a local horse race. Though Cárdenas Guillén was imprisoned in 2003, he reportedly directed the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas behind bars; when he was extradited to the United States in 2007, Treviño Morales and Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano pushed for Los Zetas' independence from the Gulf Cartel.
In November 2007, the city of Laredo, Texas, issued an arrest warrant for Treviño in connection with a 2006 double homicide in Texas. In 2008, Treviño Morales and Lazcano Lazcano, the two leaders of Los Zetas, forged an alliance with the Beltrán Leyva Cartel. It had just gone to war with the Sinaloa Cartel, believing that El Chapo Guzmán, their leader, had betrayed them. Treviño Morales subsequently joined them to kill the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. Government sources said Los Zetas were fighting for control against La Federación (The Federation), an alliance of several drug trafficking groups led by Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán and Ismael El Mayo Zambada, two drug lords who used to work for the Beltrán Leyva Cartel.
In February 2008, Lazcano Lazcano sent Treviño Morales to kill rival drug traffickers and take control of the drug trafficking routes in Guatemala. Reportedly, he carried out a military-like ambush that resulted in the death of the Guatemalan drug lord Juan José León Ardón (alias Juancho) in March. An unnamed U.S. official said that Treviño Morales may have been the man who fired the bullet that killed the drug kingpin. Having succeeded outside of Mexico, Treviño Morales was appointed by Lazcano Lazcano as the national commander of Los Zetas, a position traditionally reserved to Zetas members with military background. In this position, Treviño Morales had a say in nearly all the decisions Los Zetas made at a national level, creating some resentment among the old-generation commanders of Los Zetas who, unlike him, had been in the Mexican Armed Forces before turning to the drug trade.
Leadership position Treviño Morales acted as a cartel 'gate-keeper,' and his people collected a piso (tariff) at all drug territories controlled by Los Zetas. He controlled the highly lucrative Nuevo Laredo plaza (turf), across the border from Laredo, Texas. He bribed and intimidated officials to help maintain control, and responded to any challenges to his authority or control with brutal violence. Treviño was feared and very few local journalists dared to write about him. He was alleged to have favored a torture method known as el guiso (stew), in which people are stuffed into an oil barrel, doused with gasoline or diesel fuel, and set on fire to burn alive. His violent behavior gained him "the notoriety of a cult figure." He reportedly survived gun battles unharmed, avoided making alliances with anyone, dismembered dozens of victims while they were still alive and dumped them, and "seemed unafraid to die." Organization members claimed that Treviño Morales enjoyed driving around the city in a car, pointing at people randomly and saying, "kill this one and kill that one." A former hitman who worked for him told the press in 2013 that Treviño Morales could not sleep at night if he did not kill someone. He also said that the drug lord would ask his victims how they wanted to be killed. Journalist Alfredo Corchado, head of The Dallas Morning News in Mexico, wrote in one of his books that Treviño Morales enjoyed eating out the hearts of his victims—even when they were still alive—because he believed that doing that would make him invincible among his enemies and authorities.