Carlos Landín Martínez (born – 9 December 2021), also known as El Puma, was a Mexican former police chief and convicted drug lord. He was a high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and worked as the second-in-command of the cartel in Reynosa from 2005 to 2007. Landín Martínez was a trusted enforcer of the kingpin Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa. Among his responsibilities were managing international drug trafficking shipments from Tamaulipas to Texas, collecting taxes from independent traffickers who operated in his turf, and managing money laundering operations. Landín Martínez was also a commander in the Tamaulipas State Police, where he headed the homicide taskforce. According to a witness who testified against him in court, Landín Martínez worked for the Gulf Cartel while still employed by the state police.
In July 2007, Landín Martínez was arrested after being spotted by an off-duty U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent inside a supermarket in McAllen, Texas. He was charged with multiple counts of drug trafficking, conspiracy, and money laundering. In January 2008, he was found guilty of all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, his sentence was later reduced. The case against Landín Martínez highlighted unprecedented levels of cooperation between local and federal authorities in the U.S. and Mexico. Since the case was built from a bottom-up approach, with low-level criminals providing authorities with information that led to their leadership, investigators stated that the case could potentially serve as a model for future organized crime cases.
Early life and career Carlos Landín Martínez was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, in . He was a member of the Tamaulipas State Police, where he worked as the commander of the homicide investigatory taskforce. His efforts in the agency were lauded in law enforcement circles. In the police, he was known as "El Puma Uno" () for his aggressive stance against the most-wanted criminals in Tamaulipas; his family members nicknamed him "El Sapo" () for his wide face and neck. In March 1997, the Attorney General's Office (PGR) arrested him and Pablo Villanueva Hernández, another police chief, for reportedly being involved with Los Nichos, a Reynosa-based drug gang. Hours later, however, Landín Martínez was released from custody due to lack of evidence and resumed his police duties.
On 28 May 1999, Landín Martínez was permanently released from the Tamaulipas State Police along with nine other police chiefs. This decision was made by the former Tamaulipas Governor Tomás Yarrington (1999–2005). Yarrington released them because they were suspected by the PGR of being involved in drug trafficking during the administration of his predecessor Manuel Cavazos Lerma (1993–1999). When he was in the state police, Landín Martínez was involved with the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas. Authorities also stated he worked closely with Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel's former paramilitary group. Landín Martínez lived a double life to avoid detection; he posed as a retiree while being involved in organized crime. In Mexico, he ran a criminal organization responsible for international drug trafficking; in the U.S., he spent time with his family, including his three children and four grandchildren.
U.S. authorities tracked Landín Martínez's drug trafficking activities back to 1998, when his criminal cells in Granjeno and Peñitas, Texas, worked with a family-led smuggling ring headed by Francisco Meza-Rojas, a former McAllen police officer. For nearly a decade, Landín Martínez's drug trafficking cells were responsible for moving narcotics from Mexico into the U.S. Most of the drugs from the Gulf Cartel were cultivated in Michoacán, smuggled through Tamaulipas, and then redistributed in South Texas and throughout the rest of the U.S. The drugs were smuggled via the Rio Grande River and dropped off in designated spots for arranged middlemen to pick up. The drugs were then given to other smugglers, who met in parking lots of businesses in the McAllen area. Smugglers linked to Landín Martínez would then take the drugs and store them in stash houses across the city. A group of smugglers would then take those drugs past the U.S. Border Patrol stations in Falfurrias and Sarita, where they would then be distributed to cities like Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta, Greensboro, and New York City. Once drug cells were finalized, couriers would bring the money back to Mexico from all over the U.S. through the Reynosa border crossing, where it reached Landín Martínez's network.
In August 2005, U.S. authorities discovered a tunnel that was used by Landín Martínez's associates to smuggle drugs from Mexico to downtown Hidalgo, Texas. From January 2005 to January 2007, Landín Martínez was the second-in-command for the Gulf Cartel in Reynosa. Among his duties was collecting taxes from independent drug traffickers who wanted to smuggle drugs through his corridor, which extended between the Tamaulipas municipalities of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Río Bravo. Those who tried to circumvent this taxation, or who were found responsible for losing drugs or money, were kidnapped, tortured, and/or killed on Landín Martínez's orders. This taxation system was a profitable business for the Gulf Cartel. The Reynosa corridor was headed by Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa, a kingpin that reported to Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the top leader of the cartel. Landín Martínez worked under both of them. However, Sauceda Gamboa began having differences with the Gulf Cartel's leadership due to his perceived weakness; his excessive drinking, drug addiction, and cancer diagnosis pushed him to the sidelines. While Sauceda Gamboa's influence declined, Landín Martínez began generating more influence and money. The leadership differences triggered an internal rift in the Gulf Cartel; multiple regional leaders were killed, and Landín Martínez was rumored dead in 2006. Landín Martínez worked under the kingpin Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez; his colleagues were the siblings Gregorio and Héctor Manuel Sauceda Gamboa, Zeferino Peña Cuéllar ("Don Zefe"), and Alfonso Lam Liu ("Gordo Lam"). However, when the infighting began, Landín Martínez began having differences with them and others cartel leaders.
In the mid-2000s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) launched Operation Puma, a multi-agency investigation that targeted the Gulf Cartel's network in the U.S.; it was dubbed "Puma" in reference to Landín Martínez, the main target of the investigation. The investigation began in Dallas, Texas, and resulted in over 30 arrests in Dallas, San Antonio, McAllen, and Laredo. The DEA teamed up with law enforcement agencies in Mexico, as well as with federal, state, and local police agencies in the U.S. This included collaboration with the police departments in Dallas, McKinney, Garland, Plano, Kaufman, McAllen, Mission, Houston, Laredo, Texarkana, San Juan, Weslaco, Pharr, and San Antonio. In addition, it received support from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the U.S. Marshal's Service, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the DEA, the collaboration between agencies, including the ones with Mexico, highlighted an "unprecedented" level of cooperation between law enforcement. In addition to Landín Martínez, the DEA's investigation also focused on arresting ten high-ranking members of the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, who were placed in a most-wanted list with bounties. In May 2007, U.S. federal authorities indicted Landín Martínez and thirteen others for drug trafficking, conspiracy, and money laundering.
Arrest On 17 July 2007, Landín Martínez was spotted inside a H-E-B supermarket in McAllen, Texas, by off-duty DEA agent Leonardo Silva. Landín Martínez was buying watermelons and was accompanied by two men who were apparently his bodyguards; Silva was at the store to prepare for a barbecue with his family. Silva described that he was in the store buying corn and got a glance of Landín Martínez by coincidence. At that time, the DEA was investigating Landín Martínez for his involvement with the Gulf Cartel and had been working on the case for at least two years. Silva recognized his face from the DEA case he and his coworkers had been working on. Days prior to the encounter, the DEA received information that Landín Martínez was in the Rio Grande Valley. Silva was not properly equipped to execute the arrest. He followed the men as they left the supermarket and drove through an intersection before calling on the McAllen Police Department for assistance. Landín Martínez did not resist arrest and was unarmed. He then admitted to being himself. Landín Martínez did not have an arrest warrant that day, but the DEA had been reassured by Mexican authorities that they would arrest him in Mexico if U.S. authorities were unable to get a warrant from a U.S. judge. He was also a wanted criminal in Mexico. "He happened to fall into our lap, so we had to move fast," Silva said. "You only get one shot at a person like Mr. Landín."
Landín Martínez appeared in court on 19 July for his initial hearing with judge Peter E. Ormsby. His attorney, Oscar Rodolfo Alvarez, told the judge that Landín Martínez fled Mexico and sought for safe haven in the U.S. because he feared for his life. He said Landín Martínez was an honorable police officer and that drug traffickers he worked to arrest wanted to kill him. "Let's not forget that police commanders are turning up dead every day in Mexico," his attorney said. In the hearing, the prosecution explained the drug charges against Landín Martínez, which included two drug seizures between 2002 and 2005. DEA agent Jaime Fernandez told the judge that four informants had linked Landín Martínez with two cocaine seizures in the U.S. from Mexico. One of the sources, according to the DEA, verbally stated that he paid Landín Martínez to allow him to freely move drugs through the Reynosa corridor. Alvarez told the prosecution they conducted an unlawful arrest because they did not have an arrest warrant when they detained Landín Martínez outside the store. U.S. authorities stated that they had not issued an arrest warrant for him because they did not expect to arrest him in the U.S. since he rarely visited.
The prosecution asked the judge to deny his bond; although Landín Martínez was legally allowed to enter the U.S. with his Border Crossing Card, he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally through the Rio Grande River to visit his family in McAllen and Pharr. Authorities stated it was unclear when Landín Martínez illegally made it into the U.S. Alvarez told the judge that the case against Landín Martínez was built by criminals that Landín Martínez helped arrest, and cited vengeance as a driving motive for his detention. He asked the judge to consider Landín Martínez's years of service in the Tamaulipas State Police and the unknown identities of his accusers as evidence of Landín Martínez's innocence. "If Mr. Landín had been a police officer in the state of Texas and two defendants accused him of criminal activity, he wouldn't have been suspended," Alvarez said. Ormsby ordered Landín Martínez to be held without bond and under federal custody. Because of his questionable entry to the U.S., the judge stated that Landín Martínez could also be held on immigration charges.
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