Who is Nemesio El Mencho Oseguera, brother of arrested Mexican drug lord El Tony Montana?

El Tony Montana, the brother of Mexico’s most wanted drug lord El Mencho was arrested on Tuesday, December 20, in possession of weapons. According to Mexican officials, they captured Antonio Oseguera aka El Tony Montana in a suburb of Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco in West Mexico.

The Mexican State Department during a press release said that the arrest of Tony Montana, the brother of infamous cartel boss Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera, was a “forceful blow” to the cartel.

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The United States has also offered a $10 million reward for El Mencho’s capture, but the cartel has been successful in fighting the past attempts to arrest him.

Who is Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Oseguera?

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes was born on July 17, 1966 in Aguililla, Mexico. Widely known by the name ‘El Mencho’, it is believed that he changed his birth name from Rueben to Nemesio in memory of his godfather. He grew up in a rural farming family. Oseguera has five siblings.

After dropping out of school in the fifth grade, Oseguera began working in the fields and then went on to guard marijuana plantations. Desiring a better life, he illegally moved to California in the US in the 1980s.

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At the age of 19, he was arrested by San Francisco Police for carrying a loaded gun and stealing a car. After being in custody a couple of times, in 1992, he and his brother Abraham were arrested while carrying out a heroin deal at a bar in San Francisco. Mencho, who was 26 years old at the time, realized that the transaction was set up by the police. After being arrested and jailed for three years, he was deported back to Mexico at the age of 30.

After strengthening his relationship with the Milenio Cartel, he gradually rose to leadership when the top leaders of the cartel got arrested. He headed the Los Mata Zetas(The Zeta Killers) after the cartel split into two parts. Consolidating its influence in Western Mexico, the group changed its name to Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

The CJNG went from being a small criminal gang to one of the leading criminal groups in Mexico, establishing El Mencho as one of Mexico’s most-wanted criminals.

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Since the 2000s, the DEA office in Los Angeles, California has been tracking El Mencho’s activities, also detecting that the CJNG had expanded its drug-trafficking operations internationally.

In October 2018, the Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury announced a joint law-enforcement measure against the CJNG, announcing a reward of US$10 million to anyone who could locate El Mencho. It became one of the largest approved bounties in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program.

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El Mencho is married to Rosalinda González Valencia, the sister of a leader of the Milenio Cartel. They have three children: Jessica, Laisha, and drug lord Rueben Oseguera. Rosalinda Gonzalez was arrested in 2021. She was the financial chief of CJNG at the time.

In February 2022, it was reported that El Mencho died from respiratory arrest while undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Guadalajara. The reports are however yet to be confirmed.