Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was tricked into three phone calls with his Chicago distributor in 2008, in which the two openly discussed a large-scale heroin deal.
The never-before-heard tapes played for jurors Wednesday might be the most damning evidence so far presented against the Mexican cartel kingpin at his Brooklyn drug trafficking trial.
“Amigo!” a chipper Chapo greets at the beginning of one call with Chicago-born Pedro Flores, who, along with his identical twin, Margarito, were his best drug runners in major US cities.
In the series of calls, Chapo sounds happy, and unsuspecting. “We’re here at your service, you know that,” he tells Flores, whom he once thought of as a son.
“So, then, how should we do it?” Chapo asks Flores of the 20-kilo heroin deal, before coming up with his own solution. “The guy from Chicago should call you — but you get up in the afternoon.”
The drug baron was teasing him, Flores, now a government cooperator, testified, since he knew the twins were always up all night.
“I’m trying to be as normal and routine as possible. On a normal call that would be our conversation. Drop the price and I’ll take more,” Flores says of the deal, where he agrees to take more heroin in exchange for only paying $50,000 a kilo.
In the final call Flores made before turning himself in to the DEA, he phones his boss pretending he’s run out of heroin.
“I only have 3 [kilos] left, when do you think we can get some more?” the now-37-year-old says on the call.
“What the f–k, man, didn’t you say you could only get rid of a little bit?” the kingpin responds. Flores testified earlier Wednesday he’d tried to slow down heroin shipments into the US that year.
“The truth is, they’ve turned out good,” he says.
Chapo asks how many kilos of heroin he can move a month, and Flores says he can do around 40.
“Oh that’s good!” Chapo exclaims, sounding pleased. “OK, I will send it to you then. I’ll send you some.”
Two weeks later, Flores walked into the DEA’s office in Guadalajara to turn himself in. He owed Chapo $1 million for the deal, but instead turned that money over to the DEA as well, he testified.
Meanwhile, on cross examination, defense attorney William Purpura tried to cast doubt on whether or not the voice on the calls was even his client’s.
“Do they sound like the same voice to you?” Purpura asked Flores after playing clips from the kingpin’s fateful Sean Penn-led Rolling Stone magazine interview.
“Not really, no,” he conceded.
While Flores previously said he never took part in any cartel violence, Purpura projected a photo of a slain Latin Kings member, Rudy Rangel, for jurors to see.
Rangel, the court heard, had a tattoo across his chest that read, “Destined forever, My Queen Valerie.”
“Valerie” would later marry Flores’ twin brother — but only after Rangel was murdered while getting a haircut.
“You’re going to tell the jury you didn’t contract to have that happen?” Purpura asked.
Flores denied it.
Purpura also grilled him on his massive wealth, getting him to detail nine homes, 40 personal cars —– including a Lamborghini and Ferrari — 12 tractor-trailers, and nearly 30 ATVs.
The lawyer also dredged up Flores’ testimony from Tuesday, in which he admitted to impregnating his wife while in DEA custody.
Flores said he was having family time, and the agents in charge were distracted when he followed his wife into the bathroom.
Inquiring as to how long the couple were in the bathroom, unattended, Purpura said: “Now, I don’t want to ask the amount of time, but…”
He did not continue the question, which left the courtroom — and his client — in stitches.
Chapo, who has not embraced his own wife since January 2016, faces life behind bars if convicted.