Glenis Zapata, 34, was crowned Miss Indiana Latina in 2011 but she is now facing two counts of laundering after she was accused of transporting hundreds of thousands of dollars for criminal gangs
A beauty queen has been swept up in a Mexican cartel drugs bust after allegedly using her job as a flight attendant to help move drug money around the US and Mexico.
Glenis Zapata, 34, was crowned Miss Indiana Latina in 2011 but she is now facing two counts of money laundering after she was accused of transporting hundreds of thousands of dollars for criminal gangs. The former beauty queen’s money laundering counts stem from a $170,000 (£134,000) cash transport on August 7, 2019, and at least $140,000 (£110,000) on September 10, 2019.
The drugs bust, which was years in the making, saw federal authorities swoop on 18 suspects, including Glenis Zapata, from Lafayette, as part of an operation to take down the main target, Oswaldo Espinosa, listed among the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) most wanted. The latest arrests in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces’ operation to take down Oswaldo Espinosa’s network saw Zapata, along with two bank tellers – Zapata’s sister, Ilenis Zapata and Georgina Banuelos being read their rights.
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The latest federal indictment filed on May 16, describes how US streets were flooded with thousands of kilograms of cocaine by a multi-million dollar, Mexico-based drug trafficking ring which Espinosa allegedly controlled. As well as gangsters and drug dealers Espinosa’s network recruited more ordinary workers like Zapata from 2018 to 2023 as part of the alleged operation with drugs hidden in warehouses and garages all around Chicago.
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Cocaine and cash were transported on semi-trailer trucks and on planes from gang houses in the Midwest to the southern part of the US and over the border to Mexico, “including via commercial flights and using the assistance of Glenis Zapata,” the indictment alleges. Court documents name the gang as the Espinosa DTO, short for drug trafficking organization, and the latest filing shows eight drug trafficking operations from 2021 to 2023 and 15 cash transports between November 2019 and March 2022.
According to the indictment the group transported tens of millions of dollars in drug proceeds using trucks, commercial flights and a private chartered jet that had previously been seized by the government in a 2021 drug bust, prosecutors said. The indictment details eight seizures of cocaine across the Midwest, starting with around 11lbs (5kg) in Chicago in March 2021, with millions of dollars in proceeds also seized from cocaine sales across Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Maryland, and Florida.
The Espinosa DTO is a relatively small player in the multi-billion dollar world of Mexican drug cartels, with major players like The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel wielding massive power in Mexico and abroad. There are roughly 150 Mexican cartels comprising 175,000 “active members” according to 2023 research with many involved in the cross-border drugs trade into the US.
A report from the DEA published this month showed that the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels were active in all 50 states of the US, primarily producing meth and fentanyl, fuelling “the worst drug crisis in US history”. The report said: “DEA’s top operational priority is to relentlessly pursue and defeat the two Mexican drug cartels … that are primarily responsible for driving the current fentanyl poisoning epidemic in the United States.”