Despite bounties, Zetas leader took trainer on ranch tour

By Jason Buch

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  Zetas leader Miguel Treviño Morales is one of those charged in the money laundering conspiracy case.

AUSTIN — Despite having millions of dollars in bounties on his head, one of the Zetas Cartel's top leaders spent several hours one summer day in 2010 touring ranches in northern Mexico with a California horse trainer, according to testimony Tuesday in a federal money laundering trial here.
Adan Farias, the trainer from Los Alamitos, Calif., said a man who contracted him to train horses in the United States took him to meet “the boss” in Mexico in July 2010.



It was only after he returned home and Googled the man who introduced himself as “Z-40,” or “Zeta Cuarenta” in Spanish, that he realized he'd met one of the cartel's top leaders, said Farias, who was one of nearly 20 people charged last year with conspiracy to launder money.
Also charged in the case, in which authorities say the money was meant to be laundered through the U.S. quarter horse industry, is Miguel “El 40” Treviño Morales, who last year became the cartel's leader.
As they toured ranches near the border that day, Farias said, the only indication that Treviño was a cartel leader on the run were the men in civilian clothes carrying rifles who followed in their wake.
Treviño took him to three ranches and showed him about 100 horses, Farias testified.
“They were very nice ranches, and the horses were well-kept,” he said.
The cartel leader asked his opinion on the horses at the ranches, upcoming races in the U.S. and the 10 horses that Carlos Miguel Nayen Borbolla, another co-defendant in the case, had hired Farias to train. The horses were held in the names of various U.S. companies, including Garcia Bloodstock LLC. Garcia Bloodstock is a company owned by Fernando Solis Garcia, one of five men on trial.
Garcia, a quarter horse expert; José Treviño Morales, Miguel Treviño's brother; Francisco Colorado Cessa, a Mexican businessman who made a fortune contracting for that country's state-owned oil company; Jesus Maldonado Huitron, an Austin-area homebuilder; and his brother, Eusevio Maldonado Huitron, are all on trial.