La Familia

Mexican authorities Thursday announced the arrest of a man dubbed "the king of heroin," who allegedly was one of the biggest smugglers of the drug into the United States. Jose Antonio Medina was captured by Mexican police a day earlier in the western state of Michoacan, where he allegedly operated a trafficking network that smuggled 440 pounds of heroin a month across the border into Southern California, federal police said. Medina, 36, was sought on a warrant issued last year for extradition to the U.S. on charges of drug trafficking and sales north of the border.

'We have your daughter." Those chilling words, the worst nightmare of any parent, came over the telephone, spoken by a man planning to demand money for her safe return. One catch: We have no daughter. So the call, for us, was easy enough to ignore. But thousands of Mexicans receive these calls every week. Sometimes they are real; a child or spouse or other relative has been kidnapped, and a ransom is demanded. Often, they're bogus. A cottage industry has exploded alongside the skyrocketing kidnapping rate in Mexico that could be called "extortion on spec": telephoned shakedowns that play on fears, in which the perpetrators scamming for pesos make random calls.

Drug agents swept through Los Angeles and dozens of other locations Wednesday and Thursday, arresting more than 300 people and seizing large quantities of drugs, weapons and money in the biggest U.S. crackdown against a Mexican drug cartel. The months-long offensive, the fruit of dozens of federal investigations over the last 3 1/2 years, will put a significant dent in the U.S. operations of La Familia Michoacana, one of Mexico's fastest-growing and deadliest cartels, authorities said.

Mutilated bodies of nine people turned up in the southern state of Guerrero, authorities said Friday, amid a spike in drug-related violence there. The victims had been beheaded, hacked to pieces and left in 18 black plastic bags in the bed of a pickup in the town of Tlapehuala, Guerrero's public safety department said. Officials said they had not identified the victims, whose remains were found late Thursday in a rural zone, nicknamed Tierra Caliente, or "hot land," that is known for drug-trafficking activity.

When registration opens today for Mexico's newly elected Congress, there is one up-and-coming legislator who officials will be relieved to count as a no-show. Julio Cesar Godoy, in addition to being a lawmaker-elect from the state of Michoacan, is also a fugitive from the law. Godoy, brother of the state governor, is one of dozens of politicians and police chiefs from Michoacan accused of aiding the notorious La Familia drug cartel. He dropped out of sight as arrest warrants came down in May and June, yet won election anyway.

Police said they had captured 11 suspected members of La Familia cartel and seized a methamphetamine lab in the western state of Michoacan. The Public Safety Department said federal police officers discovered the lab, allegedly operated by La Familia, after a strong chemical smell was reported in a rural area of the state. The department said the lab produced about 220 pounds of crystal meth each week. Lab operators packaged the drugs, loaded them into pickup trucks and sent them to the United States.

Mexican authorities announced plans Thursday to send 5,500 police officers and military personnel to the western state of Michoacan to confront a violent crime syndicate offering some of the fiercest resistance President Felipe Calderon's government has faced since launching its war on drugs 2 1/2 years ago. About 1,000 extra police officers were deployed Thursday before officials outlined the broader buildup.

Last week, Julio Cesar Godoy was a congressman-elect. This week, he is a fugitive. Mexican authorities say Godoy, a half-brother of Michoacan state Gov. Leonel Godoy, helped provide protection for La Familia, the drug-trafficking gang that has waged war on federal police across the state in recent days, killing at least 16 officers.

Marking a gruesome new setback in the war on drug gangs, Mexican authorities said Tuesday that 12 people found tortured and fatally shot in the western state of Michoacan a night earlier were federal police officers. Officials said the slayings were the work of La Familia, a Michoacan-based trafficking group that has carried out at least 10 attacks against federal police in the state since Saturday, when authorities captured an alleged leader of the group.

Authorities were interrogating a suspected ringleader of the drug cartel La Familia on Sunday after the crime syndicate launched a series of coordinated commando attacks against federal police and Mexican soldiers over the weekend that left five dead and a dozen wounded. The ambushes Saturday in eight cities across the western state of Michoacan were carried out with disciplined force by small units of La Familia cartel gunmen with military-grade assault rifles and grenades.