Mexico's Guzmn becomes the worlds most wanted man

The new moniker, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Treasury yesterday, is just one more title on “El Chapo’s” ever-growing list of dubious accolades. After Osama bin Laden was killed,. Since 2009, regrettably, he has also made the Forbes’ World’s Most Powerful People. And he ranked No. 1,140 on our most recent list of Forbes World’s Billionaires, making him by our count the world’s richest drug dealer.To that end, the government is not just cracking down on Guzmán but his associates. Yesterday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control named three individuals with tight ties to Guzmán as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNTs): Mexican nationals Oscar Alvarez Zepeda and Joel Valdez Benites, both of Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, and Colombian national Carlos Mario Torres Hoyos, of Medellin, Colombia. The first man, Alvarez, is a relative of Guzmán’s.The trio has provided “material support to the drug trafficking activities of Guzmán Loera and the Sinaloa Cartel and also have ties to Colombian drug trafficker Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa,” according to a Treasury press release.Because the three men have been named as Guzmán associates under the Kingpin Act, Americans are now banned from doing any type of business with these trafficking folks. Those unlucky, unwise, or shady enough to have already done business with the trio, have by now likely found that their assets have been frozen.Guzmán and Colombia’s Cifuentes have been indicted in the U.S. for both drug trafficking and money laundering. Under the Kingpin Act, Treasury and the DEA have been trying to punish narco-traffickers by cutting off their financial means.A $7 million reward is being offered for information leading to El Chapo’s arrest–$5 million from the U.S. government and another $2 million from Mexico.Meanwhile, in a bizarre twist, just one day before this latest news, Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who has played a drug trafficker on TV, distinguished herself (perhaps also dubiously) in an open letter declaring that she “believed in El Chapo more than in the government.” A publicist confirmed that the letter, written in Spanish, was indeed the work of del Castillo.“Today, I believe more in El Chapo Guzmán than in the governments that hide all the truths, even if they are painful, the same governments that hide the cure for cancer and HIV, etc for their own benefit and wealth,” del Castillo wrote in her letter in Spanish. She may be one of his few fans outside his cartel.