The woman had an active role in El Chapo’s organization, but was an FBI informant for a year, leading the kingpin to hire the Hells Angels to kill her.
“Mr. Guzmán, since I don’t blame you, I forgive you, and I hope you can forgive me”: Andrea Fernández Vélez worked for El Chapo, she betrayed him by working with the FBI and he wanted to kill her. In the sense of the kingpin, he told his incredible story in tears.
Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, who minutes after Vélez’s testimony was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars for smuggling hundreds of tons of drugs into the United States for 25 years, looked seriously at her for a few seconds before he focused on his wife, young Emma Coronel.
Tall, slim, with her brown hair tied to the waist in a ponytail, Vélez stood about four meters from Chapo and said there was “an empathy” between the two as they worked together on a project for a film about life. of the two. famous capo.
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“I deeply admired Mr. Guzmán (…) I began to see him as a good person, well educated, who cared about me, kind and charisma. At one point I felt like it belonged to my family, ”he said.
But “I’m a miracle of God because Mr. Guzmán tried to kill me… He offered a million dollars to Hells Angeles to end my life,” said Velez, referring to the motorcycle gang.
Save “from hell”
Federal police and the Brooklyn prosecutor’s office “literally rescued me from hell,” said this woman of unknown age, dressed in a sober black coat and skirt and high heels.
Vélez was charged with drug trafficking by a New York court in May 2012, but apparently she has never been in prison.
FBI agent Steven Marston told the El Chapo trial that Vélez had been approached in Colombia in September 2012 to work as an informant in the investigation against El Chapo and Alex Cifuentes.
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Vélez agreed not to go to jail, the FBI paid her $ 290,000, and when her life was in danger in 2013, they transferred her to the United States and gave her a special visa for cooperating witnesses.
The woman hinted that she is part of the US government’s witness protection program today and has a new identity.
He stated that he wanted to tell his story “so as not to be a name without a face”.
“I’ve lost everything”
It all started with the friendship between Vélez and Colombian narco Alex Cifuentes, Chapo’s partner.
Cifuentes, a prosecution witness in El Chapo’s trial, said Andrea was his most trusted person. He met her through a Colombian actress and, having nowhere to live, offered her his apartment in Cancun.
Andrea soon became his secretary, spokesman and right-hand man. He handled all his change, bought his clothes, his watches and all his personal belongings. According to Chapo’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, up to “$ 500 sheets”.
According to the Latinus portal, it published the images corresponding to the night of January 8, 2016, the day that Guzmán Loera was captured along with his hitman, Orso Iván Gastélum “El Cholo Iván”. Photo / video recording LatinUs
She coordinated her schedule and her contacts, and as her spokesperson, she met members of Colombian guerrillas from the FARC, with drug traffickers from Canada or Ecuador, or with corrupt military personnel.
He also ran a modeling agency in Mexico City, a front company that supplied prostitutes to Mexican soldiers, all paid for by El Chapo.
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“I confess that I have sinned, but I paid a heavy price for it,” said Velez at the verdict. Because of “my dream of greatness, I lost my family, my friends, I became a nameless shadow. I had everything and lost everything, even my identity ”.
Without telling him the truth, El Chapo used her as bait in 2013 to kidnap the Ecuadorian army captain Telmo Castro in a restaurant “with a squad of men armed with AK47s,” an incident that continues to give Vélez “nightmares”.
Around that time, at the request of the Mexican capo, Vélez offered an unidentified Mexican general $ 10 million to stop the hunt for El Chapo, but turned down the offer. El Chapo, enraged, said that Vélez was lying and decided to kill her, Cifuentes said.
However, everything indicates that Vélez worked with the FBI for more than a year and that El Chapo may have found out that she was an informant.
“She betrayed my employer,” said Cifuentes.
El Chapo Guzmán on the day he was taken to maximum security prison. AFP photo
The Colombian narco said they, along with El Chapo, decided to hire the Hells Angels to kill Vélez while she was in Canada.
But in November 2013, the day he was due to meet a gang boss to work out the details, Cifuentes was detained by Mexican police and imprisoned.
During the hearing, Vélez said that he had some sense of Stockholm syndrome and that his friends became “his kidnappers.”
“They reminded me that if I left I could only put it in a plastic bag and with my feet forward”