This week he was arrested in Miami for real estate fraud, but he has a long history in the organization of the North Valley cartel. Part of his story was told in the TV series 'El cartel de los sapos'.
Without much news, Colombian doctor Carlos Ramón Zapata was arrested in Miami last Thursday for real estate fraud. A Florida prosecutor accused him of participating in an illegal company that, through false documents, defrauded several mortgage firms. He was also accused of money laundering. What was not said in the police reports was that Víctor Julián Patiño Asprilla, son of drug trafficker Víctor Patiño Fómeque, was arrested with him, and that Zapata himself has a long history in the world of the mafia.
Born in Pamplona but raised in Medellín, Carlos Ramón Zapata studied medicine at the Pontifical Bolivarian University, but at the time he began to practice his profession he became involved in drug trafficking, first in Antioquia and later in the north of the Valley, at a time when this organization took the lead in shipping tons of cocaine to Europe. It was the time when the authorities were focused on fighting the Cali cartel and the drug traffickers from the north of the Valley had become the czars of the illicit business.
But just as the big bosses of the criminal dimensions of Orlando Henao or Víctor Patiño Fómeque prospered in the activity, in their shadow the youngest members of the organization also began to become millionaires, among whom were Juan Carlos Ramírez, alias Chupeta; Árcange Henao, Andrés López, alias Florecita; Miguel Solano and Zapata himself, who for obvious reasons began to be called The Doctor. As he himself acknowledged, in one year up to 40 tons of cocaine were transported from the Pacific on routes to Europe and the United States.
The business went smoothly until the internal wars came. Although at the time of the capture of the brothers Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, between June and August 1995, the most notorious bosses in the north of the Valley had surrendered to justice to settle their accounts with meager sentences, due to the denunciations and Suspicions about the management of power began to die down. The first to fall was Efraín Hernández, alias Don Efra, in November 1996, but that same year there were two attacks that marked the direction of the mafia.
The first in March 1996, when Wílber Varela, alias Jabón, head of Orlando Henao's hitmen, alias The Man in Overalls, was shot on the road between Cali and Rozo. He was miraculously saved by the reaction of his bodyguards Javier and Luis Enrique Calle Serna, who took him injured to a clinic in Cali. Two months later, these same individuals entered the Rodizio Río de Enero restaurant with bullets and murdered Miguel Rodríguez's brother-in-law and three of his bodyguards. The boss's son, William Rodríguez Abadía, survived badly injured.
At the same time that the mafias of Cali and the north of the Valley waged their war without quarter, the unnoticed like Carlos Ramón Zapata enjoyed the profits of the business and made their own. As he would tell it years later, around that same time Zapata imported a program from Spain to carry out experiments and search for a treatment against AIDS. He smuggled monkeys from the Amazon to perform his exams, in the company of two other doctors. Incidentally, he continued to be linked to drug traffickers and their network of illicit businesses.
At the end of 1997, as a result of pressure from the United States, via Congress, the Samper government revived the extradition of nationals. This new ingredient further encouraged violence between the mafias of Cali and the Valley. Within a few days of each other, at the end of 1998, the bosses Hélmer Pacho Herrera and Orlando Henao were murdered. The first in the Palmira prison and the second in La Picota in Bogotá. A year later, in October 1999, 'Operation Millennium' came, more than 30 drug traffickers were captured and the stampede began.
Although the mafia war temporarily ceased, everyone ended up fleeing extradition. Among them Carlos Ramón Zapata and those like him who were not well known. But as greed breaks the bank, some of the drug traffickers who had settled their sentences with justice reoffended again. The most notorious case was that of Víctor Patiño Fómeque, who after activating his routes, was captured in April 2002 and extradited to the United States in December of the same year. It would not take long for the war to the death to restart.
With new judicial conditions, in exchange for his denunciation, Patiño Fómeque received benefits. But this path, which soon began to be imitated by other gangsters, was considered by the new bosses as a betrayal and the response was violent. Patiño's family suffered the consequences and the new boss of bosses in the Valley, Wílber Varela, imposed his law. His main opponent was Diego León Montoya, alias Don Diego, and between 'Rastrojos' and 'Machos', hitmen from both sides, they sowed death in the west of the country.
Partly fleeing the war and also to settle his accounts in the United States, one of the first to migrate and surrender to North American justice was Carlos Ramón Zapata. As fate would have it, he ended up sharing a cell with Andrés López, alias Florecita. Zapata says that he started to write a book about his life, but that he showed it to López, who decided to go ahead and wrote his own. It was titled El cartel de los sapos, which was an editorial best-seller and later a success in the Canal Caracol series of the same name.
With a luxury cast, the television series told the details of a drug trafficking cartel that ended up decimated by denunciations and murders. The role of Carlos Ramón Zapata was played by the talented actor Andrés Parra, who in exchange for the alias El Médico, acted under the pseudonym Anestesia. The fiction was a box office hit, but the reality continued to be violent. Only the two giants of the war ended badly. Wílber Varela was murdered in January 2008 and Diego León Montoya extradited at the end of that same year.
The heir to the northern Valle cartel, now called the 'Los Rastrojos' gang, is Javier Antonio Calle Serna, alias Comba or Combatiente. His right-hand man is his brother Luis Enrique, but his criminal monopoly was suddenly altered by the return of another boss willing to regain his power: Víctor Patiño Fómeque himself, who settled his accounts with the United States justice system in June 2010. Now It is not known whether from Colombia or Mexico, he is avenging what was done to his family.
And his main support is alias Martín Bala, who in addition to having been one of Diego León Montoya's lieutenants, and therefore a mortal enemy of Jabón and of course the Comba, wants to exact his own revenge however he was a victim of an attack in August 2005 in Cali and had to spend several years in Europe. It is said that he returned last year and that he joined Víctor Patiño to combat his archenemies of yesterday and partners from the 90s in the dark cartel in the north of the Valley.
In these rounds, according to the authorities, in recent months Víctor Julián Patiño Asprilla, the son of Víctor Patiño Fómeque, traveled to Colombia twice, to orchestrate plans with Martín Bala. Except that last Thursday he was arrested in Miami along with Carlos Ramón Zapata, who after settling his accounts with the justice system, demonstrates once again that whoever walks the walk, something sticks to him. It is said that he was the man who kept the money for Patiño Fómeque. The truth is that for now he will have to answer for fraud and money laundering.
The delivery of the 'Comba' brothers. For about a month now, a rumor has been emerging among authorities, lawyers and drug traffickers that the brothers Javier Antonio and Luis Enrique Calle Serna would be in negotiations to surrender to United States justice. According to the newspaper El País de Cali, those in charge of handling the matter by the North American justice system are prosecutor Carolyn O'Connor of the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn) and two special agents of the DEA.
Although some authorities in Colombia have denied that there is negotiation for a future delivery, the Valle del Cauca newspaper has indicated that Javier Antonio Calle Serna already has the advice of lawyers both in Colombia and in the United States and everything is aimed at an eventual dismantling of the organization. , legal guarantees and protection of family members.
Calle Serna and nine men from his group are accused of trafficking 25 tons of cocaine, money laundering and murder.
The submission of Víctor Patiño Fómeque. On June 24, 1995, drug trafficker Víctor Patiño Fómeque surrendered to the authorities. At the time of his surrender, alias El Químico had an arrest warrant for the crimes of drug trafficking and illicit enrichment. It was the government of then President Ernesto Samper and his Minister of Defense, Fernando Botero.
Patiño was a member of the National Police, but once he retired from the institution he recorded an unusual increase in assets. With only basic primary education, almost overnight he became the owner of financial investment companies, mining exporters, hotels, fishing firms and boats.
Once his surrender took place, there was expectation among the authorities for that of other drug trafficking bosses, such as Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela, José Santacruz Londoño, Hélmer Pacho Herrera and Phanor Arizabaleta. Patiño managed drug refining in Chocó for the cartel.
