Mexico arrests major drug kingpin

Authorities caught up with the kingpin in the northern city of Torreon, the source said.

Both the Mexican and U.S. governments offered multimillion-dollar rewards for information leading to the arrest of Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, who, according to the FBI, inherited the leadership of the drug cartel founded by his late brother.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known for his fleet of smuggling aircraft as the "lord of the skies," died in 1997 after undergoing plastic surgery to disguise his identity.

Another sibling involved in the business, Alberto Carrillo Fuentes, was nabbed in September 2013.

The Carrillo Fuentes organization is based in Ciudad Juarez, a city just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

In August 2000, a federal grand jury in Texas handed down a 46-count indictment against Vicente Carrillo Fuentes for drug trafficking, money laundering, murder and racketeering.

Vicente, 52, also faces a raft of charges in Mexico.

Another top kingpin, Hector Beltran Leyva, was apprehended Oct. 1 in the central Mexican town of San Miguel Allende.

Mexico City daily Reforma reported in August that several of the country's major drug cartels were pursuing an alliance.

The Carrillo Fuentes organization and Los Zetas were among the groups trying to create a "cartel of cartels," the newspaper said in a front-page story that cited unnamed intelligence sources.

The impetus to band together came after each of the criminal outfits has experience significant setbacks, the sources told Reforma.

Senior figures from the Jalisco Nueva Generacion Cartel, the Carrillo Fuentes mob, Los Zetas and the Beltran Leyva cartel met in June in Piedras Negras, a city in the northern border state of Coahuila, according to the sources.

Reforma did not mention any involvement by the Sinaloa cartel, reputed to be Mexico's most-powerful drug trafficking organization, whose top boss, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was apprehended in February after 13 years on the run.

Conflict among rival cartels and between the criminals and security forces has claimed well over 100,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderon decided to militarize the struggle against the drug trade.

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