Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes was born on 17 July 1966 in the rural community of Culotitlán in Aguililla, Michoacán. His first name was cited as "Rubén" and/or "Nemesio". He had alternative aliases such as "Nemecio", "Rubén Acerguera Cervantes", "Lorenzo Mendoza", and "Nemesio Oseguera Ramos". Some sources state that his birth-given name was Rubén but that he changed it to Nemesio in memory of his godfather. He was widely known by his alias "El Mencho", a nickname that derives from Nemesio. Another nickname was "The Lord of the Roosters", said to be derived from his love for cockfighting.

El Mencho grew up in a poor family that cultivated avocados. He had five brothers: Juan, Miguel, Antonio, Marín, and Abraham. He dropped out of primary school in fifth grade to work in the fields. At the age of 14, he started guarding marijuana plantations. A few years later, he decided he wanted a better life for himself and immigrated illegally to the U.S. state of California in the 1980s. To conceal his identity in the U.S., he used different names and combinations, such as "Rubén Ávila", "José López Prieto", "Miguel Valadez", "Carlos Hernández Mendoza", and "Roberto Salgado", among others.

Time in the U.S.

In 1986, he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was arrested by the San Francisco Police at the age of 19 for stealing property and carrying a loaded gun. Two months after his arrest, his first child was born. According to border entry records, El Mencho crossed the U.S.–Mexico border several times during the late 1980s under other aliases. The DEA and Mexican investigators believe that it was during this time that he became involved in methamphetamine production and trade in Redwood City, alongside his brother-in-law Abigael González Valencia (alias "El Cuini").

In 1989, El Mencho was arrested again in San Francisco for selling narcotics. He was deported to Mexico several months later, but re-entered the U.S. and resettled in San Francisco. In September 1992, he was arrested again, this time on federal drug charges in Sacramento, California. According to court records, El Mencho and his brother Abraham were at a San Francisco bar known as the Imperial to carry out a heroin deal: five ounces for US$9,500. Abraham was in charge of the transaction, while El Mencho acted as a lookout. El Mencho was 26 years old at the time, much younger than Abraham, but was savvy enough to recognize that the transaction was a set-up by the police. He told his brother that the men to whom they gave the heroin handed over perfectly stacked dollar bills instead of loose ones. Through a wiretap conversation, the police overheard El Mencho warning his brother to never do business with them again since they were undercover cops.

Family

El Mencho had five brothers: Juan, Miguel, Antonio, Marín, and Abraham. In the 1990s, Abraham was given a 10-year prison sentence in California. In 2013, Mexican authorities accused him of murder in Michoacán. The charges were later dropped and the case was closed.

Marín was accused in a California court, but the charges are not available to the public. Antonio lived in the U.S. and was released from a Mississippi prison in 2001 after completing a sentence for property damage. He was arrested in Jalisco on 4 December 2015, by the Mexican Army and Navy for working as one of El Mencho's top financial operators. According to the Mexican government, Juan and Miguel are involved with the CJNG. Juan was charged in Michoacán for burglary, but the case was later dismissed.

Rosalinda González Valencia was El Mencho's wife. They had three children: Jessica Johanna Oseguera González, Laisha, and Rubén Oseguera González (alias "El Menchito). Jessica Johanna is married to Julio Alberto Castillo Rodríguez (alias "El Ojo de Vidrio"), first arrested on 1 May 2015. He was released on 1 July for lack of evidence, but was re-arrested again on 6 April 2016, for his involvement in the CJNG.

El Mencho's son Rubén was regarded by the Mexican government as the second-in-command in the CJNG prior to his arrest in 2014. He was released from prison on several occasions for lack of evidence, but was re-arrested each time by the police on additional charges. Rubén was extradited to the United States on 21 February 2020 and was later convicted by a Washington D.C.-based federal jury on various murder, drug trafficking and firearm charges in September 2024.

Mexican authorities suspected in 2016 that Omar Eleazar Oseguera Cervantes was part of the CJNG leadership structure. Though he has the same last names as El Mencho, he was listed as being his nephew and not as one of his brothers. He reportedly works as one of his top security chiefs. El Mencho's brother-in-law Elvis González Valencia was arrested in 2016 as well. He had served as the CJNG's lead financier. He was later released in December 2016.

In May 2018, El Mencho's wife Valencia was arrested on money laundering charges. Rosalinda was later released after being granted a bail of MX$1.5 million (US$78,000) in September 2018, but remains under criminal charges.

In April 2019, El Mencho's godson Adrián Alonso Guerrero Covarrubias was arrested on charges of drug trafficking and kidnapping. Guerrero served as El Mencho's regional head in the Ciénega and northern Los Altos regions in Jalisco, along with southeastern Guanajuato.

In February 2020, El Mencho's daughter Jessica Johanna, 33, known as "La Negra", was arrested in Washington D.C. when she went to see her brother Rubén, who had been extradited to the US for drug trafficking. She was charged with engaging in transactions or dealings in properties with businesses blacklisted by the Treasury Department and providing financial support to the CJNG. She pleaded guilty on 12 March 2021, and on 11 June was sentenced to 2½ years in prison. In April 2022, Jessica Johanna Oseguera González was released from prison.

In November 2021, Valencia, known as "La Jefa," was arrested in Zapopan, Jalisco. At the time of this arrest, El Mencho's wife was found to be the financial chief of the CJNG.

In December 2022, El Mencho's brother Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, known as "El Tony Montana," was arrested during an army raid in Guadalajara. Authorities have stated that he was a logistics operator of the CJNG, supplying weapons, laundering money, and coordinating actions against other cartels. During his arrest, the army confiscated multiple weapons. On 27 February 2025, Antonio was extradited from Mexico to the United States.

In November 2024, El Mencho's son-in-law Cristian Fernando Gutiérrez Ochoa, a high-ranking CJNG leader who notably faked his death and took up residency in California under an assumed identity, was arrested in Riverside, California. Gutiérrez Ochoa was previously reported to be the romantic partner of El Mencho's daughter Laisha in April 2022. El Mencho assisted the scheme to fake Gutiérrez Ochoa's death by falsely telling associates that he killed his son-in-law for lying. The scheme to fake Gutiérrez's death occurred after he was charged with a 2021 kidnapping of two Mexican Navy members. However, the charges for which Gutiérrez was arrested in California involved drug trafficking and money laundering. The U.S. Department of Justice also stated that Laisha had been living with Gutiérrez in the United States, and had even been living in the country just prior to his arrival from Mexico after he faked his death. According to the Justice Department, Gutiérrez fled Mexico in part to join El Mencho's daughter in the United States.

On 20 June 2025, Gutiérrez Ochoa, also known as "El Gaucho," pled guilty in the United States to one count of international money laundering conspiracy, with the charge resulting in him facing a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. In his guilty plea, El Gaucho admitted to being vital to CJNG's money laundering operation, especially from 2023 up to his arrest in 2024, using sophisticated methods involving real estate transactions, shell companies, and international money transfers. On 18 December 2025, Gutierrez-Ochoa was sentenced to serve 140 months (more than 11 years} in a U.S. federal prison.

On 28 February 2025, El Mencho's older brother Abraham, also known "Don Rodo", was recaptured by Mexican authorities. Regarded as a founder of CJNG, Don Rodo was vital to the cartel's money laundering and property purchasing operations, reportedly also working alongside CJNG notary public offices in Ciudad Guzmán and Autlán de Navarro to manage changes of ownership of the properties he purchased for El Mencho. The arrest came a year after Don Rodo was briefly imprisoned for nine days in April 2024. In February 2026, it was reported that Abraham was still "in the hands of Mexican authorities" since his February 2025 arrest.

At the time of his death in February 2026, it was revealed that El Mencho's influence in the CJNG had initially come through his marriage to Valencia. At the same time, it was also revealed by Mexico City-based security consultant David Saucedo that El Mencho's son being jailed in the United States broke the line of succession, with his stepson Juan Carlos Valencia González (“El Pelon”) and only one of El Mencho's brothers being family members most likely to be candidates as his successor. Despite this claim, his brother Abraham was soon afterwards revealed to still be in custody. "El Pelon" was also acknowledged by Saucedo to lack "influence among other cartel commanders. El Mencho's son-in-law Julio Alberto Castillo Rodríguez (“El Chorro”) has also been designated as a CJNG leader as well.

At the time of his death, El Mencho, who separated from Valencia in 2018, was involved with a different romantic partner. Despite this, "El Pelon," his stepson, was still considered to be El Mencho's "de facto second in command" by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence's (DNI) National CounterTerrorism Center. El Pelon was also later confirmed to have succeeded El Mencho as head of the CJNG.

Arrest and deportation

Three weeks after the incident both men were arrested by police. In court, El Mencho insisted that he was innocent. He said he was not involved in the heroin deal and that the undercover agents were lying about him handling the drugs. The prosecution insisted that both siblings were working together. El Mencho was left with few options; if he pleaded not guilty, his brother Abraham—who already had felony drug sentences on his record—would probably face life in prison. His defense understood that if he decided on a jury trial, he would likely be convicted. He decided to plead guilty and protect his brother from life imprisonment. He was sentenced to five years and imprisoned at the Big Spring Correctional Center in Texas, which houses a large population of undocumented immigrants.

After three years he was released from prison on parole and deported to Mexico at the age of 30. In Mexico, he joined the local police forces of Cabo Corrientes and Tomatlán in the state of Jalisco. After some time he left the police and joined organized crime as a full-time member of the Milenio Cartel. To strengthen his relationship with the Milenio Cartel, El Mencho married one of the clan leader's sisters, Rosalinda González Valencia. It was in this criminal group that El Mencho would become a leading figure in organized crime.

The DEA office in Los Angeles, California, tracked El Mencho's activities for many years, and detected that the CJNG had expanded its drug-trafficking operations internationally. In 2000, the U.S. government discovered that El Mencho was involved in an international cocaine and methamphetamine operation. Five years later, they discovered he had used firearms to facilitate his operations.

In 2007, the DEA found that El Mencho was involved in a cocaine operation that went through Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and ended in the United States. They also uncovered a second cocaine shipment from Colombia, Mexico, to the United States. In 2009, the DEA detected that El Mencho was involved in another cocaine shipment originating from Ecuador. Two more shipments were then detected in 2013 from Mexico then again to the United States. In 2014, however, the DEA noticed a radical shift in the CJNG's modus operandi; El Mencho was discovered to have coordinated a methamphetamine shipment that went from Mexico to Australia then to the U.S. by leveraging China-based gangs.

On 27 September 2011, Mexico's Office of the General Prosecutor (PGR) issued an arrest warrant for El Mencho and offered MXN$2 million to anyone who could help provide information that led to his arrest. He was accused of organized crime involvement and illegal possession of firearms. In March 2014, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, based on previous investigations by the DEA, indicted El Mencho for several charges, including drug trafficking and for being the leader of a "Continuing Criminal Enterprise". El Mencho and Abigael were accused of coordinating shipments of cocaine and methamphetamine from South America via Mexico to the United States. They also stated that the CJNG and Los Cuinis coordinated the collection and delivery of the drug proceeds from the U.S. to Mexico. In addition, the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas was looking to convict El Mencho of drug trafficking offenses.

On 18 December 2017, seventeen year-old YouTube star Juan Luis Lagunas Rosales, known as "El Pirata de Culiacán" (English: The Pirate from Culiacán), was gunned down in a bar in Jalisco by a group of four men armed with rifles, shortly after Lagunas Rosales published videotaped insults towards El Mencho. Police are investigating whether El Mencho gave the order to execute him, but no charges have been filed.

On 15 August 2018, the PGR announced they were offering up to MXN$30 million to anyone who provides information that leads to El Mencho's capture. This announcement was made public when the DEA and Mexican authorities prepared to reveal a new cooperation plan against organized crime, which included a stronger focus against their financial structure and the creation of a law enforcement group responsible for investigating international cases. The bounty derives from a new arrest warrant issued against him for his alleged participation in masterminding the kidnapping and murder of two agents of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), a branch of the PGR, in February 2018.

On 16 October 2018, the Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury announced a joint law-enforcement measure against the CJNG, and increased El Mencho's bounty to US$10 million from US$5 million. This increase was one of the largest approved in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program.

In December 2024, it was announced that the bounty on El Mencho would increase from US$10 million to US$15 million.