JAY, Okla. — Andrew Scott Pierson’s ordeal began on a distant Oklahoma farm and resulted in a cartel scorching zone after Mexican officers surrounded him and marched him out of Mexico.
His journey from America’s heartland to life in a risky border city began in 2012 along with his rise to prominence as a gun professional and cartel go-to man. It ended along with his public downfall two weeks earlier than Christmas in 2018 in the midst of a suburban avenue.
Officers carrying black tactical gear and face masks surrounded him with machine weapons inside his gated neighborhood within the metropolis of Nuevo Laredo, 5 miles from the Laredo, Texas, border.
Police put Pierson, then age 43, at the back of their truck the evening of Dec. 10, 2018, and drove him to the border. From there, the policemen pulled and tugged Pierson midway throughout the Gateway to the Americas Worldwide Bridge that stretches throughout the Rio Grande, their toes nearing a yellow line on the pavement that marks the precise divide of countries.
Pierson, topping 500 kilos, then walked to the American aspect guided by ready officers with U.S. Customs and Border Safety.
An officer advised Pierson he was underneath arrest on a fugitive warrant obtained by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on a cost of being a felon in possession of a firearm. However he did not know the ATF was mounting a a lot bigger case.
Pierson jeered: “You go into Mexico and you’ve got individuals drug out by the military for that?”
Throughout a police interview at a close-by Texas jail, Pierson chatted for 2 and a half hours, typically laughing and infrequently boasting, telling the brokers with the ATF and Homeland Safety Investigations that he did not need to make them “starstruck” about his interactions with high-ranking cartel members, together with prime U.S. targets.
He talked about cartel supervisors’ love of “bling’d out” weapons with gold triggers, and the way he ordered a boss designer Versace gun grips.
Pierson’s interview and case offers a uncommon glimpse on the lifetime of an American embedded with a Mexican drug cartel.
He and different U.S. criminals play a key position serving to cartels thrive by arming them, since Mexico has just one gun retailer and limits military-grade weapons to members of its federal police pressure and army. Some U.S. brokers name the incessant southbound move of weapons the “iron river,” and cartel members dub it the “hormiga,” Spanish for ant, akin to an ant path.
Pierson dodged questions on his personal position in trafficking gun elements, together with faking out cartel members by promoting them do-it-yourself assault rifles fraudulently stamped within the U.S. with the distinguished title model Colt, stated Edwin Starr, the ATF particular agent who led the trouble to ship Pierson to jail.
“He knew, if the cartel discovered he was giving them counterfeits, that may be dangerous for him,” Starr stated.
Investigators additionally consider when weapons malfunctioned in Mexico, the cartel paid Pierson to repair them.
When investigators searched Pierson’s dwelling in Mexico in addition to his laptop and telephones, they discovered a video of a cartel member standing outdoors on a sunny day attempting to fireplace an assault rifle, whereas younger kids are heard fortunately taking part in close by. Brokers say the person requested for assist in Spanish to repair the weapon, a faux designer gun.
Pierson advised brokers he’d reveal extra of his life in Mexico later, however he by no means talked to them once more.
He pleaded responsible in 2021 to conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Management Act, and a decide sentenced him in 2022 to serve 12 years in federal jail, the place parole shouldn’t be an choice.
He had lobbied for a a lot lighter sentence, however throughout the listening to, Starr advised the decide why Pierson’s crimes matter.
“He is including to the amount of weapons that the Mexican cartels are going to make use of to struggle one another and to struggle Mexican police,” stated Starr, who has since retired.
“A few of that violence is not going to remain in Mexico, it’ll have an effect on the U.S. brokers combatting violence alongside the border, and it will spill over into American cities.”
In February, Pierson gave his first public interview throughout a name from a federal jail in Texarkana to a reporter for the Louisville Courier Journal, a part of the USA TODAY Community. He detailed a few of his harmful interactions with cartel members, his enterprise journey to the favored Pacific Coast resort city of Puerto Vallarta and the motive behind the savage homicide of considered one of his closest buddies.
“Once you cross the dominant cartel in your space, your life expectancy is mainly nil,” Pierson stated.
“The border city I labored in was stuffed with sociopaths,” Pierson stated of his years in Nuevo Laredo, which he advised brokers was the “ghetto of narcos.”
Starr testified in court docket that in Nuevo Laredo, “the extent of violence within the intelligence studies I noticed described it as historic and horrific.”
That is the place Pierson introduced his mom, Betty Joann Prepare dinner, to reside in her personal place in 2016, saying she fell behind on payments after a bout with most cancers.
“It was both that or a nursing dwelling,” Pierson stated.
Brokers say Prepare dinner advised them cartel members deliberate to maneuver her to a furnished upscale dwelling and use her place as a weapons stash home, reasoning that police would not suspect an older white woman.
Prepare dinner did not converse Spanish and felt remoted, changing into so depressing and scared within the cartel-dominated city, she considered committing suicide by cop, strolling down a public avenue and elevating a firearm to trigger officers to fireplace on her, brokers declare in court docket paperwork.
She ended up discovering one other method out, regardless of Pierson’s plan to maintain her there.
To piece collectively Pierson’s crimes and seize, The Courier Journal sifted by court docket information and transcripts and traveled to Arkansas and Oklahoma to interview brokers, prosecutors and the shocking tipster who uncovered Pierson’s scheme.
When requested how he bought concerned with cartels, Pierson advised a reporter: “It positively was unusual.”
“If I advised you ways all this bought began, you would not consider me. If I advised you I began off as a authorities informant, what would you say?”
When requested for his confidential supply or informant quantity, the title of his handler and the federal government company concerned, he declined to reply and shut off all communications.
Starr, the lead ATF agent within the case that despatched Pierson to jail, stated he checked with different businesses however discovered nothing to corroborate that story. He concluded that Pierson stayed in Mexico as a result of he was a fugitive on the run from U.S. brokers, not secretly working to assist them.
In September 2014, ATF brokers had raided the Oklahoma farm the place Pierson arrange his rip-off inside a big transportable constructing outdoors his mom’s home, ordering gun elements and forwarding them to a cartel affiliate in Laredo.
Quickly after, Pierson known as the Tulsa ATF workplace and stated he was working with cartels close to the border and provided to be an informant, reaching Particular Agent Carlos Sandoval. Sandoval advised him in regards to the search warrant for the farm and suggested Pierson to return to the U.S.
Pierson refused and tried his luck by making an analogous provide to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Houston. Pierson, thought of unreliable due to his lies, once more was rejected.
Starr stated businesses use informants to catch a giant fish. They did not need to make a cope with Pierson as a result of “Pierson was the fish.”
A lethal betrayal
In Nuevo Laredo, Pierson arrange an auto diesel restore store in a constructing that stretched practically a block.
He claimed to have native and federal authorities contracts to work on all the pieces from patrol automobiles to ambulances and gasoline supply vehicles. He lived in an house within the again and claimed Julio Garcia, a member of the notoriously violent Los Zetas cartel, dropped in to demand a “quota,” an extortion or safety payment.
Garcia arrange a desk at Pierson’s store, and the 2 turned buddies and ultimately roommates.
Years later, whereas standing earlier than a decide pleading for leniency, Pierson downplayed his involvement with Garcia and the cartel.
However the evening of his arrest, he bragged.
“I am not attempting to make y’all starstruck or nothing,” Pierson advised U.S. brokers. “But it surely’s been loads of work for the final six years.”
He described assembly drug lord Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, often called “Z-40,” the co-leader of Los Zetas in 2012. Trevino was captured in 2013 after the U.S. provided a $5 million reward to assist discovering him.
“I met the massive man as soon as earlier than you bought him,” Pierson stated.
“You could not even look him within the eyes once you talked to him. It’s important to take a look at the bottom. This man’s burned children, stuffed children in barrels of acid. He is killed households.”
Pierson advised brokers the earlier proprietor of his diesel restore store additionally labored with the cartel till his arrest in Texas.
“He laundered cash for (Z-40) and bought picked up in San Antonio and misplaced $3 million,” Pierson stated. “The Zetas ended up choosing up his brother, Roberto, chopped into items and thrown in the midst of the road.”
Pierson, ignorant to many customs and cartel protocols, known as Trevino “Papi,” usually used as a colloquial time period for “Daddy.” The drug lord retorted: “Name me seňor!”
Los Zetas morphed into the Cártel del Noreste, or Northeast Cartel, often called CDN. Pierson advised brokers his pal Garcia turned the “armero,” in command of weapons for CDN chief Juan Gerardo Trevino-Chavez, known as “Huevo.”
“I ordered him a pair of gold customized Versace grips for his Tremendous 38” semi-automatic handgun, Pierson later testified.
Pierson largely stayed indoors working or watching TV, saying he felt like he was in jail.
“You may’t actually exit and social gathering,” he stated. “You are the white man on the town. Everyone’s gonna snitch on you. You may get picked up by the boss, who’ll say: “What are you doing? You are purported to be laying low.'”
He was excited when he thought Garcia deliberate a seaside trip to Puerto Vallarta, a well-liked seaside resort city within the western state of Jalisco.
“We had been purported to have enjoyable and hang around with scorching chicks,” he stated.
As a substitute, they met key members of an much more violent and highly effective cartel, the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, often called New Era or CJNG. It is a prime U.S. goal blamed, together with the Sinaloa Cartel, for fueling America’s deadliest drug epidemic.
Pierson advised brokers he and Garcia met with a prime CJNG member at a Denny’s restaurant in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest metropolis and CJNG’s headquarters.
Afterward, Pierson and Garcia adopted CJNG orders to journey hours northeast of Puerto Vallarta deep into the mountains of Jalisco. They handed vacationer bike trails and fragrant marijuana fields on filth roads.
Once they reached the cartel compound, Pierson claimed he repaired an assault rifle for a cartel supervisor and mentioned future enterprise.
Pierson later realized that whereas he was visiting the CJNG hideout, there have been 40 vehicles of CJNG gunmen on the base of the mountain ready with radios to hurry in if the native chief, El Sapo, determined he did not belief Pierson, the “gringo.”
Again in Nuevo Laredo, Pierson thought CJNG ignored Garcia over a misunderstanding, however he later realized that Garcia started trafficking its cocaine.
CJNG is a brilliant cartel, detected on each continent besides Antarctica, however rival cartel CDN nonetheless controls key border cities, together with Nuevo Laredo.
One way or the other, CDN realized of the betrayal, catching Garcia in Nuevo Laredo with a cargo hidden beneath a vacationer bus. The cartel leaders summoned Garcia to a wooded space, together with one other man and a married couple, believed to be Garcia’s kin. Solely the person returned.
The opposite three had been boiled in giant barrels in a “guiso,” or human stew. DEA brokers have stated cartels generally use this ugly tactic to rule by fear.
Hours earlier than Garcia disappeared to report back to his bosses, he had warned Pierson: “Keep in your own home. I do not know what is going on on.”
Pierson stated: “I’d have been picked up and useless, too, however I did not become involved within the drug half.”
After Garcia’s homicide, investigators say Pierson rose in energy and reconstructed the gun ring. U.S. brokers later discovered textual content messages of Pierson recruiting individuals to arrange financial institution accounts that he managed and paying them to make use of their identities to purchase gun elements.
Earlier than his arrest, Pierson stated, CDN supervisors advised him they had been getting ready for a battle and needed him to arm 80 members with all the pieces from protecting vests and helmets to military-grade weapons.
Pierson stated the cartel additionally was “determined for grenades,” however he did not become involved in these. Mexican officers later discovered elements used to make grenade launchers in a home Pierson had shared with Garcia. Pierson blamed his useless pal.
Pierson advised brokers that weapons had been simple to sneak throughout the border. The cartel typically bought a name from a corrupt border agent on the U.S. aspect as soon as the agent was about to go on shift.
“The decision goes by on the radio: “OK, Bridge 2 is open,'” Pierson stated, which means the cartel may transfer weapons or medication with out being stopped.
Pierson’s mom was spooked by the cartel’s energy and located a method out of Mexico. In Could 2018, she fell and injured her shoulder and headed to a Texas hospital.
Brokers consider Pierson advised his mom to return after therapy, however she refused and took a airplane to Michigan to reside with kin, abandoning 40 of her beloved chihuahuas. Prepare dinner declined remark when reached by telephone by The Courier Journal final yr and once more in February.
Pierson advised brokers his well being had been declining, and he deliberate to spend the remainder of his life in Mexico. He did not know {that a} enterprise affiliate in Arkansas, a state he by no means visited and a person he by no means met, would finish his life on the run.
Oklahoma’s ‘Machine Gun Nook’
In rural Oklahoma, brokers say Pierson started an elaborate rip-off making designer knockoff assault rifles.
Pierson first hit brokers’ radar in March 2014, when ATF brokers found Pierson, already a convicted felon barred from even proudly owning a single gun, created the username “Ozarkcart,” and in 2013 purchased elements simply restorable to show into functioning machine weapons, Starr stated.
ATF brokers hoped to seek out Pierson on Sept. 30, 2014, once they crept up on his household farm in Jay, Oklahoma, 83 miles northeast of Tulsa. Almost a dozen brokers in tactical gear rushed in, looking out each closet and nook.
Prepare dinner, also called Betty Kendall, shouted, “what are you guys doing right here?” and cursed on the brokers.
“We lastly bought her calmed down,” stated Sandoval, one of many ATF brokers who searched the house. He briefly spoke to Pierson on the telephone and urged him to return to the U.S., however Pierson stated he did not know when that may occur.
The federal raid of an space house is now legendary within the small neighborhood, stated Eddie Wayne Peacher, who works for an Oklahoma Metropolis engineering firm. His household now owns the property.
“They nicknamed that place ‘Machine Gun Nook,'” Peacher stated of native residents. “Apparently, he was promoting computerized weapons out of the storage.”
Prepare dinner advised brokers containers got here and went, however she thought they contained automobile elements.
Brokers say Pierson organized the cargo of decrease receivers, the decrease a part of assault rifles, to a person in Northern California who engraved the do-it-yourself weapons with markings resembling these of the Colt’s Manufacturing Co., a favourite model of cartels. The faux stamp included a serial quantity and the situation of Hartford, Connecticut, the place professional Colts are made.
From right here, the gun elements had been mailed to a gunsmith who lives close to Little Rock, Arkansas, who makes a speciality of coating weapons with a uninteresting, black ceramic-based end that protects towards scratches.
“They got here from California, and so they needed them coated and shipped to Nuevo Laredo,” the gunsmith advised a reporter, asking for his title to be withheld for his safety. “That is form of a bizarre path to be going. Each alarm bell in my head was going off.”
He knew that Colt did not have a manufacturing facility in California and did not promote decrease receivers, solely absolutely assembled weapons.
Colts are the higher echelon, he stated, in comparison with the elements despatched to him, which had been of “far much less high quality.”
The gunsmith tipped off Little Rock ATF and agent Starr launched an investigation in August 2017 that led him to Pierson after the agent and a U.S. Postal Service Inspector traced financial institution information and on-line purchases.
Starr, a veteran ATF agent, requested for assist from ATF’s attaché in Mexico in 2017.
In December, the Mexican Lawyer Common’s Workplace despatched police to look Pierson’s dwelling, They used a flat mattress truck to haul away proof, together with machines to make firearms, machine gun elements and bins of ammunition, together with .50-caliber bullets able to ripping by tanks and downing plane.
The federal officers in Mexico drove the proof to a warehouse outdoors town to maintain it out of attain of any corrupt native police. The ATF attaché was allowed to {photograph} the proof, later used within the Arkansas case.
If Pierson serves his time and is launched from an American jail and crosses the border once more, the Mexican authorities may prosecute him on their very own expenses.
‘The place are your weapons? The place is your store?’
Pierson’s time in Mexico got here to a traumatic halt on Dec. 10, 2018. What follows is his model on that day:
He headed dwelling for lunch at about 1:30 p.m. and pulled into his gated neighborhood, a three-minute drive northeast of the U.S. Consulate. 4 males in plain garments hopped out of a crimson automobile with weapons drawn and pulled him out of his Chevrolet Silverado, saying they had been “inner safety.”
Three males searched his truck whereas the one in cost questioned him. Then, Pierson noticed a white Chevrolet truck with brown fenders and a state police emblem.
Officers wearing black uniforms with helmets and physique armor walked as much as Pierson carrying machine weapons, ordering him into the again of their truck. They pulled his T-shirt over his face.
At first, Pierson wasn’t too involved. He knew this sort of factor occurred in Mexico. He thought he was being arrested on some minor cost.
He peeked by the skinny threads of his T-shirt and watched because the truck made a sequence of turns. Once they handed the courthouse and headed out of city, the panic hit.
The truck drove off the primary freeway, onto filth roads, and stopped close to a dilapidated shack. Then, Pierson noticed industrial-size barrels, those utilized by cartels to eliminate human stays.
Sitting on a steel bench at the back of the truck, he tried to plant his toes to withstand being moved. He stated one of many males struck him within the head with the butt of a shotgun, knocking him out.
When he got here to, males had been dragging him towards the constructing.
“My head damage,” he recalled. “I used to be seeing stars.”
He overheard two of the boys questioning: “In the event that they chop the fats one up, how lengthy is it going to take to place him within the barrel?”
Pierson noticed a steel pole protruding from a concrete slab and he raced to it and held on to withstand being pulled towards the barrels.
Somebody kicked him within the again, inflicting him to let go of the pole and topple to the bottom.
“This was probably the most ache I had ever been in,” Pierson stated. “I used to be moaning. It took my breath away.”
One of many males requested him: “The place are your weapons? The place is your store?”
He gave the tackle of the auto diesel restore store, which police discovered deserted a month earlier.
The person persevered: “No, no, no. We would like the store the place you make weapons.”
Pierson, who denied manufacturing weapons, shook his head in disagreement. The person smacked him at the back of the top and, in Spanish, advised him to not lie.
That they had been on the rural location for just a few hours. It was getting darkish and chilly.
The officers ordered Pierson again within the truck and pulled his T-shirt over his head, however this time the evening sky obscured his view. They drove till they reached a safe parking zone close to the Nuevo Laredo bridge to the U.S.
Pierson noticed two vehicles stuffed with Mexican army. He stated one of many state law enforcement officials threatened: “They’ll get their solutions.”
Pierson stated the army unit requested extra questions as he continued to lie, claiming: “I do not know something about arms.”
He tried bargaining, promising to not report something that occurred in the event that they let him return dwelling.
Then he took extra of a forceful tone, claiming he was a Mexican citizen with the proper to see a decide. “I need my bail. I need my lawyer.”
An officer advised him he was needed within the U.S. Pierson later recalled: “That is when my jaw dropped. I used to be like, ‘Oh my God. All of that is due to the People.'”
Police handcuffed Pierson, and two males pulled on his arms and two tugged at his waist till they reached the halfway level of the bridge.
He stated a deputy U.S. Marshal took him into custody. Customs officers patted Pierson down for weapons, fingerprinted and photographed him, claiming they did not see any indicators of abuse.
An ATF agent from Laredo teamed with the Homeland Safety Investigations agent to query Pierson at an space jail.
After the interview, Pierson collapsed on the ground.
He claims he feared he was about to die from a coronary heart assault. Medical doctors at an space hospital discovered one minor contusion on his again, however no indicators of the prolonged abuse he described. They attributed his well being issues to diabetes and weight problems and launched him inside just a few hours.
Pierson’s legal professional unsuccessfully fought to get his assertion tossed out due to the alleged misconduct by Mexican police. A decide in Arkansas and an appellate court docket dominated that U.S. brokers weren’t complicit if abuse occurred throughout the border.
Pierson additionally claimed his father is Mexican, giving him Mexican citizenship — one thing each international locations dispute. Pierson’s mom advised brokers her son and his father are from Virginia, and she or he is a local of Iowa. Pierson claimed he was entitled to an extradition listening to earlier than a Mexican decide.
A deputy U.S. Marshal testified that Pierson returned to the U.S. voluntarily, fearful the cartel would hear of his arrest and get to him if he ended up in a Mexican jail, in response to a transcript of the suppression listening to. He knew secrets and techniques and had met high-ranking cartel members.
Throughout his sentencing listening to, Pierson addressed the decide and blamed the cartel.
“When the cartel first approached me, I believed it was a approach to get out of their sick graces once they would come round and tax me” Pierson stated. “I want I had had extra of a spine. And I actually want I hadn’t stopped in Nuevo Laredo.”
Assistant U.S. Lawyer Anne Gardner efficiently argued for a jail sentence larger than the federal pointers, saying: “He stood right here in the present day and testified and barely took duty for something.
“He’s a con man, your honor,” the prosecutor stated. “He’ll get out, and he’ll discover one other con.”
This text initially appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Oklahoma man cons Mexican drug cartel with counterfeit Colt guns
