Cowboy Cartel is the unbelievable true story of unlikely hero Scott Lawson, a rookie FBI agent from rural Tennessee, whose investigation took down the Treviño brothers, the leaders of Los Zetas, one of the most powerful cartels in Mexico. While the Treviños terrorized thousands in their pursuit of power, money and influence, Lawson risked his life on a hunch: tracking their brother’s racehorse transactions in the United States, infiltrating the deadly cartel and uncovering their international money laundering operations. “Cowboy Cartel” features first-time interviews with FBI agent Scott Lawson, who broke the case; IRS agent Steve Pennington; Irving police officers Steve Junker, Brian Schutt and Kim Williams; Assistant United States Attorney Doug Gardner; Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Ginger Thompson; and Joe Tone, the author of “Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream,” among many others.
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00:00My first week as an FBI agent, my boss told me, here we work against the Zetas.
00:18All the cartels use violence to achieve their aims.
00:20The Zetas took it to a different level.
00:22Their calling card was brutality.
00:24Anyone who stood up to them would wind up dead.
00:28When you think of the drug cartels, you think of the drugs, you think of the violence, you
00:31think of money, but you do not think of horses.
00:40It's ranchers and wealthy businessmen who usually populate the winner's circle.
00:45But all of a sudden, there's this new owner who keeps winning named Jose Trevino.
00:50The Trevino brothers run the Zetas cartel.
00:53The suspicion was that the cartel is laundering money through racehorse operations.
00:58How are you going to prove this business is illegal?
01:01Scott was in way over his head.
01:04It was a chance to dismantle the Zetas in a way that has never been done before.
01:11You got to have hard evidence.
01:14There's millions upon millions of dollars.
01:15We have to follow the money and put your own safety at risk.
01:20Here we go.
01:21Twelve hundred law enforcement personnel had to target the Zetas on the same day.
01:26Three years of investigation could all be ruined overnight.
01:29My biggest fear was that every target was going to go to Mexico and be untouchable.