Essay On Organized Crime

Organized crime is a major problem throughout the world. From as early as the nineteenth century, organized crime has not only affected the United States but several other countries including Russia, Japan, Italy, and Mexico. Organized crime is defined as a “structured group of three or more persons existing for a long period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.” (Lyman, 2015) The criminal activities and offenses these groups engage in can vary from group to group but most commonly involve racketeering, extortion, trafficking of drugs, humans, or arms, money laundering, and murder. Organized crime groups

It was founded by two men who go by the names, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Hector Luis Palma Salazar. Guzman was born in Badiraguato, Mexico where he entered the drug trade when he was just a teenager. After being kicked out of the family home Guzman was forced to provide for himself. He began to grow and sell marijuana and later became involved with Salazar. By his late twenties he became involved with another drug lord, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, who was the founder of the Guadalajara cartel. Guzman quickly became the most powerful and dangerous drug trafficker in Mexico due to Gallardo’s arrest. Guzman inherited some of Gallardo’s territory which led to him becoming the founder of his own cartel known as the Sinaloa Cartel. (Aldrich, 2017) The Sinaloa Cartel mainly operated in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, the Western District of Texas, and other states in Mexico and the United States. The gang consisted of several members who engaged in criminal activities such as money laundering, murder, kidnapping, and bribery. Most of the gangs income came from smuggling drugs such as marijuana and cocaine into the United States which added to their yearly net income which $3 billion. (Pike,