HomeNewsAnalysisReport: 'Fast & Furious' Guns Found in Colombia
ANALYSIS

Report: 'Fast & Furious' Guns Found in Colombia

ARMS TRAFFICKING / 10 SEP 2012 BY ELYSSA PACHICO EN

Several weapons that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) allegedly allowed to be purchased and moved by straw buyers in the so-called "Fast and Furious" case have reportedly ended up in Medellin, Colombia. The finding comes just days before the US Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General will issue a report on the case.

As Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reports, these weapons include at least 2 rifles and 14 Five-seven pistols. Some of these weapons were found in February, when Colombian police raided an encampment of the brother of Erick Vargas, alias "Sebastian," the former leader of the Medellin crime syndicate the Oficina de Envigado.

An ATF official in Colombia compared the serial numbers of the guns seized from the Oficina encampment and the weapons that the ATF lost track of during the "Fast and Furious" operation and found several matches, according to El Tiempo.

"Fast and Furious" was an attempt by the ATF to track gun smuggling operations in the Southwest US by allowing middlemen, or "straw buyers," to purchase weapons. Law enforcement would then continue to track the movements of the guns in the hopes that this would lead them to high-level gun and drug traffickers in Mexico. Instead, the ATF lost track of nearly 2,000 of those weapons.

Many of the lost firearms are believed to have been allowed to "walk" across the US-Mexico border and ended up in the hands of Mexican criminal groups, although some ATF agents dispute this account. In December 2010, one of these weapons was found at the scene of the death of Border Patrol Agent Bryan Terry, prompting a political scandal that eventually ended with US Attorney General Eric Holder being found in contempt for withholding documents related to the investigation. On September 7, Mexico police said they had arrested a suspect involved in the killing of Border Agent Bryan Terry

According to El Tiempo, some of these "Fast and Furious" weapons ended up in the hands of the Sinaloa Cartel, who then sold them to the Oficina de Envigado in exchange for drug shipments. There could be as many as 200 "Fast and Furious" guns currently in Medellin, the newspaper reports. 

InSight Crime Analysis

The discovery of "Fast and Furious" guns in Medellin is a testament to just how far and wide these US-sourced weapons may travel in the region's gun and drug trafficking networks. Medellin's gangs are also known to source some of their Five-seven "cop killer" pistols from a Miami-based gun store, as the newspaper El Colombiano reported earlier this year.

The appearance of the weapons also sheds light on some of the criminal alliances in the region. The Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltran Leyva Organization both obtain large numbers of weapons from the Southwest US. Their cocaine sources in Colombia, however, are harder to surmise, making the alleged discovery of the US-sourced guns in Medellin particularly interesting for crime watchers.  

Finally, the finding will certainly give Obama foes more fodder for their efforts to shame the administration into getting rid of Attorney General Holder. Fast and the Furious turned into a major scandal for the Obama administration and led to several Congressional hearings and an investigation by the Justice Department, whose inspector general is expected to release its report on the ATF operation no later than September 11. These findings are to be followed by yet another Congressional hearing on "Fast and Furious" on September 19.

It is unlikely, however, that the report will recommend that further legal action be taken against Holder: according to CNN, the Fast and Furious report states that by and large, officials in Washington DC were not aware of the actions taken by the ATF team on the ground in Arizona.  

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

COLOMBIA / 20 OCT 2021

The Pachenca, also known as the Conquering Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra (Autodefensas Conquistadores de la Sierra), emerged following the…

COCAINE / 20 JUN 2022

Gustavo Petro will be Colombia's next president. Cocaine, Venezuela, deforestation - criminal challenges face him in droves.

COLOMBIA / 30 MAR 2023

"Creepy" marijuana cultivated in Colombia is in demand in Latin America, and Venezuela provides its exit point.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…