86 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
86 lines
10 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Jose Santacruz Londono
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aliases:
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- Jose Santacruz Londono
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- José Santacruz Londoño
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- Jose Santacruz-Londono
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- Jose Santa Cruz Londono
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- Jose Santa-Cruz Londono
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- Santacruz Londono
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- Chepe Santacruz
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- Londono
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created: 2026-05-17
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updated: 2026-10-05
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category: "Organized Crime"
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tags:
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- Person
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- OrganizedCrime
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- CaliCartel
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- Cocaine
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- TheOctopus
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- Colombia
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summary: "Colombian cocaine trafficker and Cali cartel leader, investigated in New York from 1979, whom a federal court found had ordered the 1992 killing of the journalist Manuel de Dios Unanue."
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location: "Cali, Colombia"
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died: 1996-03-05
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relations:
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- type: member_of
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with: "[[Cali Drug Cartel]]"
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role: "leader with the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers; head of the 'Santa Cruz Family' of the cartel"
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fn: 1
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- type: prosecuted
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with: "[[United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 1985
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role: "ten-count indictment in No. 85 CR 596 (E.D.N.Y.) naming Santa-Cruz Londono and seven others"
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fn: 3
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- type: investigated
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with: "[[DEA]]"
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reverse: true
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start: 1979
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role: "New York investigation of his organization; New York Drug Enforcement Task Force arrests in October 1985"
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fn: 4
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- type: participant_in
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with: "[[Murder of Manuel de Dios Unanue]]"
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start: 1991-11
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end: 1992-03-11
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role: "found by the Eastern District of New York to have issued the $50,000 contract from Cali"
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fn: 7
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---
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José Santacruz Londoño was a leader of the [[Cali Drug Cartel]], named alongside [[Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela]] and [[Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela]] in the 1997 congressional statement of the [[DEA]]'s Chief of Operations, which said the three were building "the most prolific and successful criminal enterprise in history" while the [[Colombian National Police]] was dismantling the [[Medellin Cartel|Medellín Cartel]].[^1] He was shot to death by police outside [[Medellin|Medellín]] on March 5, 1996, two months after escaping from La Picota prison in [[Bogota|Bogotá]].[^2]
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### The Eastern District of New York cases
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The federal court in Brooklyn described him in 1993 as the head of a Colombian conglomerate, the Cali cartel, that allegedly imported about 3,000 kilograms of cocaine a month into the [[United States]] and used bank accounts throughout the United States, Europe, and Central and South America to store and move its proceeds. An international letter rogatory from the Eastern District of New York, quoted by the Second Circuit, described the government's investigation of Santacruz-Londono "since 1979."[^3]
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The earliest case in the published record is No. 85 CR 596 (E.D.N.Y.), a ten-count narcotics indictment naming Jose Santa-Cruz Londono, Jose Omar Sanchez, Jairo Escobar, Fouad Hazzi, Angelica Carvajal, Soffy Mejia Carvajal, Luz Marina Carvajal and Luis Soto Garcia. On October 28 and 29, 1985, officers of the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force arrested Jairo Escobar at a house in Bayside, Queens, where a telephone warrant issued by Judge Henry Bramwell at about 11:40 p.m. led to the discovery of cash, jewelry, false identification and "a memo book listing information relating to customers of the Jose Santa-Cruz Londono cocaine trafficking organization." Sanchez, described as indicted "for his alleged role as a primary distributor in the Jose Santa-Cruz Londono cocaine trafficking organization," was stopped by agents near his Old Westbury, Long Island residence, and a wallet taken from him held documents that, in the agents' opinions, reflected narcotics quantities, cash amounts and code names of known customers of "the Jose Santa-Cruz Londono network." Judge Joseph McLaughlin ruled on the suppression motions on May 4, 1987.[^4]
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### Luxembourg arrests and the 1992 forfeiture trial
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Three associates of Santacruz-Londono were arrested in Luxembourg on June 28 and 29, 1990. According to the Second Circuit, they had opened hundreds of bank accounts throughout Europe and deposited large sums for the cartel. Luxembourg authorities asked several countries to freeze funds, and in July and August 1990 a series of electronic transfers through New York intermediary banks was attached through oral orders and eight in rem arrest warrants naming "all funds on deposit" in the names of persons and entities connected with Santacruz-Londono. A two-month jury trial before Judge Jack Weinstein began on March 9, 1992. The government's evidence included bank records from around the world, documents seized by the Colombian National Police in Cali, and the testimony of former cartel members, DEA agents, a Luxembourg police officer, an Internal Revenue Service investigator, a customs official and an accountant; it linked Santacruz-Londono's proceeds to Panamanian and Colombian shell corporations, while the claimants maintained that the funds came from clothing sales. The court of appeals recorded that he "had already been indicted in this country for various narcotics and money-laundering violations," and Agent Michaelis was allowed to testify as an expert on Santacruz-Londono's money-laundering techniques.[^3]
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### The de Dios Unanue contract
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In a 1994 memorandum, Judge Edward Korman summarized evidence from the trial of Wilson Alejandro Mejia-Velez: [[Manuel de Dios Unanue]], a journalist and former editor of New York's largest Spanish daily, was shot in the head in a Queens restaurant on March 11, 1992, and was "singled out for execution by Jose Santa Cruz Londono, head of the 'Santa Cruz Family' of the cartel" because of his "scathing exposes" of the cartel. In November 1991, from Cali, Londono issued a contract offering $50,000. He passed it to his aide Guillermo Leon Restrepo Gaviria, who kept $30,000 and handed the $20,000 contract to John Harold Mena, head of the family's "New York Office." Mena offered it to Juan Carlos Velasco, who, after aborted attempts, subcontracted it in February 1992, when Londono "became impatient," to Jose James Benitez and Elkin Farley Salazar, who recruited Mejia-Velez as the gunman for $7,000. Velasco's wife, Diane Elizabeth Castaño, showed the men a photograph of de Dios and took them to the Meson Asturias restaurant, and Mena paid the balance the next day.[^5] Castaño pleaded guilty on October 21, 1992 to using a telephone to facilitate a murder-for-hire, and the Second Circuit affirmed her resentencing in 2000.[^6]
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### Lawyers for the Cali cartel
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The Southern District of Florida case No. 93-0470-CR is a nine-count indictment of fifty-nine defendants charging racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine and conspiracy to launder money. Two of the defendants, the lawyers [[Michael Abbell]] of Washington and [[William Moran]] of Miami, were charged on the theory that their acts furthered "promoting and protecting the Cali Cartel's drug importation and distribution network." Search warrants on their offices were executed on September 9, 1994, on the strength of an affidavit by a Customs agent that described calls from Abbell's office to numbers in Cali for Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela.[^7]
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### Escape and death
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The Associated Press reported on March 6, 1996 that Santacruz, 54, regarded as the number three leader of the Cali cartel, was killed on Tuesday night when police intercepted his Chevrolet four-wheel-drive shortly after 11 p.m. in Medellín, "once home to a rival drug gang." A police patrol had chased the vehicle after an informant's tip, said General Alfredo Salgado, the Medellín police commander. He had fled La Picota prison on January 11, "apparently with the help of corrupt prison guards," and U.S. officials were described as furious. The killing came a week after President [[Bill Clinton]] cut some U.S. aid to Colombia partly because of evidence of drug money in the campaign of President [[Ernesto Samper Pizano]], who said the manhunt was "a way of showing the world that this country is not an executioner but is rather the main victim of drug trafficking."[^2]
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### Allegations in the Casolaro material
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According to [[Cheri Seymour]], [[Michael Riconosciuto]] told [[Danny Casolaro]] and her that [[Robert Booth Nichols]] paid Abbell to "crowbar" a Justice Department inquiry that would have led to the extradition of Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela and Santacruz Londoño, whom Nichols considered "intelligence people"; she places Santacruz Londoño among the figures of Casolaro's "[[The Octopus]]" investigation. Seymour also wrote that Santacruz Londoño and Rodríguez Orejuela were targets of a DEA Centac investigation that produced indictments in Los Angeles and New York in 1978, that those cases did not go beyond indictment, and that disgruntled DEA agents suspected a [[Central Intelligence Agency]] connection after the Centac 21 task force was dismantled under the [[Ronald Reagan]] and [[George H.W. Bush]] administrations. The New York court record dates the investigation to 1979 and the indictment in No. 85 CR 596 to 1985.[^8]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Statement of Donnie Marshall, Chief of Operations, Drug Enforcement Administration, Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice, July 9, 1997. https://irp.fas.org/congress/1997_hr/h970709m.htm
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[^2]: Associated Press, "Colombian Police Kill No. 3 Drug Kingpin," *Deseret News*, March 6, 1996. https://www.deseret.com/1996/3/6/19229025/colombian-police-kill-no-3-drug-kingpin/
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[^3]: *United States v. Daccarett*, 6 F.3d 37 (2d Cir. 1993) (appeal from the 1992 trial in *United States v. All Funds on Deposit in Any Accounts Maintained in Names of Meza, et al.*). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/8619261/united-states-v-daccarett/
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[^4]: *United States v. Londono*, 659 F. Supp. 758 (E.D.N.Y. May 4, 1987) (No. 85 CR 596(S)), pp. 760-61, 764-65. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1957276/united-states-v-londono/
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[^5]: *United States v. Mejia-Valez*, 855 F. Supp. 607, 608-10 (E.D.N.Y. June 15, 1994) (Korman, J.). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1973343/united-states-v-mejia-valez/
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[^6]: *United States v. Castaño*, 234 F.3d 111 (2d Cir. 2000). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/771330/united-states-v-elizabeth-castano/
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[^7]: *United States v. Abbell*, 926 F. Supp. 1545 (S.D. Fla. 1996) (No. 93-0470-CR), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2280404/united-states-v-abbell/; *United States v. Abbell*, 963 F. Supp. 1178 (S.D. Fla. 1997), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1645124/united-states-v-abbell/
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[^8]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010. Not re-verified against the book.
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