Facebook posturing helps nail Mexico’s young drug barons

Slideshow: Mexico’s drug lords on social media

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Authorities in Mexico have been using social networking sites to track drug lords and their families, highlighting the importance of the internet in crime-fighting

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“WEIGHING the money,” reads the caption under one photograph of stacks of cash.

“Partying and . . . taking care of ourselves,” says another, accompanying an image of AK-47 assault rifles with silver and gold plating.

Younger members of Mexico’s drugs cartels who have grown up in the digital age love nothing more than displaying their lavish lifestyles on social media. But Facebook pictures and Twitter hashtags are increasingly helping investigators to piece together their movements.

Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa, a top Sinaloa cartel member with the Twitter name “El Chino Antrax” (“the Chinese Anthrax”) was arrested last week at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam after taking a flight from Mexico under an assumed name. The anthrax part of his Twitter name is said to refer to the methods of Sinaloa, which was engaged in a war with the Beltran Leyva cartel.

Allegedly an enforcer for the cartel, Gamboa faces drug trafficking charges in California