Horst Overdick
drug lord
Horst Walther Overdick-Mejía, alias El Tigre (English: The Tiger), is a former Guatemalan drug lord and associate of the Mexican criminal group known as Los Zetas. He is known for helping Los Zetas cement their power in northern Guatemala. He was considered by the authorities as "one of the most prolific" drug lords in the country of Guatemala. He was arrested on 3 April 2012 in San Lucas, Guatemala.
Criminal career
Overdick began as a trader of cardamom, a spice used in cooking, then used his knowledge of import and export routes to help Los Zetas drug cartel move cocaine to the United States from Guatemala. Nevertheless, since 1999, Overdick has been trafficking cocaine into Guatemala by securing airstrips in the country for planes carrying hundreds of kilograms to land. By the year 2002, he was responsible for more than 1,200-kilogram cocaine shipments at airstrips that arrived at the country, which he and his associates later hid in trucks to transport to Mexico. Overdick then began to purchase cocaine directly from Los Zetas, a Mexican criminal group. In fact, reports mention that he was the "first person to ally himself with Los Zetas in Guatemala" and cement their presence in 2008. During the investigations leading to Overdick's arrest, the Guatemalan authorities recovered videos of Overdick with prominent members of the Zetas at a "narco-fiesta," a large party hosted by drug traffickers in Guatemala, which took place at a horse race.
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This entry incorporates text from “Horst Overdick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.