He was then called to oversee the plaza (turf) of Culiacán, the center of operations of Los Ántrax and the city where the Zambada family reportedly resided.
Among the first gang leaders to die was Redel Castro (alias "El Pocho Ántrax"), who was killed in a massive shootout in June 2010 with rival members of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel in Tubutama, Sonora.
[7][12] Local media outlets alleged that the killings stemmed from an internal power struggle within the Sinaloa Cartel, specifically from a group commanded by "El Chapo" Guzmán.
[13] Mexico's Office of the General Prosecutor (PGR) and Secretariat of Public Security (SSP) have identified various other leaders under the hierarchy of El Chino Ántrax.
[7][13] Aréchiga Gamboa was wanted by the United States government and faced charges in a San Diego, California federal court for trafficking methamphetamines, cocaine and marijuana.
[20] While in Los Cabos, Aréchiga Gamboa reportedly ordered the murder of Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix, a former leader of the Tijuana Cartel, on 18 October 2013.
[17] On his Facebook, Twitter (@comandante57_) and Instagram (miauuuu5_7 and jamesbond5_7) accounts, Aréchiga Gamboa uploaded pictures and videos of his ostentatious lifestyle, which included trips to Europe, Las Vegas (where he attended the Manny Pacquiao vs. Brandon Rios fight), Japan, and parts of Africa and the Middle East.
[27][28] Although he always blurred his face in his social media pictures, in most of them he was shown wearing the skull shaped diamond ring, in reference to Los Ántrax, as a form of signature.
[32][A 1] Initially, the authorities did not give any details on the identity of the detainee, but an anonymous U.S. federal agent and Mexican local newspapers leaked information to the media that the man was in fact Aréchiga Gamboa.
[26] According to officials, Aréchiga Gamboa travelled with the fake name of Norberto Sicairos García; at the time of his arrest, he was carrying an iPhone 5, a Blackberry Bold, three airplane tickets, credit cards from Visa and MasterCard from Banamex, and a Mexican driver's license.
[37] U.S. law enforcement managed to identify Aréchiga Gamboa through unspecified forensic methods despite the fact that the drug lord had used a fake name to travel, undergone plastic surgery to change his appearance, and altered his fingerprints.
[19] The following day, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California solicited an extradition request to bring the drug lord to trial in the U.S.[41] On 8 January 2014, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned the drug lord under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act), which froze assets he may have had in the U.S. and virtually prohibited U.S. citizens from carrying out financial or commercial deals with him.
[45] The following day, he pleaded not guilty to the drug charges against him and was held without bail after the U.S. Magistrate Mitchell D. Dembin deemed him a public threat and capable of fleeing to Mexico if released.
According to the court archives, the DEA has under its possession documents that prove that Aréchiga Gamboa participated in at least fifty drug trafficking shipments between Mexico and the United States.
[55] On the night of 14 May 2020, Aréchiga Gamboa, his sister, and her husband were in the house when they were visited by a Sinaloa Cartel ‘hit squad’, which resulted in a fierce firefight with Chino firing back with an automatic assault rifle.
[56] His romantic partner Yuriana Castillo Torres was reportedly kidnapped by armed men while heading to her vehicle after leaving a gym in Culiacán, Sinaloa on 6 May 2014.
[57] Her corpse was discovered on 06:45 the next day by Mexican law enforcement at a vacant lot in Lomas de Guadalupe neighborhood in Culiacán, and confirmed to be hers by her family members at the forensic installations.
Most of the songs belong to the trend of narcocorridos known as movimiento alterado ("the altered movement"), which promotes violence in reference to the physiological effect of cocaine consumption.