Margarito Flores and his twin brother went from Chicago's Little Village to the streets of Sinaloa, Mexico, and became El Chapo's most trusted traffickers.
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The Flores twin is going from trafficker to teacher. After testifying against El Chapo, serving a prison sentence himself, and now signing on with a private law enforcement training company, Flores will teach cops how to catch people who are illegally transporting drugs.
Dynamic Police Training, headquartered in Yorkville, hired Flores to give first-person instruction to dozens of police officers.
The 42-year-old and his twin brother, Pedro, quickly rose through the ranks of the notorious and ruthless Sinaloa Mexico drug cartel. Sinaloa was considered responsible over the years for 80% of metro Chicago illicit drug sales.
The brothers also became loyal aides to billionaire drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. They eventually turned on El Chapo and testified against him.
Now, Margarito Flores, having wrapped a 14-year prison sentence, will come to the Kane County Sheriff's Department on September 25th to instruct dozens of police officers from assorted departments on how to detect drug shipments.
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"Margarito had reached out to me on email. He noticed some of my content online through the Dynamic Police Training, Instagram and Tiktok, and reached out and really wanted to know how he could contribute to law enforcement in a positive way now that he was out," said founder and owner of Dynamic Police Training, Jeramy Ellison. "We want it to start from start to finish going through all the logistics, the routes, the concealment, the structure of these cartels, and we want to be able to let the students do Q & A."
Despite Flores having been a witness against the world's most dangerous drug trafficker, Flores is not in witness protection. Despite seeming to have a large target on his back, the police training session may afford him the most secure site of all.
"Security is always going be a big concern," said Ellison. "This is a law enforcement only training class. So, we're going to have 100 lawmen with guns. There'll be plenty security."
One story Flores is likely to tell: how his own Chicago father was kidnapped by the cartel in 2009 and murdered in Mexico because the twins had ratted out El Chapo. There appears reason to believe Flores could help police.
After a practice class a couple of weeks ago, one officer went back on patrol and remembered several things Flores had said to look for. He curbed a suspicious truck, and found a half-million dollars in suspected drug cash.