$15 million bounty: Federal authorities raise reward for capture of 'El Mencho'

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago's most wanted fugitive, the cartel kingpin that goes by "El Mencho," is now wanted even more as the feds have raised the bounty on his head.

The U.S. State Department announced it is raising the reward for Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, also known as "El Mencho," who is allegedly responsible for pouring tons of illicit drugs onto Chicago streets.

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"He's a person that we would consider as public enemy number one," former DEA Special Agent-in-Charge Brian McKnight told the ABC7 I-Team in 2018.

McKnight made that startling revelation to the I-Team more than six years ago, that at the time, a little known Mexican drug lord named El Mencho was considered the city's most wanted fugitive.

"He's a very powerful trafficker in Mexico and he has cells all over the world," McKnight said.

The file on El Mencho has been bulging in recent years.

Mencho's CJNG cartel, known as "New Generation," seized control of Chicago's street drug sales, and with the territory came wholesale bloodshed, here and abroad.

El Mencho is now facing federal indictments in Chicago and other U.S. cities is still on the lam in Mexico while overseeing a multi-billion dollar empire.

The $15 million hike in America's bounty for El Mencho comes as his family starts to unravel.

Relatives close to him have been arrested and squeezed by investigators as the government tries to press for information that could lead to his arrest, and the takedown of his bloodthirsty and heavily armed cartel army.

As the I-Team first reported, El Mencho's son-in-law Cristian Fernando Gutierrez Ochoa was recently arrested on drug trafficking and money laundering offenses in Southern California.

Ochoa had been living under a fake name in a luxury section of Riverside after fleeing Mexico, according to prosecutors.

El Mencho had helped Ochoa fake his own death, even claiming to have murdered him, so the son-in-law and El Mencho's daughter could live outside the dangerous cartel world, according to court records.

Late last month, federal agents revealed in court filings that they had found numerous fake identities at the time of Ochoa's arrest, along with several ghost guns or homemade weapons with no serial numbers.

Mencho's son-in-law will soon be headed to Washington DC for prosecution.

All of these moves by the feds are aimed at El Mencho himself, whom authorities say is personally responsible for hundreds of deaths and the ongoing carnage in Mexico and the U.S.