犯罪分子將大學校園變成招募中心，以高薪在墨西哥招募化學專業的學生。

娜塔莉·基特羅夫(Natalie Kitroeff) 和寶琳娜·維勒加 / 2024年12月1日 / 紐約泰晤士報

一名 19 歲的化學專業二年級學生，也在一家藏匿處為錫那羅亞販毒集團工作。

卡特爾招募人員偽裝成看門人溜進校園，然後瞄準了他的目標：一名化學二年級學生。

招募人員解釋說，卡特爾正在為一個計畫招募人員，他聽說過這個年輕人的好話。

「『你很擅長你所做的事情』」，這名學生回憶說，招募人員這樣說道。「『你決定是否感興趣』」。

為了建立芬太尼帝國，墨西哥犯罪集團正在轉向一個不尋常的人才庫：不是殺手或腐敗的警察，而是在墨西哥大學學習的化學學生。

在卡特爾實驗室中製造芬太尼的人（被稱為廚師）告訴《紐約泰晤士報》，他們需要具有先進化學知識的工人來幫助提高藥物的效力，並用一位廚師的話說，「讓更多的人上癮」。

卡特爾還有一個更雄心勃勃的目標：合成製造芬太尼所必需的化合物（稱為前體），使他們不必從中國進口這些原料。

美國官員表示，如果他們成功，這將代表芬太尼危機進入一個​​可怕的新階段，墨西哥販毒集團對近代史上最致命的毒品之一擁有比以往更多的控制權。

「這將使我們成為墨西哥之王，」一位已經煉製芬太尼六個月的化學系學生說。

錫那羅亞州庫利亞坎販毒集團安全屋的地板上用於生產芬太尼的化學品。

《泰晤士報》採訪了七名芬太尼廚師、三名化學系學生、兩名高級操作員和一名高級招募人員。他們全都為錫那羅亞販毒集團工作，美國政府稱該販毒集團對南部邊境湧入的芬太尼負有主要責任。

那些與卡特爾有關的人僅僅因為與《泰晤士報》交談就將自己置於危險之中，並且由於擔心遭到報復而要求匿名。他們的描述與追蹤卡特爾活動的美國大使館官員的描述相符，包括學生在卡特爾運作中扮演的角色以及他們如何生產芬太尼。泰晤士報記者採訪了一位化學教授，他表示招收他的學生很常見。

學生表示，他們在犯罪集團內從事不同的工作。他們說，有時他們會進行實驗來強化藥物或製造前體。他們說，其他時候，他們監督或與批量生產芬太尼的廚師和助理一起工作。

目前還不清楚招募學生的範圍有多廣，但對訓練有素的化學家的追求似乎在一定程度上受到了冠狀病毒大流行的影響。

駭客組織洩漏的 2020 年墨西哥情報評估發現，在疫情導致供應鏈放緩後，錫那羅亞卡特爾似乎正在招募化學教授來開發芬太尼前體化學品。

美國執法官員也表示，近年來，許多年輕化學家在墨西哥芬太尼實驗室被捕。據官員稱，被捕的化學家告訴當局，他們一直在致力於開發前體並提高藥物的藥效。

錫那羅亞州一所大學的化學教授表示，他知道有些學生參加化學課程只是為了更熟悉煉製合成藥物所需的技能。這位因擔心遭到報復而要求匿名的教授表示，他已經根據學生在講座中提出的問題和反應來識別出符合這項要求的學生。

「有時，當我教他們合成藥物時，他們會公開問我，『嘿，教授，你什麼時候教我們如何合成可卡因和其他東西？』」，他說

庫利亞坎是錫那羅亞州首府，也是錫那羅亞販毒集團的大本營，一名謀殺案受害者。

由於渴望保持移民問題上的合作，拜登政府避免公開敦促墨西哥採取更多行動來瓦解卡特爾。當選總統唐納·約翰·川普承諾採取更激進的做法，威脅要部署美國軍隊打擊犯罪分子，並在上個月發誓，如果墨西哥不阻止毒品和移民在美國的流動，將對墨西哥商品徵收25%的關稅。

針對關稅威脅，墨西哥新任總統克勞蒂亞·謝因鮑姆表示，需要「國際合作」來阻止從「亞洲國家」向墨西哥運送前體。

但美國官員表示，隨著販毒集團對芬太尼供應鏈獲得更大控制，兩國執法部門將更難阻止墨西哥合成鴉片類藥物的工業化生產。

美國國務院國際麻醉藥品和執法事務局助理國務卿托德·羅賓遜表示，卡特爾「知道我們現在的重點是在世界各地非法販運這些前體化學品」。

羅賓遜表示，這些努力正促使卡特爾「試圖將此事納入內部」。「這樣做的實際結果是他們能夠更輕鬆、更快速地將這些藥物轉移到美國」。

專家表示，如果卡特爾只是混合進口前體，大規模生產芬太尼可能相對簡單，因為很容易找到使用這些化學品生產藥物的說明。

但芝加哥洛約拉大學法醫學教授、美國緝毒局法醫化學家詹姆斯·德弗朗西斯科 (James DeFrancesco) 表示，嘗試從頭開始合成前體是一個更加困難的過程，需要更廣泛的化學技術和技能。 。

這個過程也很危險。廚師和學生表示，儘管他們戴著防毒面具和防護服，但他們面臨的風險有很多：接觸致命藥物的有毒物質、意外爆炸、犯下的錯誤會激怒他們的武裝和極端暴力的老闆。

然而，這項工作的薪水比許多化學領域的合法工作要高，而且這通常就足夠了。這名二年級學生表示，參觀校園的招募人員預先向他提供了 800 美元，外加 800 美元的月薪——根據政府數據，這是墨西哥正式僱用的化學家平均工資的兩倍。

這位 19 歲的年輕人在錫那羅亞州最貧困的地區之一長大，他說他選擇學習化學是因為他的父親患有癌症，他想幫助找到治療方法。

「我想幫助人們，而不是殺死他們，」他說。製造一種會導致大規模死亡的產品的想法讓他感到噁心——但他父親所需的治療是這個家庭無法負擔的。

他告訴招募人員他很感興趣，五天後他被卡特爾成員抓住，蒙上眼睛並被帶到隱藏在山裡的秘密實驗室，他說。

招募人員

錫那羅亞販毒集團在接觸新成員之前，會先檢視其前景。

一名 21 歲的前學生今年輟學，為販毒集團工作，製造芬太尼並開發前體。

一位招募人員在接受採訪時表示，理想的候選人是既具有課堂知識又具有街頭智慧的人，是一個不會對生產致命藥物的想法退縮的人，最重要的是，是一個謹慎的人。

他說，經過幾個月的尋找，他找到了三名現在為他工作的學生，正在開發前體。許多年輕人就是達不到他的標準。

「有些人很懶，有些人不聰明，有些人話太多，」招募人員說，他是一位瘦長、戴著方形眼鏡的中年男子，已在卡特爾工作了 10 年。他將自己描述為一個解決問題的人，專注於提高芬太尼業務的品質和產量。

招募人員表示，為了物色潛在候選人，該卡特爾會與朋友、熟人和同事進行一輪外展，然後與目標的家人、他們的朋友，甚至是和他們一起踢足球的人進行交談——所有這些都是為了了解他們是否願意開放。如果招募人員發現某個人特別有前途，他可能會願意支付該學生的學費。

「我們是一家公司；公司所做的就是投資最優秀的人才，」他說。

招募人員表示，當卡特爾大約十年前開始大規模生產芬太尼時，它依賴的是來自農村的未受過教育的廚師，他們可以輕鬆掌握業內人士所說的製造這種藥物的「配方」 。

與甲基安非他命（一種需要更先進的設備和專業知識才能大規模生產的藥物）相比，如果有前體化學品，芬太尼的生產就很簡單。

「這需要四個步驟，」一位長期廚師說，他以蛋糕粉盒背面的簡單方式列出了整個過程。 「你搖勻，混合，乾燥，用丙酮清洗。」

但近年來事情變得更加複雜屢屢出現。中國採取措施限制芬太尼前體的出口，墨西哥嚴厲打擊這些化學品的進口，而冠狀病毒大流行擾亂了供應鏈，使這些成分更難找到。

招募人員和所有受訪的三名學生均表示，他們尚未成功生產出前體。

「我們很接近，但這並不容易，」一名今年 21 歲的前學生說，他今年開始在實驗室工作。這名學生長著一張娃娃臉，眼睛明亮，已經輟學為販毒集團工作。 「我們需要繼續進行測試，並進行更多測試。」

但招募人員表示，這些學生在一個關鍵方面提供了幫助：讓芬太尼更有效。

一名一年級化學系學生被一名屬於犯罪集團的親戚引誘為卡特爾工作，並表示她可以用更高的薪水幫助她的母親製造芬太尼。

1號學生

大約一年前，一位親戚向一名化學一年級學生提出了一個建議：難道她不想當芬太尼廚師來賺大錢嗎？

在接受採訪時，這名學生說，她的親戚在錫那羅亞販毒集團工作了多年，並且清楚地知道該說些什麼來引誘這位年輕女子，她是五個兄弟姐妹中的老大。她的母親獨自撫養孩子，每天打掃房子 12 小時。

該名女子表示，該卡特爾向該學生提供 1,000 美元作為簽約獎金。她很害怕，但她還是答應了。她工作的實驗室距離錫那羅亞州首府約一小時的航程，搭乘卡特爾用來運送廚師上班的小型飛機。她說，她的老闆告訴她，她的工作是製造更強大的芬太尼。

來自墨西哥的芬太尼往往純度較低，招募人員將此問題歸因於急於滿足美國人對合成鴉片類藥物的需求。

「需求激增，很多人只想賺錢，而那些製造商就隨便生產，不關心品質」，招聘人員說。但他表示，在競爭激烈的市場中，該卡特爾可以透過更強大的藥物贏得更多客戶。

這位一年級學生說，她已經嘗試了各種混合物來增加芬太尼的效力，包括將其與動物麻醉劑混合。但她生產芬太尼前體的嘗試都沒有成功。

「你是從一張白紙開始的，」她說。「我們如何創造一些我們沒有發明的東西？」

錫那羅亞州卡特爾藏匿處的二年級化學學生。

2號學生

當他第一次上班時，這位在校園招收的化學專業大二學生並不知道自己該做什麼。他說，實驗室位於山上，在樹林中，上面覆蓋著防水布，防水布被塗成樹葉的樣子，所以從直升機上看不到。

他說，工作三天後，一名負責人告訴他，他不是來製造芬太尼的。他是研發實驗室的最新成員，每個人都在努力弄清楚如何從頭開始製造前體。他說他立即開始擔心無意中引發爆炸。

「他們不會告訴你如何去做——他們說，『這些是產品，你要用這個來製造它們，它可能會出錯，但這就是你學習的原因』」，他說。

這名大二學生與另外六人一起工作，其中三名是他大學班上的學生，還有三名年長男子是沒有受過訓練的化學家。當他有時間去上學時，這項工作比他在學校所做的要危險得多。

「在這裡，如果他們不喜歡你生產的東西，他們可以讓你消失，」他說。

該學生說，一名卡特爾老闆最近訪問了實驗室，讚揚了他的工作，並告訴他，如果他能夠幫助成功生產前體，該組織將給他一套房子或一輛汽車，無論他想要什麼。

大二學生告訴他們，他最需要的是給爸爸錢。他對父親隱瞞了自己日常工作的秘密。

「當他問問題時，我撒謊說我在一家公司工作，」這位大二學生說。 「我想如果他知道的話，他就不會接受這筆錢。」

娜塔莉‧基特羅夫 (Natalie Kitroeff) 是《泰晤士報》墨西哥城分社社長，負責墨西哥、中美洲和加勒比海地區的報告。

本文的一個版本發表於 2024 年 12 月 1 日紐約版第 1 頁 A 部分，標題為：墨西哥大學校園的招募人員：卡特爾。

Mexican Cartels Lure Chemistry Students to Make Fentanyl

Criminals turn college campuses into recruitment hubs, recruiting chemistry students in Mexico with big paydays. /  / The New York Times

A 19-year-old sophomore chemistry major, who also works for the Sinaloa drug cartel, at a stash house. Credit…Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

表單的頂端

表單的底部

The cartel recruiter slipped onto campus disguised as a janitor and then zeroed in on his target: a sophomore chemistry student.

The recruiter explained that the cartel was staffing up for a project, and that he’d heard good things about the young man.

“‘You’re good at what you do,’” the student recalled the recruiter saying. “‘You decide if you’re interested.’”

In their quest to build fentanyl empires, Mexican criminal groups are turning to an unusual talent pool: not hit men or corrupt police officers, but chemistry students studying at Mexican universities.

People who make fentanyl in cartel labs, who are called cooks, told The New York Times that they needed workers with advanced knowledge of chemistry to help make the drug stronger and “get more people hooked,” as one cook put it.

The cartels also have a more ambitious goal: to synthesize the chemical compounds, known as precursors, that are essential to making fentanyl, freeing them from having to import those raw materials from China.

If they succeed, U.S. officials say, it would represent a terrifying new phase in the fentanyl crisis, in which Mexican cartels have more control than ever over one of the deadliest drugs in recent history.

“It would make us the kings of Mexico,” said one chemistry student who has been cooking fentanyl for six months.

Chemicals used to produce fentanyl on the floor of a drug cartel safe house in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Credit…Daniele Volpe for The New York Times

The Times interviewed seven fentanyl cooks, three chemistry students, two high-ranking operatives and a high-level recruiter. All of them work for the Sinaloa Cartel, which the U.S. government says is largely responsible for the fentanyl pouring over the southern border.

Those affiliated with the cartel put themselves in danger just by talking to The Times, and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Their accounts matched those of American Embassy officials who track cartel activities, including the role students are playing in cartel operations and how they are producing fentanyl. Times reporters spoke to a chemistry professor, who said the recruitment of his students was common.

The students said they had different jobs within the criminal group. Sometimes, they said, they run experiments to strengthen the drug or to create precursors. Other times, they say, they supervise or work alongside the cooks and assistants who produce fentanyl in bulk.

It’s unclear how widespread the recruitment of students has become, but the pursuit of trained chemists seems to have been influenced in part by the coronavirus pandemic.

A 2020 Mexican intelligence assessment, leaked by a hacker group, found that the Sinaloa Cartel appeared to be recruiting chemistry professors to develop fentanyl precursor chemicals after the pandemic slowed supply chains.

American law enforcement officials also said that many young chemists had been swept up in arrests at Mexican fentanyl labs in recent years. The arrested chemists told the authorities that they had been working on developing precursors and making the drug stronger, according to the officials.

A chemistry professor at a university in Sinaloa State said he knew that some students enrolled in chemistry classes just to become more familiar with skills needed to cook synthetic drugs. The professor, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said he had identified students who fit that profile by their questions and reactions during his lectures.

“Sometimes when I am teaching them synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs, they openly ask me, ‘Hey, professor, when are you teaching us how to synthesize cocaine and other things?’” he said.

Image

A murder victim in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa State and a stronghold of the Sinaloa Cartel.Credit…Daniele Volpe for The New York Times

Eager to preserve cooperation on migration, the Biden administration avoided publicly urging Mexico to do more to dismantle the cartels. President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised a more aggressive approach, threatening to deploy the U.S. military to battle the criminals, and vowing last month to issue a 25 percent tariff on Mexican goods if the country doesn’t stop the flow of drugs and migrants across the border.

In response to the tariff threat, Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that “international collaboration” was needed to prevent the shipment of precursors to Mexico from “Asian countries.”

But as the cartels gain greater control of the fentanyl supply chain, U.S. officials say, it will become more difficult for law enforcement in both countries to stop the industrialized production of synthetic opioids in Mexico.

The cartels “know we are now focused on the illicit trafficking of these precursor chemicals around the world,” said Todd Robinson, the State Department’s assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Those efforts are driving the cartels “to try to bring this thing in-house,” Mr. Robinson said. “The practical result of that is their ability to more easily and quickly transfer those drugs to the United States.”

Mass producing fentanyl can be relatively straightforward if cartels are just mixing up imported precursors, experts said, because it’s easy to find instructions for producing the drug using those chemicals.

But trying to synthesize the precursors from scratch is a much more difficult process that requires a broader array of chemical techniques and skills, said James DeFrancesco, a forensic science professor at Loyola University Chicago who worked as a forensic chemist at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for 18 years.

The process is also dangerous. Cooks and students said that even though they wore gas masks and hazmat suits, the risks they face are many: toxic exposure to the lethal drug, accidental explosions, mistakes that enrage their armed and extremely violent bosses.

Yet the work pays more than many legal jobs in chemistry, and that’s often enough of a sell. The second-year student said the recruiter who visited the campus had offered him $800 up front, plus a monthly salary of $800 — twice as much as the average pay for chemists formally employed in Mexico, according to government data.

The 19-year-old, raised in one of the poorest parts of Sinaloa, said he had chosen to study chemistry because his father had cancer and he wanted to help find a cure.

“I want to help people, not kill them,” he said. The idea of making a product that would lead to mass death made him sick — and yet the treatment his father needed was impossible for the family to afford.

He told the recruiter he was interested, and five days later he was picked up by cartel members, blindfolded and driven to a clandestine lab hidden in the mountains, he said.

The Recruiter

Before the Sinaloa Cartel ever approaches a recruit, it scouts out its prospect.

A 21-year-old former student who dropped out of school this year to work for the cartel cooking fentanyl and developing precursors.   Credit…Daniele Volpe for The New York Times

The ideal candidate is someone who has both classroom knowledge and street smarts, a go-getter who won’t blanch at the idea of producing a lethal drug and, above all, someone discreet, said one recruiter in an interview.

In months of searching, he said, he’s found three students who now work for him developing precursors. Many young people just don’t meet his standards.

“Some are lazy, some aren’t bright, some talk too much,” said the recruiter, a lanky middle-aged man with square glasses, who has worked for the cartel for 10 years. He described himself as a fix-it man, focused on improving quality and output in the fentanyl business.

To identify potential candidates, the cartel does a round of outreach with friends, acquaintances and colleagues, the recruiter said, then talks to the targets’ families, their friends, even people they play soccer with — all to learn whether they’d be open to doing this kind of work. If the recruiter finds someone particularly promising, he might offer to cover the student’s tuition cost.

“We are a company; what a company does is invest in their best people,” he said.

When the cartel began mass-producing fentanyl about a decade ago, the recruiter said, it relied on uneducated cooks from the countryside who could easily get their hands on what people in the business call “recipes” for making the drug.

Compared to methamphetamine, a drug that requires more advanced equipment and expertise to manufacture at scale, fentanyl is straightforward to produce if precursor chemicals are available.

“It takes four steps,” said one longtime cook, laying out the process with the simplicity that might be found on the back of a box of cake mix. “You shake it up, mix it, dry it, wash it with acetone.”

But things got more complicated in recent years. China moved to restrict the export of fentanyl precursors, Mexico cracked down on imports of the chemicals and the coronavirus pandemic gummed up supply chains so that those ingredients became harder to find.

The recruiter and all three students interviewed said they hadn’t successfully produced precursors yet.

“We are close, but it’s not easy,” said one former student, a 21-year-old who started working in a lab this year. Baby-faced and bright-eyed, the student had dropped out of school to work for the cartel. “We need to keep doing tests and more tests.”

But the recruiter said the students had been helpful in one key respect: making the fentanyl even more potent.

A first-year chemistry student was lured into working for the cartel by a relative who belonged to the criminal group and said she could help out her mother with a higher salary making fentanyl. Credit…Daniele Volpe for The New York Times

Student No. 1

About a year ago, a relative approached a first-year chemistry student with a proposal: Wouldn’t she love to make real money as a fentanyl cook?

In an interview, the student said her relative had worked for the Sinaloa Cartel for years and knew exactly what to say to lure the young woman, the eldest of five siblings. Her mother was raising the children alone, cleaning houses 12 hours a day.

The cartel offered the student $1,000 as a signing bonus, the woman said. She was terrified, but she said yes. The lab where she works is about an hour’s flight from Sinaloa’s capital, on the small aircraft the cartel uses to transport cooks to work. Her bosses told her that her job was to manufacture more powerful fentanyl, she said.

The fentanyl coming out of Mexico has often been of low purity, a problem the recruiter attributes to the desperate rush to satisfy Americans’ appetite for the synthetic opioid.

“There was such an explosion of demand that many people just wanted to earn money, and those manufacturers just made whatever without caring about quality,” the recruiter said. But in a competitive market, he said, the cartel can win over more clients with a stronger drug.

The first-year student said she had experimented with all manner of concoctions to increase fentanyl’s potency, including mixing it with animal anesthetics. But none of her attempts at producing fentanyl precursors have worked.

“You’re starting from a blank page,” she said. “How do we create something we didn’t invent?”

The sophomore chemistry student at a cartel stash house in Sinaloa State.

Credit…Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

Student No. 2

When he first arrived at work, the sophomore chemistry student who had been recruited on campus had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He said the lab was in the mountains, in the midst of trees and covered by a tarp that had been painted to look like foliage, so it couldn’t be seen from a helicopter.

After three days of work, he said, one of the men in charge told him that he wasn’t there to make fentanyl. He was the newest member of a research and development lab, where everyone was working to figure out how to make precursors from scratch. He said he immediately started worrying about inadvertently causing an explosion.

“They don’t tell you how to do it — they say, ‘These are the products, you’re going to make them with this, it could go wrong, but that’s why you’re studying,’” he said.

The sophomore works with six others, three students from his class in university, and three older men who are not trained chemists. The work is a lot riskier than what he does in school, when he has time to attend.

“Here, if they don’t like what you produce, they can make you disappear,” he said.

A cartel boss recently visited the lab to praise his work, the student said, telling him that if he was able to help produce precursors successfully, the group would give him a house or a car, whatever he wanted.

The sophomore told them what he needed most was money for his dad. He kept his day job a secret from his father.

“When he asks questions, I lie and say I’m working at a company,” the sophomore said. “I think if he knew, he wouldn’t accept the money.”

Natalie Kitroeff is the Mexico City bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. 

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 1, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Recruiters on Mexican College Campuses: The Cartels.