El Mencho's Heir Takes Over CJNG!

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Mexican special forces killed El Mencho in February 2026, the throne of Mexico's most powerful cartel was up for grabs. But there's one man who many assumed would be taking over: Juan Carlos Valencia González, a 41-year-old California-born dual citizen known as "El 03," the stepson of the slain narco boss. His cartel royalty bloodline is almost absurdly stacked, as his mother, Rosalinda González Valencia, dubbed "La Jefa," was El Mencho's wife and a key financial architect of the cartel's money laundering empire, while his uncles from the González Valencia clan were systematically arrested and extradited to the U.S. over the past decade. And his father just happened to be the founder of CJNG's predecessor, the Milenio Cartel. Now an American citizen effectively runs a terrorist-designated drug empire responsible for flooding the U.S. with fentanyl, creating a legal nightmare for U.S. intelligence agencies with limited tools to go after one of their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.6	Must remember.
0:34.5	Do not forget.
0:38.5	Remind me to bring photo ID.
0:40.3	Reminder, set.
0:44.4	Babe, can you make sure I don't forget my photo ID when I vote?
0:45.4	All right, love.
0:52.7	However you remember, you'll need photo ID to vote in the elections in England on the 7th of May.
1:02.2	Find out more at electoral commission.org.ukest, August 2016, in Halisco, Mexico.
1:08.3	It's the end of the summer, and the cartel underworld is dangling on the edge of something big.
1:12.8	Only a few months earlier, the unthinkable happens. El Chapo, the most infamous cartel boss in the world,
1:16.1	is captured by Mexican forces, locked up,
1:19.2	and then set to be extradited to the US.
1:22.2	His cartel, Sinaloa, that once appeared to be unstoppable,
1:26.2	is starting to show cracks.
1:28.3	And nobody knows how things will go down between the upper echelons of Sinola.
1:33.3	Chapo's kids slash replacements dubbed Los Chapitos and his longtime partner El Mayo Zambada.
1:40.3	And as these things go, when a cartel starts to show weakness, or when there's even a hint
1:45.8	of weakness suspected, the other players in the game start calculating.
1:51.5	And waiting to make their move is a relatively new off-start group, the Halisco New Generation
	...

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