From Guangdong Peasant to Funder of the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels: The Chinese Money Broker at the Center of Trump’s War on Fentanyl
WASHINGTON — She calls herself “Chinaloa.” Born in Guangdong Province in 1986, her parents labored in a factory 400 kilometers from home, unable to share in the miracle of China’s economic rise. Seeking a better future, they secured labor visas and migrated to Mexico in late 2000, taking jobs in a relative’s restaurant. Remarkably, by the next decade, their daughter, Qiyun “Chinaloa” Chen, had risen to the ranks of elite money brokers, facilitating cocaine and fentanyl operations across the Western Hemisphere.
For enemies and allies alike—Chinaloa—the moniker she used in encrypted WeChat texts—fuses two worlds: Chinese money laundering and the narco-terror of Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartels. Few outside elite law enforcement circles, however, understand that U.S. intelligence views Chinese gangsters with suspected Communist Party affiliations as intrinsically connected to the brutal Mexican cartels in counter-narcotics investigations, ultimately posing greater threats to American borders and sovereignty.
Yet the story of “Chinaloa” Chen, a Chinese migrant who brought together 14K Triad money launderers and a feared matriarch of Sinaloa nicknamed the “Iron Lady,” sits squarely at the center of what President Donald Trump now calls an unprecedented crackdown on drug trafficking and illegal migration. Within hours of returning to the Oval Office, Trump signed a series of executive orders that promise to designate certain cartels and criminal groups as terrorists, invoke the Alien Enemies Act to remove them, and mobilize the U.S. military for reinforced border security. His new hard line aims to eradicate cartel influence in fentanyl, human trafficking, illegal immigration, and border threats, imposing punitive measures on nations Trump accuses of complicity—China, Mexico, Canada, Panama, and beyond.
With timing that was conspicuous, on Jan. 21, the day after Trump confirmed plans to hit Canada with a 25 percent tariff for failing to stem fentanyl flows into the U.S., Toronto police disclosed new details on the largest-ever cocaine bust in the city’s history.
Authorities announced the seizure of 835 kilograms of cocaine worth $83 million, tied to the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación. The cartel, an outlier for extreme violence even among rival Mexican narcos, has reportedly produced millions of doses of deadly fentanyl and smuggled them into the United States, often disguised to look like Xanax, Percocet, or oxycodone. Still, most Canadians remain largely unaware of the Chinese financial underpinnings of a growing infiltration of Mexican crime led by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal for the past 15 years.
U.S. experts including David Asher, a top State Department investigator in Trump’s first administration, say that Triad money brokers at or above Chinaloa’s level command Western hemisphere money laundering for the Mexican cartels from Vancouver and Toronto.
An investigation by The Bureau into freshly unsealed indictments in the case of Chinaloa Chen, aka “Gucci,” aka “La China”—along with interviews with elite investigators—explains how she introduced senior 14K gangsters to top Sinaloa operators like Marisela “Iron Lady” Flores-Torruco. These findings shed new light on the war that Trump has started and on Canada and Mexico’s alleged complicity in China’s fentanyl trade.
DEA agents discovered, after seizing Chen’s phones and reading her WeChat texts, that she, her husband, Guatemala City casino owner Xizhi Li, and his associate Tao Liu had formed an elite network operating in a rarefied sphere of wealth and influence. They mingled with politicians and seemingly legitimate businessmen across North and Latin America, while orchestrating financial logistics to ship hundreds of tons of narcotics into the United States, collect drug-sale proceeds in cities across America, and launder the money through currency conversions and international trade spanning China, Mexico, the United States, and Canada.
“We found Chinese networks picking up drug money in over 22 states. They’d fly one-way to places like Georgia or Illinois, pick up cash, and drive it back to New York or the West Coast,” a U.S. expert with direct knowledge of investigations into Chinaloa Chen and Xizhi Li told The Bureau in a recent interview.
“Most people don’t realize that Chinese organized crime has been upstream in the drug trade for decades,” they said. “The money brokers based in Mexico City—that’s the directors of actual U.S.-based money brokers, at the higher level. There was a lady by the name of ‘Chinaloa’—a great example of a higher-level money broker who worked for the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, and her husband was Triad and a high-level guy. Just like the guy (Tao Liu) that came into New York—these are the players who would do the wine-and-dining. They’re several nodes above the street-level distribution.”