America’s Dirtiest Cops: Cash, Cocaine and Corruption on the Texas Border
The news of the Panama Unit rocked Hidalgo County. In all, nine officers associated with the crew were indicted, and the DA announced he was throwing out as many as 75 cases: “Their credibility went from absolute to zero,” he said. At a “Coffee With the Sheriff” event at the Country Omelette restaurant a few months later, Lupe called the day the Panama Unit was busted “my 9/11”: “On that day, it was said that America would never be the same,” he said, according to The Monitor. “After 12/12, the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office will never be the same.”
It wasn’t long before suspicion fell on the sheriff. After all, Jonathan had lived at home for years. Could Lupe – the veteran narcotics investigator – really not have known what was going on? Either he was a terrible cop or he was covering for his son. At the trial of a deputy accused along with the Panama Unit, one lawyer asked, for instance, why Jonathan’s free-spending ways never raised alarms. “He was making quite a bit of overtime money,” the sheriff said, pointing out that for much of the time, Jonathan lived at home rent-free. “I had no reason to question what he was doing.”
Publicly, the sheriff was adamant. “I’ll say this until I am blue in the face,” he told The Monitor. “I had no knowledge about the criminal activities of those individuals, nor was I complicit in those activities.” He compared himself to a cheated-on husband: “They may live under the same house, share the same bed, share the same finances – but the spouse is always the last to find out.” About the feds, he added, “I want them to investigate me. I want them to take a good look.”
As it turned out, the sheriff would get his wish. Further investigations revealed that Lupe was receiving money from a local drug lord named Tomas Gonzalez – a.k.a. El Gallo, “the Rooster.”
El Gallo was like a real-life version of Gus Fring from Breaking Bad. He owned a cold-storage company, T&F Produce, whose logo was a chicken, and which he used as a front for his drug-smuggling operation. He and his logistics coordinator (who moonlighted as the coach of a girls’ basketball team) would pack marijuana and cocaine in tractor-trailers full of vegetables and ship them all over the country: Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, even as far north as Iowa. A well-known narco-corrido singer named Chuy Quintanilla sang of El Gallo’s exploits:
He’s a real man with the blood of a fine gallo
And his people admire and respect him
He doesn’t like violence; he’d rather use his head
But if necessary, he can use a machine gun
El Gallo was rumored to have ties to the Zetas, the terroristic Mexican cartel currently locked in a bloody war against their rivals in the Gulf Cartel. Two of his brothers were in prison in the U.S., and his mother supposedly died in prison in Mexico. He’d been on Reneau’s radar for more than two years, and once escaped a bust in a chase at 115 mph. But he wasn’t the type to keep a low profile: On the gates outside his mansion in the sugarcane fields east of town were two ceramic roosters, right next to the signs that read re-elect Sheriff Treviño.
The sheriff swore he’d never met El Gallo. Yes, he’d been to his property twice – once to investigate the signs, which he said were fake, and once to investigate a triple murder at a cockfight elsewhere in the county (El Gallo’s dad was a big cockfighting enthusiast). But he’d never met the man. “I’ll take a polygraph,” he told the feds, according to his son Chris. “I don’t even know what the fuck he looks like.” But when an investigation turned up $10,000 in illegal campaign contributions from El Gallo, the sheriff was sunk. In March, he resigned, and in July, he was sentenced to five years for money laundering.

Lupe ultimately admitted to accepting between $20,000 and $25,000 from El Gallo. A sheriff’s commander, who was himself convicted of bribery, claims it was more like $1 million. The cash was delivered in paper bags, fives, tens and twenties. At his own sentencing in November, El Gallo – who, to be fair, stood to earn a reduced sentence by implicating the sheriff – said he gave Lupe $53,000 for a new fishing boat and $40,000 for a trip to Vegas. The sheriff supposedly referred to El Gallo as “Eastside” and cautioned against calling him on a work phone. (El Gallo preferred Boost Mobile burners.) El Gallo said the person who first introduced him to the sheriff was Chuy Quintanilla, the narco-corrido singer – who, the previous year, had been found murdered in a grapefruit orchard.
Citing a pending appeal, Lupe declined an interview. “My denials of those allegations that cannot be verified or corroborated are a matter of record,” he said in an e-mail, noting that many additional claims were made when he wasn’t present to defend himself.
Lupe’s defenders insist that his crime was, at worst, a campaign violation. “[They] sentenced him because of his son,” said the Hidalgo County DA, one of his oldest friends. Chris agrees: “If it wasn’t for the Panama Unit, they never would have been combing through his campaign-finance reports. Jonathan brought all the attention on him.”
Although no one knew it at the time, the sheriff was considering a run for Congress. Recently, he e-mailed Chris from prison in Florida, where he’s serving five years. “He said, ‘I worked so hard in my 42 years of law enforcement, and it was all wiped away because of what Jonathan did. I forgive Jonathan – but I’m here because of him.’ ”