Quarter Horse racing, breeding operation allegedly used to launder money

by | 06.12.2012 | 12:44pm
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On Tuesday, the United States Justice Department dispatched hundreds of law enforcement agents to a Quarter Horse farm in Oklahoma owned by Jose Trevino, reports the New York Times. Trevino is charged with laundering money for Mexico’s Zeta’s drug trafficking organization. Trevino’s brother Miguel Angel Trevino Morales is known to be the second in command of the Zetas.  Money from the Zetas allowed the Trevino brothers to establish a prominent breeding operation called Tremor Enterprises. Authorities says the breeding operation allowed them to launder millions of dollars in drug money.

Tremor Enterprises first came to prominence in 2009 when Jose Trevino bought $3 million in Quarter Horses, including a horse named Number One Cartel. That same year, Trevino’s horse Tempting Dash won the Texas Classic Futurity. In 2010, Trevino upset the All-American Futurity with a colt named Mr. Piloto. With the mounting number of wins and recognition at top levels of racing, Trevino was able to hire the most respected jockeys, trainers and sales associates.

Rumors as to the source of Trevino’s money came as he gained more recognition in the industry and when he moved his family from Texas to a large, state-of-the-art farm in Oklahoma after claiming to be a brick layer. Some of his records show Trevino having others sign for business agreements and sales purchases.

“From all appearances, he looked like anyone else interested in quarter horses,” said one person in the industry who knows José Treviño. “But he had a massive amount of money, with no good explanation where it came from. And he had a family name that made a lot of people wonder.”

» Read more at New York Times
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  • Jimculpepper

    At least he didn’t steal it from the taxpayers of a small town to buy AQHA halter horses.

  • ITP

    Entire QH industry knew about it and loved the new money it was bringing into the sport.

  • Citation1012

    The hits to the horseracing world keep coming and it doesnt matter if it is TB, SB or QH.  Good thing my income doesnt rely on any part of the industry.  Just a fan, but for how long?

  • Lory

    NO JIM INSTEAD HE WAS INVOLVED IN THE NICE DRUG TRADE ! you know the one that brings in meth-herion-coke and other wonderful life saving drugs to our country . sarcasm intended. the zetas are wonderful people that have a littering problem- they have so many bodies laying around with heads-feet-and hands chopped off they have to leave them for the highway workers to pick up. i did not kow of him or his money making ways . but folks if we want to get rid of these people in racing (and every where)then some of us have to quit shoving their product into veins-noses etc. yeah blame the lax racing commissions but then turn and point out the real problem. drugs are ruining the UNITED STATES . we also have a problem with the sex slave trade but lets leave that for another day.

  • Jimculpepper

    Beg Pardon! My sarcasm is a bit dry, the irony  of AQHA making the thoroughbred industry appear like saints and PH’Ds is too rich.  We, the USA have a drug problem, not the sociopaths in the cartel.  More died from script drugs than illegal drugs last year and yet we are mystified because trainers think that drugs are how to care for horses. Indeed, detectable amounts of most scripts and over the counter meds are found in most drinking water supplies. 

  • ITP

    It says a lot for horse racing (don’t care if it’s qh racing, tb racing or harness racing, it’s all horse racing) when they knowingly allow someone like this to be a dominant player in the industry because the people in charge of if are all making money from their participation.

    Would NASCAR let them buy a racing team, NFL a football team, etc…..No!  Of course not!…Why?…Because they have some sense of right/wrong…Racing has almost no ethics as a whole..It’s almost all about “are they putting money in our pocket”.

    Funny thing though…It doesn’t apply to bettors when the industry asks the above question.

  • JC

    Why do poor innocent horses always have to be right in the middle of this brand of corrupt garbage?!!  

  • May Flower

    Quarter horse racing is already brutal, corrupt
    and toxic enough without bloody money being laundered by Mexican
    drug-lords. If the Trevinos are slick and powerful enough to operate
    drug trades worldwide, if they can torture and execute humans in mass, behead
    and dismember bodies and throw remains in acid vats, if they are brazen
    enough to send a brother and his family to live in the US to launder some of the loot, if they are arrogant enough to name one of their American
    racers “Number One Cartel”, if they take many race horses into Mexico –because Miguel Angel Trevino wants to “see” them– and then sneak them back on foot to keep them under the radar, what are they
    capable of doing to horses in the U.S. and Mexico in order to win and win big including the richest
    quarter horse race with a long shot? Did they intimidate or buy the silence of racing officials and those who gladly sold them expensive horses and
    real-estate?

    Was “Tremor Enterprises” named after to the horrible side-effects caused by Zilpaterol, a popular dope in quarter horse racing or something even more macabre?

  • Stan

    Great work by the NY Times uncovering this huge Quarter Horse Racing scandal. Can’t understand how they missed the story of The Attorney General smuggling guns to these very same Mexican Drug Cartels and using the weapons to murder a border agent along with hundreds of civilians. I guess that wasn’t news that was fit to print.

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