A Colorado Springs food distribution company and at least six local Mexican restaurants are linked to the Sinoloa Cartel and drug lords Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán-Lorea and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada-Garcia, says a recently released federal complaint providing the first evidence of cartels operating in Colorado Springs.

A cellphone of Jose Aguilar-Martinez, who purported to own the unregistered wholesale distributor El Potosino Foods, had “significant contact” with suspected cocaine distributors in the city and in Pueblo and was linked to Guzmán’s and Zambada’s trafficking, the complaint says.

The six restaurants and El Potosino — which means “the one from San Luis Potosi, Mexico,” an area associated with drug cartels — are accused in a drug-money laundering scheme in the sealed federal complaint filed in November. A 50-page version “sanitized of confidential information” was filed publicly Feb. 22.

It alleges that El Potosino was a front company used to funnel drug money through Mexican restaurants in Colorado and Wyoming.

The restaurants would buy food from El Potosino and accept invoices for items they did not order or receive so checks could be cut to the company and Aguilar-Martinez, 48, who is in the U.S. illegally, the complaint said.

El Potosino is not a registered business, its website is inactive and no other wholesale food distributors in Colorado Springs “were even aware of El Potosino’s existence or that it purported to compete with them,” the complaint and other records said.

Authorities have seized more than $1.5 million from 15 bank accounts and two safety deposit boxes of the restaurants. In Colorado Springs, those are three Taco Star eateries, at 318 N. Wahsatch Ave., 7434 Ridgewood Drive and 605 N. Circle Drive; two Monica’s Taco Shops, at 30 E. Fillmore St. and 5829 Palmer Park Blvd.; and the Albertacos at 4494 Austin Bluffs Parkway.

A seventh restaurant with ties to Colorado Springs also was named in the complaint. Rodolfo’s Mexican Grill is in Cheyenne, Wyo., where the investigation began with a suspicious vehicle purchase. Its owner, Hilario Montejano-Aleman, also operates the local Viva El Taco at 5945 N. Academy Blvd.

The two seized deposit boxes, tied to Monica’s Taco Shop, contained more than $800,000, the complaint said. Authorities believe a woman accessing the safe-deposit boxes faked pregnancies to make deposits, “carrying the cash inside of a false belly.”

Defendants have denied involvement in the scheme.

Guzmán, widely known as “El Chapo,” was considered the world’s most powerful drug lord until his federal conviction this month on 10 counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and use of a firearm in decades of grisly killings to further his drug enterprise.

His Sinaloa Cartel is “one of the world’s most prolific, violent and powerful drug cartels,” moving billions upon billions of dollars in marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, the U.S. Justice Department reports.

Guzmán is a known escape artist as well. In 2001, he spent $2.5 million in bribes to escape the maximum-security Puente Grande prison in Jalisco, Mexico, in a laundry cart. And in 2015, he crawled through an opening in a shower area that led to a mile-long tunnel, escaping the maximum-security Altiplano Federal Prison near Toluca, Mexico.

He later bragged to movie star Sean Penn: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world. I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.”

Now Guzmán is expected to be sent to Colorado’s maximum-security prison in Florence, the U.S. Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility, better known as Supermax. He faces a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole.

Zambada now is assumed to head the Sinoloa Cartel.

The Colorado Springs restaurants, meanwhile, all remain open. Albertaco’s did close briefly after funds were seized, but it has reopened.

In 2017, 16-year-old Nathaniel Czajkowski was shot to death in Albertaco’s while eating with three friends, two of whom also were shot.

No arrests have been made, but a cashier told The Gazette that all employees in the restaurant that night then returned to Mexico.

Contact the writer at 719-636-0362 or find her on Twitter: @njKaitlinDurbin.

Crime scene photo at Taco Star. (File, courtesy of KKTV).

FILE – In this Jan. 8, 2016 file photo, a handcuffed Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is made to face the press as he is escorted to a helicopter by Mexican soldiers and marines at a federal hangar in Mexico City. Guzman was tried in New York and found guilty on drug smuggling charges. Claims of jury misconduct arose after a juror told VICE News in February 2019 report that several jurors followed media accounts of the three month-long trial. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

Eduardo Verdugo