Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel

by Tom Wainwright

order to finance this turbo-charged growth, the Zetas have employed a version of franchising. According to a recent analysis5 by the regional head of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime, the Zetas have decided not to send their own representatives into new markets to set up criminal outposts from scratch and instead have adopted local gangsters into their club, as franchisees. Zeta scouts go to new areas and identify the most promising local criminals, “to whom the mother cell offers a kind of franchise on the use of the Zetas’ criminal marque,” the UN report says. As part of the “affiliation package,” the Zetas’ central command provides the franchisees with military training, and in some cases arms. In return, franchisees share a slice of their revenues with the central organization and agree to form a “solidarity pact,” an agreement that they will fight for the Zetas if a war breaks out with another cartel.