True Crime - An Exclusive Interview with The Cartel Wives: The Untold Story of El Chapo
It’s one of the largest criminal entities the world has ever seen. Notorious Mexican cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is being held in a high security New York City jail, faced with multiple counts of drug trafficking and conspiracy charges. As he awaits his fate, two American moms are hiding in the shadows. Their husbands, identical twins Pedro and Margarito Flores Jr., were once El Chapo’s honored henchmen, helping him move billions of dollars of cartel drugs into the US. In this episode, Mia and Olivia Flores are speaking out exclusively about their public fight for justice, and their private life filled with terror, revealing what it was really like living in a world of illegal drug deals with dangerous, and even deadly consequences. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
He's not going to get madder just because we wrote a book.
He's already mad.
He's already hunting us.
That's never going to stop.
When our husbands went to get sentenced, they got 14 years in prison, and the judge told them that they were walking away with the life sentence because every time that we go and we start our cars, we're going to be worried if that car is going to explode.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
It's one of the largest criminal entities the world has ever seen.
Notorious Mexican cartel leader Joaquin El Chapo Guzman has been held in high security New York City jail for a while.
He's facing multiple counts of drug trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Now, as he waits his fate, you guys have all seen the, you know, noise around El Chapo, two American moms are hiding in the shadows.
Their husbands, identical twins, Pedro and Margarito Flores Jr., were once El Chapo's honored henchmen, helping him move billions of dollars I say it again, billions of dollars of cartel drugs into the U.S. Today, those wives are here, in studio, speaking out exclusively about their public fight for justice and their private life filled with terror, revealing what it is really like to live in a world of illegal drug deals with dangerous, even deadly consequences.
So, Mia and Olivia Flores, thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having us.
You're both wearing disguises.
Yes.
I did meet you beforehand, and you were very thoughtful about the fact that when you put a disguise on it, it creates a little bit of a persona that's not really you.
And our hope today is to try to dive a bit into who you really are.
Lisa and I were talking about this interview quite a bit over the past week, trying to understand what it's like, that you've changed your names, changed your identities, you're in hiding, your kids are in hiding.
I'm not going to get into any detail on them because I want to keep them safe and you as well.
Meanwhile, Chapo's being held in solitary confinement and your husbands are in prison.
So, the bad guy's in prison.
What are you hiding from?
We're hiding from the Sinaloa cartel.
Our husbands are, I mean, they're the main cooperators on this case.
They're American citizens.
They're the first to ever get Chapo Guzman on a recorded conversation.
You know, when we lived in Mexico, our husbands, they were at the highest of highest level that you can possibly be with.
They were the first American citizens to ever work directly with Chapo Guzman.
Now, Chapo Guzman is the biggest narco terrorist in the world.
He's the most violent man you can ever imagine.
And when we were out there living in Mexico, our husbands, you know, they've been doing this their whole life.
This is what, you know, selling drugs is what they, you know, this was part of their upbringing.
Their dad, he was involved with the cartel and he was a drug trafficker as well.
So at the age of...
Seven years old, when my father-in-law got out of prison, you know, his dad, like, he came home and it was very hard not being able to be in his father's life.
And when his father did get home, they were just so eager to learn from him and they were so eager to, you know, be loved by their dad.
And this is what he trained them to do.
At seven years old, they were putting their hands in the gas tank and pulling out his drugs.
They had to learn their Just because they needed to count their dad's money and they had to translate his drug deals.
And this is happening at seven, eight, nine years old.
So my father-in-law instilled in them that you can never cooperate.
This is what you don't do their whole life.
taught them that you cannot, you know, be a snitch.
You cannot be a rat.
You have to be loyal to the cartel.
And this is all that they've ever known.
It's like when racism exists in your home and you teach your children to be racist, they grow up thinking that this is how life is supposed to be.
And so what happened was, you know, my husband, Junior, and Mia's husband, Peter, they're identical twin brothers, and they just learned how to be successful in what they did.
And that was trafficking, you know, millions and millions, billions of dollars of drugs.
And they worked this company like a 500, like a Fortune 500 company.
It was so...
You know, it was insanely huge the way they ran their operation.
You know, their first job, ironically, was at McDonald's and they learned this system.
And in that system, it was, you know, the fry guys wouldn't cross paths with the hamburger guys and vice versa.
And this is what they did.
They had their drug couriers.
They had their money counters that worked three shifts a day, eight hours, around the clock counting millions and millions of dollars.
And the money was stacked up to the ceiling, from the floor to the ceiling, and this is all they did, was just know how to be the best at what they knew, and that was to sell drugs.
Now, their father instilled in them, you do not snitch.
So they basically went against everything.
Yeah, why did they do that?
What made them turn?
What was their epiphany?
There was an epiphany.
Well, their turning point was, it was me and I, and we were in Puerto Vallarta, and they had these business associates that came down from China.
From China?
From China.
Were they selling to China as well?
They were dealing with people in China, and they were going to start a business where they were able to get these buckets, which they get this chemical that's in the meth.
And they were starting that because Chapel was like, I need it, I need it, I need it.
And so my husband and my brother-in-law, I mean, in this network of traffickers, you know, I mean, doors just open up.
And my husband would just be having a conversation, a simple conversation with different business associates.
And they're like, we got this going on, we got that going on.
And then all of a sudden, Chop was like, I need, you know, this certain chemical because I need to, you know, we have our meth labs here and I'm going to just start, you know, producing everything here and making it and sending it up to L.A. And my husband's like, well, hold on.
I have so-and-so over here and this is how the business works.
They're just connecting, you know, this person with that person.
And so they were down there, you know, with us in Puerto Vallarta.
We had a beach house right next to the Kardashians where they vacation.
And right in Los Ranchos, which is in Punta Mita, which is right off of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
And that's where we stayed.
And we were there.
They came down.
And my husband, you know, people come down from different countries.
They want to have a good time.
So me and I, we don't let our husbands out of our sight.
So we're like, okay, we're all going to go out together and we're going to go to the strip club.
So we go to the strip club and we're there.
And all of a sudden there's this man staring at me and I, and we're like, what's going on?
And I'm telling my husband, something doesn't feel right.
And he's like, no, it's okay.
They're just not used to seeing women in a strip club in Mexico.
Like, you know, women, he's joking with me.
Women here are supposed to be at home cooking and cleaning.
You know, because that's the life over there in Mexico.
It's a little different than it is here.
And so it was like, we're joking, and then all of a sudden he gets up, he walks out, and all of a sudden, you know, he walks by us, and five minutes later, I mean, they have these men that are just running in with ski masks on their faces with AK-47s, and they just throw us to the floor.
Mia and I are on the floor.
Our husbands are on the floor.
We have guns to our heads, and they kidnap us.
It was one of the most scariest moments in our lives.
I thought they were going to blow our heads off.
And it was so scary.
They took us to this place.
They had us tied up.
We didn't know if we were going to make it out.
When I was sitting in the car and they had me, I pulled out my radio somehow, someway, and I was holding down my two-way radio, which was me reaching out to my older brother-in-law, Which is Jay and Peter's older brother.
I'm holding down this radio, not even knowing if he can hear us or not, because he's at home with my son.
And I'm crying like, what do you want?
Just tell me what you want.
Is it $10 million?
We'll pay you.
We have money.
What do you want?
And he was like, no, I don't want anything.
He's like, you screwed me.
And that's the nice way he said it.
And he pulls off his ski mask.
And it so happened to be the custom agent that was trying to extort me.
At her wedding, the day she was getting married.
On our wedding day, I'm standing there in my big, beautiful white dress and, you know, the happiest day of my life.
These Mexican federal agents come in our room and they grab my husband and they're like, we're going to extort you.
And they have their wanted photo, my brother-in-law and my husband's wanted photo.
And they said, if you don't give us money, we're going to ruin your wedding.
We're going to ruin your day.
We're going to send you back to the United States.
We're calling the government.
These are customs agents for Mexico?
For Mexico, yes.
Crooked.
Crooked, yes.
So did you pay them off?
How did that work?
Well, my husband was like, okay, I'll give you something right now.
Let me enjoy my weekend.
We have everybody flying in.
It was a very big event for us.
He's like, let me just finish it through my weekend and I'll give you whatever you want.
He gives them the money.
He gives them a deposit on the money.
And then after that, as soon as the wedding was over, it was like the most beautiful wedding you could imagine.
And with this secret, we're here with this secret and it was just really overwhelming for all of us.
It was hard because not only that, I'm thinking the DEA is going to bust in.
They're going to just come and take our husbands back to the U.S. Like it was...
The scariest day, and at the same time, the most happiest day for us.
It's like, it didn't matter in our lives.
Living in this cartel world, you can be, like, it doesn't matter what is going on.
You could be having, like, the best moment, and it's always overshadowed by something bad.
So it's like, one year can feel like ten years in this cartel world.
So back to this custody agent.
So they come in, your husband pays him, me, I guess, some of the money.
Did he not pay him the rest?
Why did he come in?
It's pretty ballsy.
To come into a strip club or anywhere, frankly, and kidnap the two top lieutenants of the Sinaloa cartel.
Right, right.
He didn't know.
He didn't know.
He didn't know what he was getting himself into.
He had no idea what he was getting involved in.
So why did he think you would scream?
Because he found out that her husbands were fugitives from the U.S. So he was thinking that he was just going to extort them because he was going to threaten to call the U.S. government so they can come and arrest them and extradite them back to the U.S. This is how it started.
But because we went back after Mia's wedding that same night, instead of them having the honeymoon, we're Packing up our personal things and we're gone.
And we leave because we knew the extortion was never going to stop.
And so when we left, we said, you know what, we're not going to go back to our house no more.
It's okay.
This is what we've learned to do.
You get up, you leave, you don't look back, you keep moving.
This was our life.
We've been moving for years, like constantly around the clock.
And so what happened was when we were in that strip club, it so happened that the man that was staring at us was his brother.
So he made a phone call and sure enough, there was a caravan of seven bulletproof vehicles at Suburbans outside and they come in with ski masks and guns and AKs just pointed at us and they're telling us that we're going to die.
And so we are so afraid.
All of a sudden, we're tied up.
I'm like, my husband's trying to negotiate with them.
He's trying to tell them, we are Chapo's people.
We are Alfredo Beltran's people.
You don't know.
What you're doing right now.
You have to let us go.
And they're like, are you crazy?
You are not who you say you are.
They laughed at him and thought that it was a joke because, mind you, our husbands are American citizens.
They're twin brothers.
They're young.
If you see them, you would never believe, okay, these are the two men that have been moving all these drugs, billions of dollars in drugs.
There's no way.
Like, you can't believe it.
So what happens is you're tied up.
You've got your two-way walkie-talkie tipping off your older brother-in-law.
I guess El Chapo at some point is going to find out.
So what went down?
So my older brother-in-law, he grabs my son, my baby, and he takes off back to Guadalajara on the road.
And so he's making phone calls and he's calling Chapo's people because he needs to talk to El Senor because nobody says his name on the phone.
So he calls and all of a sudden...
Chapo and his people and Alfredo and Arturo Beltran, all these cartel leaders are calling the place that we're at.
Because in Mexico, there's something called a plaza.
And a plaza means it's like a piece of real estate property, and there's certain bosses in that area.
And at that time, it was...
Menchel.
And right now, Menchel is like the biggest deal.
He's like the next chapel.
So they called Menchel and Menchel connected them.
He found out who exactly had us because nothing can go down without the person in charge knowing about it, which is Menchel.
You think that the government is in charge in Mexico?
But no.
The cartel, they run Mexico.
And so they connect chapel with these agents that are corrupt, mind you.
And he's like, you have my people.
You need to let them go.
So this agent, he hangs up the phone.
He had veins in his neck.
He's screaming, who did you contact?
Who did you contact?
It was like a moment of life and death for him because he knew that he was in the worst position he could possibly be in because one thing you don't do is mess with Chapo's people.
So his veins were popped out.
He was foaming at the mouth.
I was so afraid that he was going to shoot me in the head and I'm sticking the radio in my back of my jeans because I'm afraid that he's going to find this thing and know it was me.
And so we're sitting there and all of a sudden they allow me and I to leave.
We go back to the house in Rancho's.
And I'm looking for my baby.
The house is empty.
My brother-in-law's gone.
I don't know where he's at.
I'm going crazy.
Like, my son, my baby, what's going on?
I'm freaking out thinking I don't know if we're ever going to see Junior, our husbands, again.
And it was like a mess.
All of a sudden, hours are...
And I'm like, we're leaving.
We're going back to Guadalajara.
And Mia's like, we are not leaving.
We're waiting here for Junior and Peter.
I said, they are going to kill us.
We need to get out of here now.
And all of a sudden, there was like this caravan of trucks that were pulling into our driveway in Ranchos.
And it's like our driveway is so long because our house is right on the beach.
And here comes all these cars.
We don't know who's in them.
These pickup trucks with guys just hanging out with AK-47s.
So now we're like, what is going on?
And our husbands jumped out the truck.
I don't know if it was Junior or Peter because they're identical, but all of a sudden I seen them and I'm like, oh my God, they're safe.
We never thought that we were going to see them again.
And so we were so like, we were like, oh my goodness, we couldn't believe that we met Mencho.
He was like, don't worry, we're going to have the federales drive you back to Guadalajara.
People who kidnapped you are going to drive you.
These are the federal government, which there's different...
It's kind of like here in the U.S. where you have the ATF, you have the FBI, you have the IRS. The federal government is driving El Chapo's two lieutenants and their wives to keep them safe.
Yes, back to Guadalajara to keep us safe.
We have a lot more questions to get to, but first, a quick break.
So El Chapo's just saved your life pretty much.
And then your husbands decide to turn on him.
This is...
Okay, this is what happened.
So me and I, we had just found out that we were both pregnant.
Simultaneously, we found out that we were pregnant.
Like, we got the news.
We were like...
We were crying with joy.
We were so happy.
This is Mia's first baby.
And so it was like the happiest moment in our lives.
The whole time that I was with my husband, I had a rough upbringing.
Me and I, we came from great homes.
Our fathers are Chicago police officers.
We came from a family-oriented home, loving, instilling values, instilling morals in us.
We lived in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood, which is Pilsen and Little Village.
Now, in these neighborhoods, it was gang infested, it was drug infested, it was lower class.
I had no idea.
I lived my whole life in a lower-class neighborhood because our fathers had sheltered us.
They put us in private school.
I was the first girl to get braces in my neighborhood.
Like, we lived a different life.
Our fathers wanted nothing but the best for us.
Our fathers were caring, compassionate, loving.
Like, they were our—we looked up to them.
Like, we adored them.
They were our heroes.
And so when you come from a home that is so— Simple and it's all about family.
And you're just living a normal life.
It became boring to me.
And I became this rebellious young girl.
And I always was attracted to bad boys because I felt like they were adventurous.
I felt like they were mysterious.
Like I was like, I don't know what it was, but I always was attracted to these bad boys because I lived such a good life.
And because of that, I got involved with the wrong crowd.
I was around so many different men that were nothing like my father.
They were opposite of them.
They were abusive.
They were toxic.
They were drug dealers.
And they would drive around in these fancy cars with these shiny rims and these diamonds.
And I was blinded.
And I thought that everything was about money.
I thought everything was about material things.
I was so materialistic.
It was insane.
And I said, you know what?
My mom's an independent woman.
She is like, she's so independent.
She's a hardworking woman.
And I'm like, I can do this too.
So I started dealing.
And it was like this rush that you would not believe.
Like, I was a totally different person.
To write this book and to put our lives into this book was the hardest thing that I ever had to do because I had to be transparent.
I had to be vulnerable.
I had to go back and relive the most embarrassing moments of my life.
And I had to share with the world where I was at at that moment.
I couldn't write the book and...
Kind of try to steer it in a way with this is what I think now.
No, I had to be honest and truthful.
And it was the most hardest thing that I had to do.
It felt like I was reliving a nightmare.
I was sitting there crying every day just writing my stories because I was like, who is this little girl?
Like, I am not that woman today.
But everything that I went through, all the...
All the tragedies and all the life experiences and everything that I ever went through, it made me who I am today.
It made me a better woman.
It made me a better wife.
It made me a better person.
That's because all the BS that I went through.
Now, when I was in these different relationships, my first husband went to prison.
He's sitting in prison for the rest of his life because he was a drug dealer.
My second husband, I got married for a second time.
He was murdered.
I was devastated.
He was murdered in a drug deal?
He was murdered in Chicago because he was a gang leader of the Latin Kings.
And I was devastated.
I was in this world that was so foreign to my world.
And it was like, okay, this type of living, it felt like it's okay to be going through what I was going through.
And it was just so bad.
And I was so tired when I lost my husband.
It was, I felt like it was the end of my life.
And I just wanted to die.
I felt like I cannot do this no more.
This is not who I am.
This is not who my parents raised.
I need to do better.
This is not what I want in my life anymore.
And so what I did was I promised myself that I'm going to find a person that can just love me, that can treat me right, that is not going to abuse me, that is not going to.
I've been in abusive relationships.
I've been walking around with black eyes.
My husband, he shot at me, and it was hard for me to put that in my book because he's not here anymore.
And it's a hard thing to do when somebody's gone and to actually come out and say what you went through.
So I'm trying to organize it for myself and I think a lot of listeners.
So which husband shot at you?
The one that got killed?
The one that got killed.
Yes, he got killed and he was shot at.
I mean, he shot at me.
Why would he shoot at his wife?
Because he was very controlling.
He was very controlling and it was a very toxic relationship and I didn't know what to do.
And honestly, Dr. Oz, I feel like if He did not die.
I love this man, like he was my everything.
I felt like I still would have been in that same relationship today.
I wouldn't be who I am today.
So let me just go back and say, what does your dad say about you being in these relationships?
Your first husband goes to jail for the rest of his life, second one gets shot and killed after shooting at you.
Yes, my dad was devastated.
I feel like I tried to stay away from my family.
I kind of had this disconnect because I didn't want them to see certain things because at the end of the day, I had nothing but love and respect for my parents.
But at the same time, I showed my parents what they wanted to see and I told them what they wanted to hear.
My parents were strict parents.
They wanted the best for me.
They wanted to give me a better life.
Did they know you were doing all this?
To a point, I mean, when it comes down to your husband going to prison and your husband them having to show up to a funeral, it's like, what could you possibly say?
But at the end of the day, our parents are going to love us unconditionally.
And as parents, that's what we do for our children.
They don't agree, but...
They're going to support us.
Mia, you're also a police officer's daughter, but you didn't have a history of selling drugs.
What was your childhood like?
No.
My childhood, I grew up in a working class neighborhood, blue collar, where everybody was striving for the same thing.
Everybody sent their kids to private schools, barbecues, you know, just like a really great life.
You know, we were able to ride our bikes in the neighborhood.
And it was just, you know, my parents provided me a really, really great life.
I went to school to become a court reporter in hopes of maybe going to law school one day and paying my way to law school.
Alright, so I'm getting, you know, two different people.
This is your first marriage, I guess, right?
Yes.
And you got married after Olivia got married, right?
Yes.
So when you met your husband, did you realize that he was involved with the cartel?
Yes.
Well, I've known my husband for a long time.
I've met him, but we were just 15 years old children growing up around the same people, and I met him through a friend.
So since I lived in that neighborhood I was talking about, when my husband moved into that neighborhood, It was like, who are these people?
It wasn't like what we were used to.
They got the fancier house on the block.
My brother-in-law, the one that went to prison, he was flashy.
He had his flashy cars out and his jewelry.
So I became curious.
And of course, I met them through a friend and, you know, he was just a great guy.
And I did.
Since my father was a police officer, I'm going to be totally honest, I dated a police officer as well.
And, you know, he was not like my father.
That's when I figured out there was like a really thin line between good and evil.
He became corrupt.
He was part of a big corruption scandal in Chicago.
He was actually shaking down drug dealers for their money.
This is your boyfriend.
Yes, an ex-boyfriend of mine.
So, you know, and it was just...
Then when I met my husband...
Then when I started dating my husband in my early 20s, I was like 20 years old, 21. He was just so different.
He was...
It was so ironic how, you know, you try to go with the good guy who you think is a good guy and then they turn out to be...
A total jerk.
An international drug dealer.
Yeah.
No, she's talking about my ex-boyfriend.
Oh, the ex-boyfriend.
You know, you think...
But the husband wasn't exactly a...
No, and he wasn't, and it was like, okay, so, you know, it's just a really thin line.
Let's examine that thin line, because that's one of these I wanted to have you in here.
Obviously, you're speaking about family values, about fathers who are cops, about boyfriends who are cops, but not good cops, and then husbands that are, at least on the surface, drug dealers.
I mean, not just on the surface, they seem to be drug dealers who are in jail for that.
I'm just trying to understand how You ended up with them.
Me, in your case, you've already learned from the boyfriend who's shaking down drug dealers.
When was the first time you realized that your husband made his money by selling drugs?
You know, when I seen my father, when I seen my father, I seen him and, you know, he was this, you know, brave man going out there and protecting the streets of Chicago.
So he put on this uniform, this, you know, blue uniform, and he was out there and he was doing his job and just, you know, just being this, you know, outstanding man that I always knew he was, that I always seen him to be.
And then on the other hand, I fell in love with this bad boy that was putting on a different uniform every single day and flooding the streets of Chicago.
So it was really hard for me.
I think it was the hardest decision of my life.
But, you know, for love, I turned a blind eye.
Did you know that he was selling drugs before you got married?
Yes, I know.
I know, of course.
You know, he did always shelter me.
It's not like I've seen drugs.
I've never seen anything like that.
But, you know, he always sheltered me and he made...
How did he tell you?
How did it come out that...
Did you confront him one day and say, where's all this money coming from?
Or did he come and say, hey, Mia, before you get married, I've got to tell you what I do for a living?
No.
No.
You know, I'm from Chicago.
I'm a city girl.
You know, it's not like I'm naive to anything and I knew exactly what he did.
I mean, the first time I've ever seen money stacked to the ceiling, it was, you know, it was in Chicago in one of his stash houses.
So, of course, I knew he wasn't, you know, he was only 19, 20 years old.
How did you end up at the stash house?
He took me there.
Why would he take you there?
He had to go and do something and I was with him and I seen an obscene amount of money.
Olivia, when did you realize that your current husband made his money in the drug business?
My husband was doing business with my late husband.
He was his connect.
And so when I met Junior, I immediately fell in love with him.
You know, I said that I was going to find somebody that would work 9 to 5, someone like my dad, and I just wanted out of this life.
I was so tired of this life.
You know, I felt like I was addicted to this lifestyle and all I thought about was just money and material things and this was not my values.
This is not where I came from.
And when I saw my husband, he had my father's qualities in him.
He was compassionate.
He was caring.
He was loving.
He was sweet.
He was respectful.
And I was thinking like, what is he even doing in this drug trade?
Like, he doesn't belong here.
Like, this is not who he is.
I've seen the good in him, and that's what made me fall in love with him.
And I felt obligated because I lost my husband and because my first husband went to prison for life.
I felt obligated to change this man because I knew.
Like, I knew that I could change him.
I've seen the good in him, and I knew that he was worth it.
Now, there's many women out there that will sit there, and they would fall in love with the man, and they feel like, you know what?
I can change him.
He might be a bad boy, but I see the good in him, and I see his good qualities.
And because I seen my dad put my mother on a pedestal, and I seen him treat her like a queen, this is what he did for me.
And I fell in love with him, not with the money, not with the material things, because I already had all that.
It was the way he treated me, and I felt obligated to change him.
And ever since the first day that I started being with him, I was always in his ear, you need to change your life.
There's only two ways out of this life.
You either go to prison or you die.
And I was in his ear trying to change him.
And he was starting to see it my way.
And I was in the music business.
I had a record company.
And I had one of the biggest deals with Universal Records at the time.
I got a million dollar deal.
I was thinking that, you know what?
This is our way out.
You don't have to do this.
If you do something legitimate, you're super intelligent.
You can do any business and you are going to...
Prosper.
Like, you don't need to sell drugs.
I was counting his ear.
I was starting to have him see things my way.
And what happened was, was they ended up getting indicted in Chicago.
And they actually in Milwaukee.
And there was an indictment and they were fugitives.
Now, mind you, my husband and I, we went to Mexico because it was Christmas.
We were out there just visiting family.
When we were down there, I convinced him.
To move there.
I fell in love with Mexico.
It was beautiful.
We lived in this little town, in this little ranch, with nothing.
Like, no McDonald's, no anything.
And I was so happy because I felt like I was so far from Chicago and I was so far from that life that now I can make and see things my way and we could just live a simple life like my parents.
Simplicity, love, family.
That's what mattered to me.
So back to Lisa's earlier question.
You're kidnapped.
Yes.
Unbelievably released because you had the wherewithal of using your two-way walkie-talkie, which still seems incredible.
Mm-hmm.
You were spared because El Chapo came to your aid.
So why after that would they decide to leave?
Well, they got indicted, so they're going to jail.
No, no, no.
Fast forward five years.
Fast forward five years.
So you're sitting in Mexico for a while.
We're living in Mexico five years.
Chapo said that nothing would ever happen to them, that they are protected, that he gets the phone call before the U.S. government comes in.
There's nothing going to happen to them.
Yes.
And meticulously noting everything that's sold and bought, so Chapo has complete transparency into, I guess, you know, working at McDonald's came in handy.
Yes.
They created this system and they implemented that with their drug couriers, with their money counters, and Chapo was so impressed by them that he felt like he needed them because it's one thing to do business in Mexico.
It's one thing that Mexico is built around corruption.
So he can pay off the government and he can pay off routes.
He has underground tunnels.
They use...
track their trailers to get their loads to the U.S.
They use airplanes.
They use narco submarines.
They use- Submarines?
Narco submarines.
They come from Colombia.
They come up to Mexico.
Our husbands were invested in a submarine with them where they had a load coming from Colombia.
We're talking like highest level of drug trafficking.
We're talking about billions and billions of dollars.
Yeah, and the cartel, the cartel.
I mean, without American citizens that help, that actually are the link between Mexico and the United States, the cartel wouldn't be that powerful.
It wasn't for American citizens like our husbands that know how to navigate, that know how to maneuver.
If you were in charge, you know the business inside out.
If you were in charge of the DEA, what do you put in place to stop this flood of drugs?
This is the issue.
They have the money, unlimited resources, billions and billions of dollars to work around any barriers that the U.S. government puts in their way.
Okay, so what do you do?
I feel like education is a big part of it.
You were perfectly ready.
I was, but because of the demand, because of my environment.
When you start living, I did come from a neighborhood where drugs was very prominent.
Now, if you're living in that environment, you start becoming numb to it.
I've been to Sinaloa, and I've been to Culacan, and I've been over there, and I've seen families sitting in restaurants eating, and you would see these carnivores.
Cartels, Sinaloa cartels jump out out of pickup trucks, 50 of them at a time, with AK-47s strapped to their back with walkie-talkie radios, and you would hear gunshots in a distance, and they're ordering their food, and they're running out of the restaurant, and these families are sitting there like nothing is happening.
And I'm looking around like, what is going on?
Because they are so numb to their environment that that's their normalcy.
That's their normalcy.
So it seems like it's almost okay when it's not.
When we lived in Mexico, it was like we lived in affluent neighborhoods.
Our neighbors were doctors, lawyers, drug traffickers.
And it was so accepted because it's very different.
Here in the United States, you can see a drug trafficker a mile away.
In Mexico, they are educated.
They're polite.
They're respectful.
Their parents send them to the States to get their masters.
I mean, these are men that carry themselves like businessmen.
They run this company like a business.
I mean, they have the means to do whatever it takes to always be two steps ahead of the government.
So you're saying there's no way to deal with it?
When you deal with the government, takes people like our husbands under their wing and they learn this business inside out from our husband's perspective.
OK, these these are men that are always two steps ahead of of any government agency out there.
Now, when you take two men that know the business inside out and they know exactly how the business is run is ran and you learn from them, you are going to you are going to like their craft.
You are going to be an expert at it and you are going to be able to stop them because there's no other way than learning than thinking the way that they think and learning what they do.
That's the only way that they're going to stop them.
And when our husbands came forward and they said that they were going to cooperate against Chapo Guzman and they were going to bring down Arturo and Alfredo Beltran, which they did, all three of them, When they said they would do this, the government had no idea who our husbands were.
They knew that they always trafficked drugs.
They had no clue that our husbands were that person that could even bring these men to a US courtroom.
The US government didn't know what type of level our husbands were on.
They knew they were fugitives from a case from Milwaukee, but they had no idea they were working directly with these head cartel figures that were running Mexico.
When our husband said, we can deliver, this is what we could do, they were totally shocked.
Nobody ever thought, not even anyone in the government, realized that they would be able to, first of all, arrest Chappell, second of all, extradite him to the U.S. And our husband said, we are going to do this.
And the reason they did this was because Chapo is not loyal to anybody.
He would kill his family members if you cross him.
And the minute that you say you are not going to sell drugs and you are not going to continue to work, he will kill you and your whole family without losing sleep over it.
And our husbands were at that turning point when me and I were pregnant and we said we wanted out.
We wanted nothing to do with this life no more.
We are not bringing our children into this world.
We need to break this cycle because our children will not be raised the way that you were.
This is not OK.
We want to give our children the life that me and I were fortunate to have growing up.
And because of that, we said, no, this is not OK.
And our husbands were like, you're right.
But if we tell Chapel that we are going to stop, it's like turning off the faucet.
It's like the water's running, you turn off the faucet.
No, he's going to go into survival mode.
That's not going to happen.
And they were bringing him in so much money that he was not going to allow them to stop.
And when he's killing his family members, he is not loyal to anybody.
So...
Chapo was a violent man.
Our husbands, if you read in our book, you can see they've never used their power to hurt anyone.
They've never killed anybody.
They never sent anybody to get killed.
The government was so impressed that they ran their business like a business.
They can lose $10 million today and they say, no biggie, we're going to make it up tomorrow.
And that's the reason they did that was because that's why they were able to elude law enforcement.
Because when you start dealing with murder, that's when, you know, red flags go up.
That's when you start becoming, you know, you start becoming hot.
And that never happened to them.
So...
If I can...
So I'm talking to Mia Flores and Olivia Flores, the Cartel Wives, in the name of their book.
There's a picture of El Chapo on this, where he looks like the devil.
I mean, again, I don't know if that really is him.
That is him.
So...
When he was getting off the helicopter when they brought him to the U.S. That's the same picture.
What would happen if someone identified you, even in our studio?
I mean, I know you're here with a big security detail.
I don't know if this is government security.
I don't need to pry into this, but there's some big men who look armed.
Yes, we're very protected.
So what would happen if someone recognized you walking out of the building here and say, that's Flores.
You know...
Call El Chapo quickly, or whoever his disciples are now that still run his business.
We have bounties on our heads.
The cartel is trying to hunt us.
They are trying to kill us.
Our husbands are like...
I believe they're going to be the star witnesses of this trial that's coming up in September, just because they're American citizens, just because they were the first American citizens to work directly with Del Chapo, just because they were flooding the U.S. So we're talking like this is outrageous, the type of level that they were on.
Why would you put yourselves out there and risk the exposure and the danger, frankly, by doing this book?
Because, first of all, Chapo is never going to forgive us.
He's not going to get madder just because we wrote a book.
He's already mad.
He's already hunting us.
That's never going to stop.
When our husbands went to get sentenced, they got 14 years in prison, and the judge told them that they were walking away with the life sentence because every time that we go and we start our cars, we're going to be worried if that car is going to explode.
He says we would never have a normal life.
And what's ironic is that we wanted to give our children a different life.
We didn't want them to grow up in this life.
And here they are still having to visit their fathers in prison.
They're going through the same thing that our husbands went through when my mother-in-law had to raise...
Her twin boys, because the DEA took her husband when she was pregnant and she raised him for the first seven years of their life.
That's what our children are going through, sadly, but we only have hope.
We have hope that our husbands were courageous and they were brave enough to do the right thing.
They knew that they had to sacrifice themselves.
They knew that they were going to go to prison.
They willingly turned themselves in.
The government had no idea what type of level they were on.
They could have came back to the U.S. They could have...
They could have came back on that case.
They could have hired an attorney.
They could have probably beat the case if not did a few years.
Now they signed up because they felt like, you know what, we need to do the right thing.
We need to.
Everything that we've done so bad, like this is so horrible.
They started seeing the devastation.
They started seeing the violence.
They started seeing what this man was doing.
And when they were different from him, they didn't believe, they didn't think that was okay.
My father-in-law was very contradicting.
He might have said, this is what you do.
You run this like a business.
You sell drugs.
But my father-in-law would never have...
He taught them not to be violent, not to kill anybody, to be respectful, to be...
He was very contradicting in the way he raised them.
But the thing is, is our husbands felt like they were willing to sacrifice themselves.
They were willing to turn themselves in.
They're the ones that reached out to the U.S. government and said...
This is what we could do.
We want to come home.
We had enough money to move to Europe, to go anywhere, to live, fall off the grid of the earth.
And we decided, you know what?
Our husbands, they're going to do the right thing.
We are going to change our lives.
They are going to go to prison.
They're going to have to kiss their babies goodbye.
And they are going to, I mean, they were going to, you know, find redemption.
And say, you know what?
Now I can look my sons in the eyes and now I can know I did the right thing.
Even though I chose to live this life and even though I chose to sell drugs my whole life, you know what?
My kids deserve.
They deserve for me to do right.
They deserve for me to be able to look in their eyes and be proud of their father and say, you know what?
I did wrong.
But I chose to do this and I decided to change my life for you.
Coming up, what justice will mean for El Chapo?
And will Olivia and Mia ever come out of hiding?
Stay with us.
Mia, do you have any guilt at all through this process, including your husband turning himself in, going to jail, but also just choosing life, period, and bringing a child into an environment that's going to be risky?
Yes, I do.
I do.
And, you know, when I stepped into my husband's world, I think I've, now that I'm grown and I've been through so much in my life, I've seen that I took the biggest risk of my life.
You know, when you're in your 20s, everything's about fun and, you know...
Doing things that you can never imagine.
We traveled.
We did so many great things that a girl at 20 years old would never even imagine to do.
So all of that kind of blinds you and it blinds you to the reality of things.
Until these mishaps and these tragic moments hit you right in the face.
Our kidnappings.
My father-in-law's kidnapping.
My husband's kidnapping.
Just so many things happened to us.
They were kidnapped in addition to the kidnapping at the strip club?
Yes, my father-in-law was kidnapped.
He was kidnapped.
And what Olivia had said, that every happy moment in our life was always backed up by some kind of tragedy.
My nephew was...
It was the birth of my nephew, Olivia's son.
And, you know, instead of us decorating the house and just, you know, welcoming this beautiful baby, we're, you know, our husbands are on the phone and just trying to get our father-in-law back from the kidnapping.
It was, you know, we don't know who it really was, but they wanted $5 million for him.
It was a corrupt government official, for sure.
In Mexico?
In Mexico.
It sounds like the government's as bad as the cartels.
Yes, yes.
They really run it.
And then my husband's kidnapping, too.
We weren't married at the time.
And like I said, I just stepped into his world.
And then I started seeing all these things happening.
And he was kidnapped for a while.
He was kidnapped for like three, four weeks.
Who kidnapped him?
For a month.
He was kidnapped by an associate of his.
It was his connect.
And his connect actually was Chapel's people.
Well, his connect actually lost money.
So he was actually blaming his loss on our husbands.
And I, me, I could have been there because I was always with my husband.
Like Olivia said, we never really left our husbands.
How do you survive that?
Chapel just kills both of you.
No, my husband, this is how they started working with Chapo Guzman.
My husband, I mean, him and his brother, they're identical twins.
They've been together their whole life.
They do everything together.
And it's like when he found out that his brother was kidnapped and Chapo believed that our husbands, it was because of their debt that they didn't pay, that he wanted to murder my brother-in-law.
And my husband went up to the mountaintop.
He went to Culacan, Sinaloa.
He went up to the mountaintop and he's like, I'm here.
I need to speak to El Senor because nobody says his name.
It's like, you know who.
And so...
Voldemort.
Yes, exactly.
Harry Potter.
That's exactly how it works.
And so they flew my husband.
To his mountaintop.
They blindfolded him, put him on a plane, flew him to the mountaintop.
He had no idea he was ever going to make it back.
When I kissed my husband goodbye, I was pregnant.
I thought I was never going to see him again because I felt like Chapo is going to kill him when he sees him.
But my husband, he risked his life because he had to save his brother because his brother is his everything.
And so when he went to go see Chapel, he brought his ledgers.
Now, these ledgers are like Bibles.
They're huge.
And my brother-in-law was the one who was in charge of them, and he's the one that documented every single day all the drugs coming in, all the money going out.
So they are very precise.
The government had to hire a forensic accountant just to break down these ledgers.
And because of these ledgers, they were able...
To put a value on what Chapo was worth.
And that's why he made it to the Forbes magazine.
Because of these ledgers.
So my husband brings these ledgers.
He was the top 50 wealthiest person in the world.
He was the most powerful person.
I guess, you know, Carlos Slim, who we know, the richest man in Mexico, his only competitor is El Chapo, I found out.
Yes, for sure.
And the government was able to put a value on him because of these ledgers.
Now, in these ledgers, it showed every payment that our husbands had made.
So, the most miraculous thing happened.
Chappell had his worker, my husband was at his ranch, and had his worker go run and get his books.
He had the same book that showed every payment that he received from every person, which was unheard of.
And he compared my husband's books to his books and he realized they were making payments and it wasn't them that got over.
It wasn't them that owed a debt.
It was the person that they were, the middleman.
And so what happened was he automatically said, don't worry.
You know, I have your brother.
Don't worry.
We're going to make sure that he's okay.
After that, he flew my brother-in-law and my husband to his mountaintop again.
And he said, I want to work directly with you here.
He wanted them.
He took them under his wing like they were his own sons.
He had his sons hanging out with them because he wanted his sons to be more like our husbands.
What happened to that middleman who had taken the money?
A chapel killed him.
Yeah.
Chapo killed him.
Yes.
And it was devastating because our husbands were not violent people.
They never wanted this for him.
I mean, they didn't want to see this man die.
They tried everything to stop it.
Like, it's not okay.
Like, when they seen that happen, it was like, they didn't understand.
Going back to the custom agent.
Yeah.
That happened.
Chappell wanted to kill the custom agents, and our husband said, no, they were not having it.
He cannot do that.
The same way that they tried speaking up for the middleman, like, no, you cannot do that.
I mean, this is not something, it's not okay.
Our husbands believe in karma, and so do we.
Whatever you do, it's going to always come back to you.
And because they never killed anybody, because they never used violence, that's why they were gifted 14 years, because this is like a first-time event.
Everyone that has their power, they use that power, and they use their money to kill people and to create violence.
All that's said and done, both in this book, which again, I appreciate your honesty in it, and you have the title Cartel Wives, which is what you are, tells a story.
But you've made some choices, and you're in a business where people did get killed, whether you wanted it to happen or not.
People took drugs and died from overdoses.
A lot of money was made for people who are not so savory.
Do you have regrets?
I just want to say that we're very remorseful and we take full accountability.
We take the blame.
We know that this was wrong.
You know, I want to go back to when our husbands were either upbringing, you know, this is what they believe that this is what they were supposed to do.
And I'm not making an excuse for them at all, because when they realize this is everything that they ever believed in is all a lie and that they need they needed for themselves.
To turn themselves in and not just run again and not just flee and not just fall off the face of the earth.
They needed to do the right thing.
They needed to take accountability.
By the way, I understand this much better now, but much of our lives is spent trying to figure out if we did the right thing.
If you had to do it all over again, would you have?
When it comes to cooperating?
No, no.
Just the life you've lived.
Marrying a man who went to prison, then marrying a man who got killed, then...
Of course not.
This is not who my parents raised me to be, but at the end of the day, I feel like I went through so many...
My life has been like a roller coaster.
I had my ups and my downs, and it took me everything that I went through, all these life experiences, to be who I am today.
Like I told you earlier, if they didn't kill my husband that passed away, I'd probably still be with them and be living in that world.
I wouldn't be who I am today.
So when I put my book out there, the reason I did that was because I wanted to be transparent.
I wanted people to see that I've evolved, that I've grown, that we're not the same women, that we started this journey.
I was very addicted to this lifestyle.
And there's so many women that are out there today that are attracted to bad boys, that they might not be doing what their husbands were doing, but they're still attracted to these bad boys and it's still affecting their life.
And I wanted people to see our story, not to justify what we did, but we wanted them to just walk in our shoes and see what we've been through and maybe relate to some things that women have in common all the time.
You have the Me Too movement.
You have women that are coming forward today and they're saying, this is what I've been through.
It was hard for me to put stories about my late husband in there.
But I felt like, you know what, why should I be embarrassed?
This is what I live.
This is my story.
This is what I've been through.
So I'm just curious, as a parent, if you're a mother or father listening to this, and you don't want your daughter to end up married to drug dealers and living this dangerous life, what are the signs?
You know, what were you doing at 15 that your parents could have said, whoa?
My parents couldn't have done a better job with me anymore.
It's not their fault.
I take full accountability.
I mean, you look at both our lives.
I mean, we lived two totally different, we made two totally different choices.
I mean, we had the same upbringing and, you know, I chose until I met my husband to live on that path that my parents taught me.
And Olivia, you know, she was weaving in and out.
And I feel like it's really up to the children what life, what they're going to do with their lives and what choices they're going to make.
What should we know about El Chapo, who he really is, that you don't think people appreciate or understand?
I think Chapo is...
Chapo's a monster, and I think that we've all seen it.
I think he plays God in the worst ways.
I think that he's...
In what way?
And it takes, you know, he, of course, violence.
He uses violence.
He...
Kills obscene amount of people, innocent people as well.
And I think that we just see this guy and they glamorize him.
I mean, we've seen with Sean Penn and Keita Castillo.
It was like this big, you know, he became a celebrity.
You know, he put on a fancy shirt when that's not who he really was.
You know, he wore t-shirts and hats and, you know, his bulletproof vest.
And it's just so sad that they glamorize him.
Like, he's just this, like, celebrity that, you know, it's mind-boggling how people portray him.
And it's just, we see the violence and we see everything that he's caused to Mexico.
And, you know, if we think back in the Pablo Escobar days, and we see the mass amount of people that he killed, and we've seen what Colombia was before, we see, you know, just devastation in Colombia.
But now, I mean, we've read a couple, I think last year, Colombia was voted the most happiest place to live.
And with our husband's cooperation, and we may not see it right now, we may not see what our husbands have done for the government, and the government, and for Mexico as well.
Their indictment is well over 100 people.
Well over 100 people.
There's many cartel figures that are living, I mean, that are in prison today.
Because of our husbands.
So if we see that maybe what our husbands did, you know, and helped out, and the dent that they put into this cartel culture, that maybe Mexico would one day be the happiest place to be.
What would justice mean for you?
When your husband testifies, they probably will in his case.
Maybe as the main witnesses.
What should justice look like if the U.S. system works?
Because this man has escaped Mexican prisons twice.
He seems to be able to walk out without too much of a challenge, which is why I still am amazed that he was extradited to the U.S. I guess it's an acknowledgement by the Mexican government that this is the best shot at him serving justice.
Right.
I mean, I think that justice is going to be, you know, he's going to, it's up to the jury.
You know, by no means, I'm not an expert.
Yeah, but you know him better than the jury.
You're probably going to know him.
Yes.
If you were a juror, what would justice be?
He, of course, is going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Can you run the cartel from prison?
There are enough guys going in and out of the system, right?
Not in the U.S., though.
If he was in Mexico, it would probably be a different story, but not here in the U.S. He has no chance.
What would it take for you to be safe?
Will you ever feel safer?
We will never be safe.
We live in fear.
Fear is like a curse.
We will never be safe.
No matter what we do, we're always going to be looking out our window.
Whether we write a book, whether we didn't, whatever it is that we do in life, it's not going to stop us from being afraid.
It's not going to stop us from being devastated.
Like the judge said, this is a life sentence.
We have to live with this for the rest of our lives.
Our husbands knew that this is what they wanted to do.
They knew that, I mean, even if they go to testify, you know, and they have to face chapel in a U.S. courtroom, which is probably going to be one of the hardest things you can ever imagine.
I look at them like they're so brave.
They're so courageous.
They practically are finished with their time.
They only have two and a half years.
They don't have to go testify.
They're almost done with their time.
It's not like they're doing it for any type of benefit.
This is what they wanted to do.
They wanted to help dismantle something that they helped build.
And it was so destructive.
And when our husbands were in court and they were in front of that judge, they found redemption.
When you sit there and you realize everything that I learned was a lie and I have to take full accountability that all the devastation that I caused by selling drugs, that is a big deal.
That was like The worst thing that they could ever feel was to look themselves in the mirror and know this is what it was.
You know, when our husbands first turned themselves in, they felt like, you know what, the first night that they spent in prison, they said that it was the first time that they ever felt free in their lives.
They felt like they were done with this life.
They felt like they put this life behind them.
How ironic.
You go to prison and feel free.
You know, I think that, you know...
In all honesty, of course you read in the book just all the tragic moments that we've been through and the danger that we always live before our husbands turn themselves in.
I think that the danger now that we live is so much more worth it.
It's so much more worth it for our family because that life was not going to lead us down a good path at all.
Cartel Wives, that's who you are.
I'm coming out of this interview with a very different impression.
And I walked in.
I don't know if, Elisa, you feel that way.
No, absolutely.
100%.
A true story of deadly decisions, steadfast love, and bringing down El Chapo, which we'll optimistically be seeing later this year at a courtroom near you.
Mia Flores, Olivia Flores, good luck to you.
Thank you.
You can get on your disguises now.
I see your security detail gelling around, so just remember to duck.
