Salvador Lemus was invincible. Or so he thought. The 65-year-old drug kingpin has been at the helm of a ring that has smuggled more than $60 million worth of cocaine into the United States over two decades. He and 43 others were arrested in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The Mexican-born U.S. citizen operated a landscaping business. Nicknamed “El Vejo” (meaning the old one), he allegedly had ties to La Familia, the notorious Mexican cartel.
He received a warning from a business associate to get a new cellphone. Lemus’ response was this: “My phone, my phone — nobody can track it … I have 20 years with my number.”
Unknowingly, he’d been under government surveillance for a year, dubbed Operation Telarana, Spanish for “spiderweb.”
