Mexican gun traffickers recruiting women as buyers

Ann Zarate was sentenced earlier this year to 10 months in federal prison as a buyer in a gun-trafficking ring that delivered 77 weapons to Mexico's warring drug cartels. She also represents one in a steady stream of women — grandmothers, single moms and expectant mothers — who cartels are regularly recruiting to keep weapons flowing from the U.S. to support their violent operations in Mexico.

Federal law enforcement officials don't track the numbers of women involved in gun-trafficking cases. But as the demand for weapons in Mexico has escalated in the past two years, trafficking rings have been increasingly recruiting women with clean criminal records to buy weapons for them, said J. Dewey Webb, chief of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives office in Houston.

At least a dozen women in the past two years have surfaced in federal gun-trafficking cases as suspects or cooperating witnesses in Houston and the South Texas region, the nation's busiest gun-trafficking corridor to Mexico, according to court records, federal law enforcement officials and defense attorneys.

Webb said the women are joining the armies of buyers eager to risk harsh criminal sanctions in the U.S. — and possible retaliation by the cartels if they fail — for a relatively small share in the lucrative arms trade.

Because convicted felons cannot legally buy weapons, women with no criminal history are seen as valuable "straw buyers" who transfer their purchases to smugglers through relatives, boyfriends and acquaintances. The women often are being paid as little as $100 per trip to buy high-powered weapons from legitimate U.S. gun dealers, from Houston to the Rio Grande Valley.