They once enjoyed a life of ill-gotten luxury, married to identical twins who climbed to the top of the world’s most profitable – and deadly – drug cartel. But these days, Mia and Olivia Flores live in the shadows, wearing disguises and shuttling their children from home to home, always wary someone is coming for them.
Daughters of Chicago police officers, Mia and Olivia married Pedro and Margarito Flores Jr. as the brothers rose from street-level dealers to running Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa drug cartel in the United States.
They made a lot of money," Mia said in an exclusive, on-camera interview with Fox News Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge. "My husband and brother-in-law were a big asset to him. They knew the U.S. inside and out, they knew the roads, they knew how to maneuver in the U.S. And that's something Chapo and his team didn't know how to do."
The lavish lifestyle came crashing down in 2012, when the twins were each sentenced to 14 years in prison for smuggling 71 tons of cocaine and heroin and $2 billion in cash into the United States. The Flores brothers were the highest level American drug traffickers to be flipped by the Drug Enforcement Agency--DEA, and key to bringing El Chapo to U.S. justice. Key to the prosecution's case, they are expected to testify at his 2018 trial in New York City.
"I would say that they're probably the strongest witnesses in this case," Olivia said in the interview, at which she, like her sister-in-law, wore dark glasses and a wig. "They were the first to ever get El Chapo Guzmán on a recorded conversation. They're U.S. citizens. They speak English. They've trafficked drugs across the U.S."
Olivia recalled the difficult discussions she and Mia had with their husbands when they decided to leave the drug world, a choice they knew would leave them marked for the rest of their lives.
"There's people in the U.S. that get caught and of course they flip and they cooperate, but our husbands were never caught,” Olivia said. “They decided that they wanted to cooperate with the U.S. government, they wanted to turn in El Chapo Guzmán, which is the biggest narco terrorist in the world, and they wanted to make a difference. They wanted to help dismantle something that they helped build."
He's the father of tunnels that go under the border,” Riley said. “And his ability to sense what could sell in the American market, I think, is really the best I've ever seen. We saw it with the methamphetamine issue here in the United States. We've seen it now with the growth in prescription drug abuse. What does he do? He shifts gears and begins to produce high-grade heroin and fentanyl, and brings that to the United States.
They believe that their husbands redeemed themselves and it gives the women strength, even though they have seen the toll drugs have taken on the U.S.
"I understand,” Mia said. “I'm a mother. I love my children, and it could be one of them also. But at the end of the day, what our husbands did put a dent in the drug trade. We did our part to say I'm sorry, and we denounce this life."
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/06/19...eir-story.html
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