The Sinaloa Cartel is the single largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the Western hemisphere.
The Sinaloa is not a single hierarchical organization. Instead, it functions more as a confederacy of groups that are connected through blood, marriage, and regional relationships. Decisions for the group are ultimately made through board-of-directors-type mechanisms and not by a single leader.
This operational flexibility has allowed the Sinaloa to continue to thrive despite several setbacks. In 2008, the Beltran Leyva Organization (BLO), once a core component of the cartel, split from the group and began to wage war against it. And earlier this year, Chapo Guzman, the group's multibillionaire architect and a criminal business visionary, was finally arrested in the coastal resort city of Mazatlan.
However, the Sinaloa made new alliances and continued to expand.
Today, the Sinaloa are active in 17 Mexican states and throughout the US. They have connections that stretch to Australia as well.
The Sinaloa's success is allegedly due in part to the organization's history of preferential treatment at the hands of US's Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mexicans, who are accused of using the Sinaloa as a source of information or (even as a hands-off means of enforcement) against other, less pliable cartels.