Floral Update

The narconephews explicitly trafficked (heh) on their family connections to gain street cred with the DEA agents they thought they were selling to.

Here’s a fun nugget from the ongoing Flores drug conspiracy trial: the narconephews explicitly trafficked (heh) on their family connections to gain street cred with the DEA agents they thought they were selling to.

Take it away, McClatchy:

Just moments before gun-wielding, masked officers stormed into the Haitian hotel to arrest him, the nephew of the Venezuelan First Lady talked with confidential informant about using the profits from a $20 million drug deal to help his “mother’s” congressional campaign, according to the informant’s testimony.

Efrain Campo, 29, who with his cousin Francisco Flores, 30, has been charged with conspiring to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine into the U.S., acknowledges in recent court documents that he lived with the powerful first lady, Cilia Flores, and presumably Nicolas Maduro, the current Venezuelan president. A sign of how close he is to the family, Campo refers to himself as the first lady’s “stepson.”

After he got busted, he walked it back. And I believe him! I’m sure the plan was just to pocket the money. It’s not like Cilia is short of ways to finance her shenanigans.

That’s not the point, though: the point is that being her nephews was baked into their business plan from day one.