Some women controlled operations involving millions, sometimes billions, of dollars, and they got none of it legally or ethically.
Griselda Blanco
It’s almost kind of difficult to imagine the number associated with Griselda Blanco’s operation. Her cocaine sales stood at around $80 million every month during its peak. Yes, really, that much. Her network supplied cities like New York and Los Angeles during the late 1970s.
They used couriers and custom-made clothing to move drugs. There were some later claims that put her personal fortune in the billions, although there’s never been official proof of that. $80 million a month is still a lot, though.
Enedina Arellano Félix
You’d hardly think that accounting and cartel leadership are connected, but they were for Enedina Arellano Félix. Her brothers became known for violence and parties while she studied accounting. She later helped the Tijuana Cartel with money laundering.
It got to the point where Mexican officials said she was the group’s main financial operator. It’s unclear exactly how much she was making, but she was certainly making a lot.
Marllory Chacón Rossell
Tens of millions of dollars a month. That’s how much Marllory Chacón Rossell laundered through her gang network in the early 2010s, and it happened all while she was based in Guatemala. Her operations reached as far as Honduras and Panama
It’s all thanks to the thousands of kilograms of drugs each month that she made so much money. That wasn’t all, though, because she used some of the money to fund hotels and clothing stores. Even some import businesses were part of her operations. She was one busy lady.
Sandra Ávila Beltrán
You had to look at one of Sandra Ávila Beltrán’s drug shipments to understand the level she was working at. One of them weighed 9,291 kilograms. It was seized in 2001 after traveling by ship from Colombia toward Mexico and the United States.
Ávila was already known at that point to authorities, as she’d been connecting Colombian suppliers with Mexican trafficking groups around Pacific routes. It’s not clear how much she made overall, but there was a $5 million ransom demand after her son’s kidnapping. Clearly, she was dealing with some serious money.
Guadalupe Fernández Valencia
It took a long time for authorities to catch Guadalupe Fernández Valencia. But once they did, the truth came out, and her trafficking network had moved roughly $1.8 billion in drug proceeds. They took the money from American cities back to Mexico.
That figure wasn’t all just her money, but still, she would’ve had a cut of it. Valencia worked with the Sinaloa Cartel’s distribution system to arrange shipments and contacts. They shipped all kinds of drugs and operated at scale across many different cities.
Cheng Chui Ping, or ‘Sister Ping’
Traveling from China to the United States is difficult enough on its own. It’s even harder when you’re trying to do it illegally. That’s what people paid Cheng Chui Ping to do, they gave her tens of thousands of dollars to get a place on these dangerous journeys.
She became known as Sister Ping. Ping ran her smuggling business from New York’s Chinatown during the 1980s and 1990s. Customers came with large debts, and these were collected through relatives or work. There was also pressure and threats involved, of course.
Maria Licciardi
Naples gave Maria Licciardi so many ways to make money, and she took them all. She was the head of the Licciardi crime clan and an important figure in the Secondigliano Alliance, another Italian cartel.
Whether it was drug markets, illegal gambling, extortion, or something else entirely, Licciardi had influence over it. Her allied Camorra clans controlled entire neighborhoods at one point. She had money rolling in, week after week, and a lot of it, too.
Blanca Margarita Cázares Salazar
Blanca Margarita Cázares Salazar didn’t just have a single stash of cash. No, her earnings were linked to an entire commercial web of around 19 companies and 22 people. These included all sorts, like real estate and money-service businesses, as well as a restaurant.
She also had a chain of 20 jewelry and cosmetics stores. Salazar used these businesses to help move Sinaloa Cartel proceeds. It definitely wasn’t a simple side project for her, and such a setup gave her plenty of places to hide all that cash.
Jemeker Thompson
In the 1980s, Jemeker Thompson built a drug operation in L.A. It went way beyond a single neighborhood. She sold her drugs through contacts in several U.S. cities and brought in millions. She was smart, though, because she used legitimate businesses to handle it all.
For example, a hair company gave her a public business identity to fake her earnings, while homes and other investments absorbed the rest of it. It took a few years for federal prosecutors to charge her in a drugs and money-laundering conspiracy. She made enough to support a very expensive life for a while.
Stephanie St. Clair
Stephanie St. Clair used a $10,000 investment to enter Harlem’s numbers business in the 1920s. It was quite a lot back then. Her customers placed small bets on daily number combinations, and then the bankers kept the money left after winners were paid.
Those small wagers really started to add up. So much, in fact, that Clair became a millionaire and controlled part of a gambling market. No drug routes or cargo ships needed, just thousands of small bets. Plus some very organized bookkeeping, too.
Maria ‘Chata’ Leon
Drew Street in northeast Los Angeles was where Maria ‘Chata’ Leon made her money. She had connections to the Avenues gang and a steady mix of drug sales to keep her afloat. Extortion and robbery played a role, too, with the expectation that dealers in the area would pay up.
Strangely enough, Leon was actually convicted in a racketeering case instead of her drug empire. Her operation had kept money moving through the same neighborhood for years, so it was clearly profitable.
Lola ‘La Chata’ Estévez Zuleta
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time before Mexico’s cartels became household names. That was the 1920s, and it was also when Lola ‘La Chata’ Estévez Zuleta was building a drug business in Mexico City.
The routes extended to the United States and Canada. It’s not clear exactly how much money she was making, but it was enough for the authorities to keep chasing her. They’re not going to do that for small fry.
Rosetta Cutolo
Rosetta Cutolo’s brother Raffaele ran the Italian criminal group Nuova Camorra Organizzata from prison. But Rosetta didn’t sit idly by. She dealt with messages and meetings, for one. She spoke to contacts across Naples during the late 1970s and 1980s.
She was a typical Italian gangster and moved cash in suitcases. The organization made its money from drugs and extortion, along with prison collections. It also had control over local businesses and made them pay.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
High-profile criminal cases from the past 80 years in America
Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Zodiac Killer — do these dreadful names creep you out? These are just a few of America’s worst criminals, whose twisted behavior forever scarred the country.
High-profile criminal cases from the past 80 years in America
