by WorldTribune Staff, October 27, 2025 Real World News
A Chinese national and fentanyl kingpin known as “Brother Wang” has been extradited from Mexico to the United States.
The DEA said Zhi Dong Zhang is accused of transporting from Mexico to the U.S. nearly 2,000 kilos of fentanyl and more than 1,000 kilos of cocaine and has laundered over $150 million through a complex network of more than 150 shell companies and 170 bank accounts.
Zhang was first arrested in Mexico last October, but a federal judge granted him house arrest while he was awaiting a court hearing for his extradition to the U.S.
On July 11 of this year, “Brother Wang” escaped from house arrest and was later recaptured in Cuba, Mexican National Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch said in a post on X.
“Today he was handed over to the United States authorities,” Harfuch said on Thursday. He thanked the Cuban government for its “valuable cooperation” in recapturing Zhang.
Brother Wang, who used other aliases including El Chino, Tocayo, Pancho, and Nelson Mandela, is accused by the DEA of leading a criminal network that has worked for both the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel since at least 2016.
Authorities say he didn’t just walk away from house arrest, he disappeared through a tunnel.
Related: Who is ‘Brother Wang’? U.S. zeroes in on fentanyl kingping believed to be in Cuba, October 23, 2025
The escape took place shortly before news emerged on Aug. 8 that President Donald Trump had authorized the Pentagon to prepare military options for targeting drug cartels designated as global terrorist organizations.
Zhang’s escape came the same day a U.S. Federal Court ordered a fresh arrest warrant for him on money laundering charges.
Zhang’s value to the cartels went far beyond bookkeeping, authorities said. He was a broker in the supply chain — the man who sourced chemical precursors from Guangdong, China and Dhaka, Bangladesh, greasing customs officials in Mexico’s Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas ports to ensure smooth, unsupervised imports.
“Brother Wang” is accused in U.S. indictments of trafficking cocaine, fentanyl, and methamphetamine. His laundering playbook was global and modern: shell companies in China’s special economic zones, offshore accounts, and a growing reliance on cryptocurrency, to hide money in the digital ether.
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