Melissa del Bosque

In the late 2000s, Miguel Treviño led the notoriously brutal Zetas drug cartel in Mexico. When his older brother, Jose, sold a quarter horse in Oklahoma for a record-breaking price, the FBI was tipped off about a potential money laundering scheme that cleaned Zeta drug money by injecting it into the world of quarter horse racing. This book documents the multi-year investigation led by FBI agents Scott Lawson and Alma Perez as they pieced together the money laundering scheme.

This was definitely interesting! I really enjoyed how the intricacies of the scheme were presented, and following Lawson as he and Perez made their investigation made sense and was satisfying. Jose's (and his acquaintances') trial was very exhaustively covered--it was interesting, but I felt like it could have been shortened a bit. I definitely learned a lot about quarter horse racing, the FBI and IRS, money laundering, and the cocaine trade. I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed it, though it took me a while to get used to the (female) narrator's voice for male quotes.… (meer)