Drug kingpin 'Chino Antrax' who worked for El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel is missing just two months after being released from California prison on probation
- Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa - better known as 'Chino Antrax' - was released on probation March 3
- He was reported missing last week after a probation officer paid a visit to his house in Southern California and discovered it was empty
- Arechiga Gamboa served more than six years behind bars after pleading guilty to importing cocaine and marijuana into the United States from Mexico
- He also admitted to facilitating violent activities for El Chapo's Sinaloa cartel, and was reportedly the leader of a group of hit men
Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa - better known as 'Chino Antrax'- has disappeared two months after he was released from prison in San Diego
A lethal enforcer for El Chapo's Sinaloa drug cartel has gone missing in California, two months after he was released from prison on probation.
Jose Rodrigo Arechiga Gamboa - better known as 'Chino Antrax' - was released from Metropolitan Correctional Center San Diego on March 3 after serving nearly seven years behind bars for drug smuggling.
Arechiga Gamboa, 39, was reported missing last Wednesday when a probation officer paid a visit to his house in Southern California and discovered it was empty.
A warrant is now out for his arrest, and authorities are 'recommending nine more months behind bars if he is caught', according to The San Diego Union Tribune.
The San Diego Union Tribune reports that Arechiga Gamboa may have fled back to his homeland of Mexico.
Arechiga Gamboa was arrested in December 2013 - less than two months before the Sinaloa cartel's top leader, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, was captured.
Sinaloa's leader Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán is pictured in 2016. Last year, he was sentenced to life in prison
In 2015 Arechiga Gamboa plead guilty to participating in cocaine and marijuana shipments from Mexico to the US. He also admitted to facilitating violent activities for the Sinaloa cartel.
At the time, the prosecutors trumpeted the fact that he was being tried on US soil.
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'Chino Antrax is one of the highest-ranking Sinaloa cartel kingpins ever prosecuted in the United States,' Laura Duffy, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, stated in 2015.
However, Arechiga Gamboa was only sentenced in December 2019.
While initially facing life in prison , he was only sentenced to seven years and three months behind bars - most of which he had already served.
Arechiga Gamboa spent time in Metropolitan Correctional Center San Diego before he was released
According to Mexican media, he was one of the two leaders of a group of hit men who call themselves the 'Anthrax'.
The group is blamed for a series of murders, including the killings of three men who were hung off a bridge in 2011, that were seen as revenge after one of their leaders was murdered.
The Anthrax also helped the Sinaloa organization as it engaged in a bloody war with the Beltran Leyva cartel, when the latter decided to splinter in 2008.
Several folk songs, known as narcocorridos, mention 'El Chino Antrax' as an elegant and fit man with a taste for sports cars, yachts and Champagne.
Prior to his arrest, Arechiga Gamboa used social media to post images of himself, with his face blurred out, with beautiful women, gold-plated firearms, Italian sports cars and other luxuries in locations all over the world.
Prior to his arrest, Arechiga Gamboa used social media to post images of himself, with his face blurred out, with beautiful women, gold-plated firearms, Italian sports cars and other luxuries in locations all over the world
He was arrested in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that began in 2011 by targeting a small drug-dealing ring in the San Diego suburbs of Chula Vista and National City, before it reached top leaders through the use of more than 200 wiretaps.
Meanwhile, Sinaloa's former leader, Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, is currently serving life in prison inside ADX Florence - the nation's most secure supermax prison.
He was considered to have been the most powerful drug lord in the world prior to his capture in 2014.
A photo from Arechiga Gamboa's social media page is pictured
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