Three men were indicted today on drug trafficking charges after investigators New York State Police Special Investigations Unit traced a drug trail from a handoff in the Bronx on April 9, to a stash house in Corona, Queens.

The investigation yielded approximately 10 pounds of heroin and nine pounds of crystal meth.

The meth is valued at about $960,000, and that amount of heroin could be sold for more than $1 million on the street.

New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said the drug trafficking ring “poured literally pounds of deadly, illicit drugs into the streets of Queens and beyond.”

A search of the Queens stash house uncovered a ledger pertaining to “ice” transaction, $2,000 hidden inside a vent, and supplies for making meth, including masks, grinders, a kilo-press and a scale.

Investigators believe the meth originated from “megalabs” in Mexico. One of the types of heroin they found os known as “black tar” and apparently comes from Mexico as well.

According to State Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, the bust and seizure are “typical of a pattern” in narcotics investigations throughout the city.

Brennan believes that the presence of meth in the city is an indication that Mexican cartels are trying to “promote the use and addiction to crystal meth” here.

According to the Department of Health, emergency room visited related to meth more than doubled between 2004 and 2011, jumping from 214 to 576.

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The two arch rivals (right? apparently?) were facing off in a Pool D Round Robin game when Mexico took exception to a ninth-inning bunt hit by Canada’s Chris Robinson as our neighbors to the north led 9-3. Many people have blamed the bunt on the WBC’s run-differential tiebreaker. In other words, the tournament favors scoring as many runs as possible, even leading by six runs in the ninth.

Mexico’s pitcher Arnold Leon, with prodding from third baseman Luis Cruz, drilled the next batter after throwing two consecutive inside pitches. Rene Tosoni, that hitter, took exception to Leon and the whole brouhaha began.

The benches cleared, renowned hot head Alfredo Aceves got snap mared to the ground by Nyjer Morgan-clone Tyson Gillies and legit punches were thrown. This was not your typical “stand around and trash talk” baseball fight. It got very ugly.

Canada coach Larry Walker said of Aceves, “I had a hold of him and I thought I saw Satan in his eyes.”

Even as the players started to leave the field the Canadian players started to taunt the heavily pro-Mexico crowd. Some fan responded by chucking a bottle at the players, striking Canadian pitching coach Denis Boucher. Canada shortstop Cale Iorg pulled a Milton Bradley and whipped it back into the crowd.

Oh, and the organizers decided no one should be suspended. No big deal, boys. Carry on.

Follow Metro New York Sports Editor Mark Osborne on Twitter @MetroNYSports. Good fight, though it’s still no Nolan Ryan vs. Robin Ventura.

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She joined to find solace after her baby had died – instead, she was forced into extortion, mental torture and sexual depravity. “Olivia” is just one of the thousands of victims that fell prey to the Defenders of Christ cult, whose members were subjected to forced labor or sexual activities.

Last month, law enforcement officers raided the sect’s house near the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo: twenty-four sect members were arrested, 14 of whom were foreign nationals, including its Spanish leader Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba, who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The sect offered classes in ‘bio-programming’ and other pseudoscientific health care to attract followers.

For the first time, “Olivia”, a women in her 30s whose name is changed to conceal her identity, tells about her ordeal at the hands of those operated in the name of Christ.

Metro: How did you come to join this sect?

Olivia: It began in 2008: a friend of my ex-husband invited me – it was at that time when I was passing through a period of severe depression over the loss of my baby boy. I was emotionally devastated. Then I heard how much you can do [in the sect] to get better so I decided that I wanted to take some of the classes on offer in the sect. I felt really well at the basic level and also with the second one, the intermediate level, which allowed me a sect volunteer. By April of 2009, I was hired as their assistant.

At what point did the pressures set in?

Two of my bosses [in the sect], José Arenas Losanger Segovia and his wife, were very strict. From the beginning I started to suffer from workplace violence, which was also psychological. For the smallest mistake they would punish me without pay. And the reality is that I paid for my technical classes with my work. They had told me I had to be a good servant and obey.

When did the cult’s leader, Ignacio Gonzalez de Arriba, come into the scene?

In the summer of 2009, I started to hear about Ignacio’s arrival to Mexico from Brazil. At that time, we were told about the ‘Defenders of Christ’, but I was told that it was not so much a religion as a different way of thinking. What’s more, they started asking us to pay tithes.

What was the mechanics of the contributions?

Systematically, they planted in our minds the idea that we had to pay up once a week, and then it was every day. They received tithes through Western Union from places like Paris, Spain, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile. By then, they made us believe Ignacio was the master, a great being of light. Over time, they wanted to establish the Defenders of Christ as a religion, but in Mexico it could not have been possible because Ignacio is a foreigner.

Ignacio arrives and what happens?

He began running more classes, which became more expensive, and in the end he started to openly tell us that he is the incarnation of Christ. As part of our training as “apostles of the Defenders of Christ”, he would provide us with 343 different precepts (commandments): on this he would start talking about polygamy and how women’s bisexuality was seen as something good, and how the apostles could each have seven women and Ignacio up to ten. From that he began talking about supernatural powers, about magic – catalyzed with sex.

Was that moment the peak of it all?

They told us that we should have sex with women, and not with men. Then prostitutes started being brought in because they said that Ignacio had a heart condition and he was losing magic, so he asked for some women.

How close was your relationship with Ignacio?

We shared a close empathy, but I had no privileges at all – he was telling me that I should obey everything that was said. By obeying the 343 precepts I was such a good servant and showed great loyalty to be on his right-hand side. But when he arrived, Ignacio also became the worst for me.

What were you forced to do?

I had to go out to the bars or clubs to find prostitutes, seduce them and take them to Ignacio to have sex with him. I lost my dignity and my family fell apart. There were times when Ignacio gave me something I had to drink and he’d tell me, “This is poison” and then laugh out loud, all to test my loyalty.

How did you realize the gravity of your situation?

In 2010, it was a night when I went out in search of women, but I had an accident that kept me in bed. However, I had enough strength to turn my back and escape [the sect]. It has been very difficult because I realized I didn’t even had something to eat, or means to live. I was alone.

How did you feel when you heard Ignacio was arrested?

I was happy, I felt relief. However, I still have a feeling tingling in my spine: I hope that the authorities would be smart enough to know what they face because those cult leaders can manipulate your mind. I am worried in a particular way because the people who were closest to Ignacio are going to defend him no matter what. [Other leading cultists] José Losanger and Tito Shoucri are going to blame themselves just to get Ignacio free.

What would you like to request from the authorities of the countries some of the sect members are from?

Please do not take this case lightly – they are comparable to very dangerous criminals, even psychopaths. Just think about it: they brainwash you so much that we even sold our bodies to pay them and, even worse, they showed us how to die or kill for Ignacio.

FACTBOX

• The “Defensores de Cristo” (Defenders of Christ) was present in 80 countries, with 4,000 victims in Mexico and 10,000 across the rest of the world, according to the Argentina-based Victim Support Network (Red de Apoyo a Víctimas de Sectas).
• For online courses in ‘bio-programming’, members were charged up to $130,000.
• After paying the maximum fee, members would be conferred as “Apostles of Christ” and purportedly received supernatural powers, like the ability of resurrection and curing of diseases by touch, the network added.

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Chicago authorities designated the head of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel Public Enemy No. 1 on Thursday, a first in Chicago since gangster Al Capone earned the top spot after the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre 84 years ago.

Still, the level of violence and corruption generated by Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman and his cartel far exceeds that of Capone, the heads of the Chicago Crime Commission and the Chicago office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in their joint announcement.

“In my opinion, Guzman is the new Al Capone of Chicago,” Jack Riley, special agent in charge of the DEA in Chicago, said in a statement, adding that it “wouldn’t even be a fight” if the cartel were pitted against the Chicago Mob.

“His ability to corrupt and enforce his sanctions with his endless supply of revenue is more powerful than Chicago’s Italian organized crime gang,” Riley said of Guzman.

Guzman, known as “El Chapo” or “Shorty,” in Spanish, escaped a Mexican prison in a laundry basket in 2001 to become the country’s highest-profile trafficker, hauling tons of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin to U.S. markets in trucks, ultralight aircraft and through clandestine tunnels.

Included on the Forbes list of billionaires since 2009, Guzman has been indicted in the United States on dozens of charges of racketeering and conspiracy to import narcotics. Washington has a $5 million reward for the capture of El Chapo.

The Sinaloa cartel, which has trafficking networks throughout the Midwest, is waging an all-out war for turf with the rival Zetas cartel south of the border, stoking drug violence that has killed tens of thousands in recent years.

The Chicago Crime Commission, formed in 1919 to improve the criminal justice system, says it was first to release a list of top criminals known as the Public Enemies List. The FBI later adopted the list and named it the “Most Wanted.”

Capone was designated Public Enemy No. 1 in 1930, the year after an attack he ordered on George “Bugs” Moran’s rival gang at a North Side garage on February 14, 1929, that killed seven men, including a doctor who liked to hang out with gangsters.

The men were lined up along a wall by two men dressed as police officers and massacred by two other men using Thompson submachineguns, securing Capone’s place at the top of organized crime in Chicago and the public enemy list.

Riley said the Mexican cartel was so deeply embedded in Chicago that law enforcement officers have to operate as if Chicago were on the border with Mexico instead of 1,500 miles away.

The cartel is the major drug supplier in the Chicago area, generating tens of millions of dollars. Chicago and its suburbs also serve as a transit hub for drugs, putting Guzman’s fingerprints on much of the area violence, the commission said.

“Compared to Guzman, Al Capone looks like an amateur,” J.R. Davis, president and chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission, said in a statement.

Authorities appear to be closing in on Guzman. In recent months, U.S. and Mexican agents have arrested traffickers close to him and seized his assets on both sides of the border.

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