The Drug Lord

Joaquín Guzmán Loera is the kind of success story that Mexico often lacks. As a child, he was so poor that he sold oranges to scrape together money for a meal. But since then, the 52-year-old has built a formidable business empire and a personal fortune currently ranked number 721 on Forbes magazine’s list of global titans. His rags-to-riches story only comes with one small glitch: His business empire is illegal.

Guzmán runs one of the world’s biggest drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico, the so-called Sinaloa cartel, named for its home state of Sinaloa. It smuggles a big part of the marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines that end up on American streets, and it has links to organized crime in 23 countries, according to Mexican and U.S. officials. (Poder 360)