Mexican drug cartel-linked Quarter Horses set for sale

A group of 379 Quarter Horses seized earlier this year by federal officials for allegedly being part of a money laundering ring by Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel are scheduled to be sold at Heritage Place’s fall mixed sale in Oklahoma City on Nov. 1-3.

The 379 horses are part of a 900-horse sale. The horses are being sold as the property of the Department of Treasury and include mares, weanlings, yearlings, 2-year-olds, and other horses of racing age, and embryos.

Quarter Horse breeding regulations allow registration of multiple foals from the same mare through an embryo transfer program.

The sale horses include the 2-year-olds Mr. Ease Cartel, Streak Hitter, and Super Long Straw, who qualified for the $1,041,000 Ed Burke Million Futurity at Los Alamitos, but were seized between the trials and final by government officials. The horses have been based at an Oklahoma farm in recent months and have not been in training.

Those horses, and others, were owned by Tremor Enterprises, operated by Jose Trevino Morales and members of his family, and Bonanza Racing Stable, operated by Fernando Solis Garcia. Morales and Garcia were among seven people arrested in June in California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas on money laundering charges. They are awaiting trial.

Government officials said at the time of the seizure that money generated by the Los Zetas cartel was used to allegedly buy and race Quarter Horses in the United States.

The sale of so many horses, many with prominent bloodlines, is expected to draw widespread interest, according to Heritage Place general manager Jeff Tebow.

“I think it will be good to get them marketed and redistributed and get this behind us,” he said Wednesday.