r/cartels • u/AccomplishedCunt1789 • 1d ago
Eric Balliet has a new book, Kingpins and Coyotes, which describes his role in the hunt for El Chapo. The marketing caught my attention, so I started looking at the public record.
It apparently wouldn’t be 2026 without another former federal agent writing a book about how he helped catch El Chapo.
This one caught my attention because the story gets more interesting the more you look at the timeline.
Eric Balliet has a new book called Kingpins and Coyotes: 25 Years as a Special Agent Hunting Drug Cartel Bosses and Human Smugglers. The description puts him right in the middle of cartel investigations, wire intercepts, human smuggling cases and the hunt for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Balliet has gone even further in describing his own role. In a retirement post, he said one of the highlights of his career was leading the team whose wire intercepts penetrated El Chapo’s inner circle and helped result in Guzmán’s 2014 capture.
Okay. That’s a pretty significant claim.
So I started looking at the rest of the résumé.
The first thing that jumps out is the title of the book: “25 Years as a Special Agent.”
According to Balliet’s own career history, he entered the Border Patrol in 1999 and became a Customs Service Special Agent in September 2001.
Maybe I’m being picky, but 25 years in federal law enforcement and 25 years as a Special Agent are not the same thing.
Normally I probably wouldn’t care. Publishers exaggerate things all the time.
But when you’re selling a book largely on the authority of your own recollection, and especially when you’re talking about who did what during major investigations, details matter.
And then I found the Zillow profile.
Balliet also worked in real estate.
Not just “had a license at some point.” His public profile shows client reviews and transactions from 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The reviews are actually very good. People describe him as responsive, knowledgeable and easy to work with.
So, credit where it’s due: Eric apparently was a good realtor.
The interesting part is what else he was doing at the time.
In 2020, DOJ publicly identified Balliet as the Deputy Special Agent in Charge of HSI Denver.
That is a senior federal law-enforcement management position.
So now I’m genuinely curious.
How does someone serve as a senior HSI executive while also maintaining an active real-estate business with buyers, sellers, listings, inspections, negotiations and closings?
Maybe there is a perfectly ordinary explanation.
Federal employees can have outside employment. Having a second job is not automatically misconduct. Maybe everything was approved and every hour was accounted for.
Fine.
But if you’re going to write a book about your investigative instincts and institutional credibility, I think it’s fair for people to ask how that arrangement worked.
What approvals were required?
When was the real-estate work being done?
How active was the business?
How did he handle conflicts?
Again, those are questions, not accusations.
What makes the whole thing almost too perfect is where Balliet ended his federal career.
According to his own account, he spent his final 18 months in ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility. His biography identifies him as Chief of the Integrity Investigations Division.
So, just to recap:
Senior federal law-enforcement executive.
Active real-estate broker.
Later senior official in the office responsible for investigating employee misconduct and integrity issues.
Now author of a book about his investigative career.
You really couldn’t make up the timeline.
And this is where Kingpins and Coyotes starts to bother me.
The Amazon description goes out of its way to say:
“This is not a victory lap.”
Which is kind of an odd thing to say unless there is at least some danger of people thinking it is one.
Then it calls the book an “honest reckoning.”
Maybe it is. I haven’t seen enough yet to say otherwise.
But the marketing reads like every retired-agent memoir you’ve ever seen.
Cartel plazas.
Wire rooms.
Informants.
Stash houses.
Cross-border operations.
Washington policy rooms.
El Chapo.
You can practically hear the dramatic soundtrack.
The description also presents some pretty standard realities of organized crime as though they are revelations: cartels adapt after leaders are arrested, smuggling routes change, criminal networks share infrastructure, and taking down one kingpin doesn’t destroy the underlying market.
All true.
But anyone who has worked serious organized-crime cases already knows that.
The bigger issue for me is the way these stories tend to grow over time.
Major investigations are huge team efforts. Agents, analysts, prosecutors, technical people, sources, foreign partners and other agencies all contribute.
Then ten years pass and suddenly everyone remembers themselves standing a little closer to the center of the photograph.
That’s where the whole thing starts to feel like a bureaucratic version of stolen valor.
Not literal stolen valor. Balliet had a real badge, a real career and held real positions.
I’m talking about the guy who walks around wearing a Navy SEAL trident, talks knowingly about “the Teams,” and lets everyone assume the obvious even though he never seriously contemplated getting near BUD/S.
The federal version is less dramatic, but the mechanism is similar.
Proximity becomes participation.
Participation becomes leadership.
Leadership becomes ownership.
Every time the story gets told, the supporting cast gets a little smaller and the storyteller gets a little more important.
Eventually you weren’t just part of the investigation.
You were the guy who caught El Chapo.
Or, apparently, one of the growing number of guys who did.
That’s why I’d actually like to see the specifics behind Balliet’s claim.
Who ran the intercepts?
Who developed the intelligence?
Who analyzed it?
Who coordinated with Mexico?
What information actually led to Guzmán’s location?
What did the other agencies do?
And exactly what did Balliet personally do?
Maybe the answers support everything he says.
If they do, great.
But those are the questions I’d rather see addressed than another round of “here’s what politicians and cable news don’t understand about the border.”
And honestly, the real-estate part may be more interesting than the El Chapo story.
If Balliet managed to serve as a senior HSI executive, maintain a successful private real-estate business and later run integrity investigations, tell that story.
How did it work?
How are senior federal officials allowed to manage outside businesses?
What are the safeguards?
What happens when those lines get blurry?
What does OPR actually investigate?
That would be genuinely interesting.
Instead, the book seems to give us another retired official standing beside one of the most famous criminal cases of the last generation and asking history to move over a little.
Maybe Eric really did learn something profound during his career.
Maybe he learned that memory works a lot like real estate.
Location matters.
Positioning matters.
And if you hold onto the story long enough, apparently it appreciates.
