Carlos Beltrán Leyva

Carlos Beltrán Leyva (born 1969) is a Mexican incarcerated drug lord with the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel. The cartel was created by the four Beltrán Leyva brothers: Carlos, Héctor, Alfredo and Arturo. Born in the Sinaloan countryside in the late 1960s, Carlos and his brothers worked closely with Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, during decades of smuggling.

The organization, run mainly by Arturo and Héctor, formed as a splinter group of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, which was led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera. After Alfredo was arrested, the Beltrán-Leyva brothers blamed Guzmán Loera and retaliated by forming the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, and killing one of the Sinaloa cartel chief's sons in a grenade attack on a Culiacán shopping center. This sparked a war between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltrán-Leyva Cartel, which allied itself with the Gulf Cartel. A warrant had been out for his arrest since 2008. However, a 2008 list of Mexico's 37 top drug traffickers, for which the government offered rewards of as much as $2 million, did not include his name.

Carlos Beltrán Leyva was arrested in Culiacán on December 30, 2009, after he was stopped while driving with a forged license. He was found to be in possession of a pistol, a rifle, ammunition and cocaine, and was using the fake name Carlos Gámez Orpineda. The arrest came after a citizen tipped authorities to the presence of an armed man in Culiacán.

His children, Rodrigo, Carlos Jossafath and Iris Beltrán, Rodrigo is currently a businessman, Jossafath is a content creator and Iris is a model.