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Some $29.5 million dollars is seized drug proceeds from jailed Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas-Guillen is being divided up between 12 law enforcement agencies in the Rio Grande Valley.

Cardenas-Guillen is serving a 25-year prison sentenced but forfeited the drug proceeds back in February 2010.

U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials held a press conference in McAllen on Thursday morning to say how the funds would be split up.

ICE officials released the following breakdown for the $29.5 million dollars:

• Brownsville Police Department                                  $2,953,122.00
• Cameron County District Attorney                             $1,181,388.20
• Cameron County Sheriff’s Office                                $5,906,966.00
• Hidalgo County HIDTA                                                $1,181,388.20
• Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Office                                  $1,181,388.20
• McAllen Police Department                                       $2,953,122.00
• Mission Police Department                                        $1,181,387.60
• Palmview Police Department                                     $1,181,387.60
• Pharr Police Department                                            $1,181,387.60
• San Juan Police Department                                       $1,181,387.60
• Texas Department of Public Safety                            $1,145,387.00
• Texas National Guard’s Counter-Drug Support          $1,145,387.00

Cardenas-Guillen was indicted in 2000 but arrested in a major gun battle in Matamoros back in 2003.

Mexican authorities extradited him to the United States in January 2007.

While head of the Gulf Cartel, Cardenas-Guillen oversaw a vast drug trafficking empire responsible for smuggling tens of thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico and into the United States.

Cardenas-Guillen used violence and intimidation to further the goals of his criminal enterprise. 

In May 1999, he threatened to kill a Cameron County Sheriff’s deputy who was working in an undercover capacity with HSI after the undercover agent refused to deliver a load of about 988 kilograms (2,174 pounds) of marijuana. 

Later, in November 1999, while traveling in an official vehicle through Matamoros, Mexico, two DEA and FBI agents were surrounded by Cardenas-Guillen and his gang and threatened at gunpoint. 

Although eventually allowed to leave, Cardenas-Guillen warned the agents not to return.

Cardenas was charged with, convicted of, and sentenced to the maximum statutory penalty for threatening to assault both federal agents and the Cameron County deputy sheriff.