I know this article, but the sources he listed are mostly either other media or criminal writers who are not sensitive about numbers. A proof that this article is unreliable is that it says "In 1989, he was listed as the seventh-richest man in the world" which is absolutely nonexistent in the original source he cited from Forbes. Instead, the original source stated: In 1987, FORBES published its first international billionaires issue, now an annual list updated in real time, and estimated his wealth to be at least $3 billion. But by his final haunting mention in the mag, his net worth depreciated 67 percent, to an estimated $1 billion.


Also like I said the number vastly contradicts any sensible estimation for the profit of drug trafficking. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexican-drug-cartels-make-billion-year/
The results are all over the map, ranging from $6 billion to $29 billion in estimates released since 2006. But none of them pegs Mexican drug traffickers’ revenue at “half a trillion dollars,” as Perdue claimed.