The sons of infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman have seemingly taken aim at the Daily Star.
Last month, four of the ex-Sinaloa Cartel boss' sons – Ivan Guzman Salazar, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, Joaquin Guzman Lopez and Ovidio Guzman Lopez, known collectively as Los Chapitos – were indicted by the US.
The charges against them include drug trafficking, money laundering and violent crimes, with US authorities accusing them of taking over their father's business after his last arrest in 2016.
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One of the sons, Ovidio, was arrested in a large-scale operation in January and remains in Mexico pending extradition proceedings. He could soon join his father in Colorado's supermax prison.
Now, Los Chapitos have penned a letter to US authorities in response. It was published in Mexican newspaper Milenio.
In it they deny the charges against them and appear to take a swipe at media outlets like your very own Daily Star, who have been covering their story over the past few months.
A section from the letter, translated by BorderlandBeat, reads: "Media outlets have regularly created articles with our names in the titles and even put them in headlines of the front page, solely for the purpose of selling more newspapers or to obtain clicks on their webpage."
In other sections they deny leading the Sinaloa Cartel following their father's arrest. "We are not and have never been the heads of it and we are not interested in becoming that," they write.
Instead, they claim there are a number of cartel groups in Sinaloa, claiming to be affiliated with them and their father, carrying out crimes without their say so.
They write: "The way these independent groups operate usually relies on the use of our father's name, or in more recent cases on using our name, 'Los Chapitos', as we have been labelled."
The brothers go on to deny involvement in fentanyl trafficking, which is thought to be the cartel's primary source of income.
They write: "We have never worked with fentanyl, however there are plenty of Sinaloans who do so and that is why there are seizures.
"Those seizures belong to somebody and we encourage law enforcement to investigate them. If the government has agents working in the state, then they already know what's really going on in Sinaloa. It isn't hard to know who really owns these seizures.
"We are victims of persecution and we are being made into a scapegoat.
"We hope this letter gets to the right people. We are at your service."
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