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Jun 18, 2014 · I-Team has the exclusive video of the traffic stop that led to 90-year-old drug mule Leo Sharp's arrest. CHICAGO (WLS) -- An I-Team TV exclusive: the traffic stop that netted 90-year-old...
Jun 10, 2014 · The ‘Grandfather’ Gets Busted. The D.E.A. spent months investigating the Sinaloa cartel’s operation in the Detroit area and tracking their most prolific drug mule: Leo Sharp, a World War II ...
- 4 min
- The New York Times
Jun 11, 2014 · Leo Sharp, the most prolific drug mule that regional law enforcement had ever tracked, was placed under arrest. The Sinaloa cartel’s nickname for him was well chosen. They called him Tata ...
- 4 min
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- Leo Sharp Goes from Daylilies to Drugs
- The Perfect Courier
- The D.E.A. Hunt For “Tata”
- The Trial of Leo Sharp
- The True Story of The Mule
Long before he was a drug trafficker, Leo Sharp (born in Indiana in 1924) was a war hero, a veteran of World War II decorated with a Bronze Star Medal for fighting in one of the most brutal battles of the Italian campaign. Afterward, he’d settled into an honest career as one of the world’s most respected horticulturists. Sharp specialized in daylil...
“Leo is the perfect courier for the cartel,” D.E.A. Special Agent Jeremy Fitch admittedafter Sharp was caught. “He has a legitimate ID, he’s an older guy, he wouldn’t be pegged as a drug runner and he has no criminal history.” The Sinaloa Cartel saw that too and they quickly began to trust Sharp more and more. After a quick test run, they began loa...
In the end, it was a D.E.A. Special Agent named Jeff Moore who found Leo Sharp. He’d busted a small-time dealer carrying 2 kg of cocaine, and he’d pressed him to talk until he’d led him to Ramon Ramos, the bookkeeper for the Sinaloa Cartel. Ramos cracked. He offered to tell the D.E.A. everything he knew if they’d give him protection and soon he was...
On October 21, 2011, the police pretended they were pulling Sharp over for a routine traffic stop. Sharp immediately got out of his car, staggering toward the officer and demanding, “What’s going on, officer? At age 87, I want to know why I’m being stopped.” He seemed legitimately confused. He had to cup his ear to hear what the officer was saying....
Now, the story of Leo Sharp will reach a wider audience than ever before thanks to Clint Eastwood’s film The Mule. Eastwood treats Sharp as a sort of antihero, a regret-stricken man struggling to get out of the business, caught while making one last run. The real Leo Sharp, however, didn’t show quite so much regret. When the judge handed down his s...
- 3 min
Sharp was arrested by Trooper Craig Ziecina from the Michigan State Police in October 2011 during a coordinated arrest operation led by the DEA; Sharp was in possession of 200 kilograms (440 lb) of cocaine. His arrest was captured on the dashboard camera of the Michigan State Police cruiser and published in the New York Times.
Dec 5, 2018 · I watched every frame of the police video of Mr. Sharp’s arrest — “What’s going on, officer?” — like it was the Zapruder film. And yet, as a journalist, I was never able to crack Leo...
