The four-part documentary series will premiere globally Aug. 2 on Apple TV+.
Here’s the pitch: A rookie FBI agent from rural Tennessee and based in Laredo, Texas begins an undercover operation that takes down the Treviño brothers — the leaders of Los Zetas, one of the most powerful drug cartels in Mexico — and exposes their audacious multi-million-dollar money-laundering operation in the world of quarter horse racing.
Sounds like the outlandish premise for a glossy police procedural TV show, right?
But truth can be far stranger than fiction. Indeed, when asked to describe the premise of Cowboy Cartel, the four-part docuseries premiering Aug. 2 globally on Apple TV+, co-executive producer Castor Fernandez quotes a line attributed to Mark Twain: “Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”
Cowboy Cartel is the well-nigh unbelievable true story of unlikely hero Scott Lawson, the aforementioned rookie FBI agent. While the Treviños terrorized thousands in their pursuit of power, money and influence, Lawson risked his life on a hunch: Tracking the brothers’ racehorse transactions in the United States, infiltrating the deadly Los Zetas cartel, and uncovering their international money laundering operations.
The docuseries features first-time interviews with Lawson, who broke the case; IRS agent Steve Pennington; Irving, Texas police officers Steve Junker, Brian Schutt and Kim Williams; Assistant United States Attorney Doug Gardner; Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Ginger Thompson; and Joe Tone, the author of Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream, among many others.
Cowboy Cartel documents how the case began to break open when farm owner José Treviño Morales attracted attention — too much attention for his own good — with million-dollar winnings and big bids at horse auctions in 2011. He just happened to be the brother of ruthless Zetas leader Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, and Oscar Omar Treviño Morales.
“When you think of the drug cartels, you think of the drugs, you think of the violence, and you think of money,” Joe Tone says in the Apple TV+ trailer for Cowboy Cartel. “But you do not think of horses.
“It’s ranchers and wealthy businessmen who usually populate the winner’s circle. But all of a sudden, there’s this new owner who keeps winning named Jose Treviño.”
And that’s when Scott Lawson was, well, off to the races.
Here is the official Apple TV+ trailer for Cowboy Cartel.
