The reward for capturing the leader of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, ‘El Mencho,’ has been increased to $15 million by Federal authorities.

CHICAGO (WLS) — Chicago’s most wanted fugitive, known as “El Mencho,” is now even more sought after by authorities as the federal government has increased the reward for his capture.

The U.S. State Department has announced a higher bounty for Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, also called “El Mencho,” who is believed to be behind the influx of illegal drugs into Chicago.

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“He’s a person that we would consider as public enemy number one,” former DEA Special Agent-in-Charge Brian McKnight told the ABC7 I-Team in 2018.

McKnight shared this surprising information with the I-Team over six years ago, revealing that El Mencho, a relatively obscure Mexican drug trafficker at the time, was at the top of the city’s most wanted list.

“He’s a very powerful trafficker in Mexico and he has cells all over the world,” McKnight said.

The file on El Mencho has been bulging in recent years.

Mencho’s CJNG cartel, known as “New Generation,” seized control of Chicago’s street drug sales, and with the territory came wholesale bloodshed, here and abroad.

El Mencho is now facing federal indictments in Chicago and other U.S. cities is still on the lam in Mexico while overseeing a multi-billion dollar empire.

The $15 million hike in America’s bounty for El Mencho comes as his family starts to unravel.

Relatives close to him have been arrested and squeezed by investigators as the government tries to press for information that could lead to his arrest, and the takedown of his bloodthirsty and heavily armed cartel army.

As the I-Team first reported, El Mencho’s son-in-law Cristian Fernando Gutierrez Ochoa was recently arrested on drug trafficking and money laundering offenses in Southern California.

Ochoa had been living under a fake name in a luxury section of Riverside after fleeing Mexico, according to prosecutors.

El Mencho had helped Ochoa fake his own death, even claiming to have murdered him, so the son-in-law and El Mencho’s daughter could live outside the dangerous cartel world, according to court records.

Late last month, federal agents revealed in court filings that they had found numerous fake identities at the time of Ochoa’s arrest, along with several ghost guns or homemade weapons with no serial numbers.

Mencho’s son-in-law will soon be headed to Washington DC for prosecution.

All of these moves by the feds are aimed at El Mencho himself, whom authorities say is personally responsible for hundreds of deaths and the ongoing carnage in Mexico and the U.S.