The former leader of the Gulf Cartel, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, was captured in the city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, on 14 March 2003, in a shootout between the Mexican military and Gulf Cartel gunmen. He was one of the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, which was offering $2 million for his capture. According to government archives, this six-month military operation was planned and carried out in secret; the only people informed were the President Vicente Fox, the Secretary of Defense in Mexico, Ricardo Clemente Vega García, and Mexico's Attorney General, Rafael Macedo de la Concha. After his capture, Cárdenas was sent to the federal, high-security prison La Palma. However, it was believed that Cárdenas still controlled the Gulf Cartel from prison, and was later extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced to 25 years in a prison in Houston, Texas for money laundering, drug trafficking and death threats to U.S. federal agents. Reports from the PGR and "El Universal" state that while in prison, Cárdenas and Benjamín Arellano Félix, from the Tijuana Cartel, formed an alliance. Moreover, through handwritten notes, Cárdenas gave orders on the movement of drugs along Mexico and to the United States, approved executions, and signed forms to allow the purchase of police forces. And while his brother Antonio Cárdenas Guillén led the Gulf Cartel, Cárdenas still made vital orders from La Palma through messages from his lawyers and guards.