Inside the world's most powerful cartel - boiling bodies, child soldiers and deadly fentanyl

Considered the most powerful and largest drug trafficking organization in the world, the Sinaloa Cartel is an organized crime syndicate that has ruled large segments of the Mexican population, territory, and economy for the 1980s.

From the barbaric boiling of human bodies in barrels of acid, to recruiting child soldiers to fight in rival wars, to transporting fentanyl across the United States, the infamous cartel is known for his brutal attacks and imprisoned drug lords.

Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead during a political rally in the capital on Wednesday, days after he revealed he had received multiple death threats from people linked to the Sinaloa cartel.< /p>

In a bold statement, he said, "Here I show my face. I'm not afraid of them." Six Colombians have since been arrested and President Guillermo Lasso has hinted that his death may be linked to organized crime.

This comes as three high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel were sanctioned for trafficking illegal drugs to America on the same day as Villavicencio's murder. Here we take a look at some of the group's most gruesome crimes.

Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on Wednesday, after receiving death threats from the drug cartel (

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STRINGER/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock) Deadly fentanyl trafficking

Fentanyl is a synthetic painkiller that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine. It is responsible for more than 150 deaths in the United States every day. As former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán serves his life sentence, his three sons, known as the Little Chapos, continue to traffic fentanyl across borders in exchange for money.

"They know they're poisoning and killing Americans. They don't care because they're making billions of dollars doing it," said Anne Milgram, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, about Guzman's sons. "Their greed is shocking and boundless." The cartel is based primarily in the city of Culiacan, Sinaloa, while operating in the Mexican states of Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua, as well as the United States.