Editor’s Note: This is Part 4 of the series Follow the Money.
In the first year of the Trump administration, one of Houston’s most prominent—and flamboyant—trial lawyers came up with an unusual litigation strategy with the potential to rake in tens of millions of dollars. It hinged on a series of scandals unfolding in Mexico, an independent nation that is normally beyond the reach of any United States civil court’s authority.
Tony Buzbee, a tough-talking Marine and veteran of the first Gulf War, is a highpowered attorney based on the 73rd floor of a Houston high-rise with a sweeping view of Texas’ largest city. He’s brash and ambitious. Through his maritime law practice, he has experience handling complex international cases, which can involve tangling with multinational corporations with subsidiaries and hidden offshore accounts. He had also represented Mexican fishing associations and thousands of other clients in U.S. lawsuits against BP after the Deepwater Horizon disaster and massive oil spill in 2010. So when the newly elected governor of Veracruz—an oil-rich state on the Gulf of Mexico—began a campaign to hold his predecessor accountable for allegedly embezzling $3 billion, it made sense for him to connect with Buzbee in 2017 about assets that might have been hidden in Houston.
Here was the plan: Ex-Governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa was already in custody for some of his alleged crimes in Mexico, so Buzbee would file lawsuits in Texas against property owners, mostly people and limited liability companies, accused of laundering money for Duarte in the United States. Under Texas law, victims of theft and fraud can sue to recoup their losses. Then, Buzbee would ask a judge to transfer the titles of the targeted real estate, mostly houses in the Houston area, to the state of Veracruz. The property would then be sold, reimbursing Veracruz taxpayers. As an experienced trial attorney with investigative chops, Buzbee would, of course, receive a cut for his services, which he did not disclose but is typically between 30 and 40 percent of the amount recovered. It seemed easy enough.
“You just show the official took the money, and now there’s an asset in [a relative’s] name sitting in The Woodlands,” said Buzbee in an interview in January 2021. “It’s a much more simple case than trying to expose all the dealings in Mexico that aren’t my concern.”
In 2018, Buzbee filed seven lawsuits in Harris County district courts against a host of limited liability companies and business people from Veracruz who lived in the Houston suburbs. Those companies and individuals own dozens of properties. He alleged that a home purchased by Duarte’s sister-in-law; a golf club membership; and at least dozens of other pieces of real estate—including a list he supplied of 30 homes, empty lots, and a commercial building mainly owned by individuals and their real estate investment companies—were purchased with money stolen from Veracruz.
Around the same time, Buzbee’s firm filed a similar lawsuit in Miami, targeting 41 more pieces of property. Other states and other lawyers got in
