Joaquin Guzmán, Mexico's most powerful drug lord also known as "El Chapo," used high-tech methods to evade international authorities for more than a decade, according to a new report. Those high-tech tools, however, also led to his downfall.

Joaquin Guzmán was captured in a small resort town on the Mexican Pacific coast during a pre-dawn raid on Saturday, Feb. 22. The drug lord had managed to evade this fate for 13 years by using sophisticated high-tech tools to perform counterespionage measures, according to a new report by the Associated Press, but it seems his confident reliance on those high-tech tools was belied by a patently low-tech spying technology.

Guzmán's Expensive High Tech Gadgets

An anonymous senior law enforcement official and an anonymous U.S. government official told the AP that Guzmán paid top dollar for the best communications technology to help cover his tracks -- some of which are not available to the general public. "He didn't spare any expenses when it came to protecting himself," a law enforcement official said, on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publically about the case.

The gadgets Guzmán employed -- though not named specifically -- included counter-surveillance scanners, or bug sniffers, that could detect any transmitters held on persons or in rooms where he would meet to conduct illicit business. "It was top notch," said the law enforcement official.

The sophistication of Guzmán's technology and techniques were enough to impress investigators who were on his trail. To get a sense of how secure Guzmán felt with his counter-surveillance and communications mechanisms, consider that "El Chapo" was able to attend family events and hold a big wedding party for himself in his home, without springing intelligence leaks that could take him down. In fact, both U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials took years just to find a weakness in Guzmán's communications networks.

Old School Techniques and Technology Led to Capture

According to the report, it wasn't NSA metadata tracking, GPS hacking, or other cutting-edge surveillance techniques that sniffed out Guzmán's trail. Instead, it was old-fashioned wire taps, police raids, flipping informants, and a bit of luck that took down Guzmán.

Though details are sketchy at the moment, the AP report recounts that traditional wiretaps were able to intercept BlackBerry messages and a few other communications from Guzmán or his associates, but only "at times." It appears the big break in the case happened when the cell phone of Guzmán's head of communications was discovered in a raid of one of Guzmán's suspected hideouts in Culiacán, Sinaloa, earlier this month. That led authorities to a trusted Guzmán courier, who later ratted out a series of Guzmán's safe houses to officials.

One of those safe houses was in the resort town of Mazatlán, where Guzmán was eventually captured. Closing in, authorities got a clue from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wiretap in Nogales, Arizona, which pointed out the exact condo where Guzmán was hiding.

The rest was up to the marines who captured Guzmán -- marines who did use some high-tech tools in their raid, including infrared and body-heat scanners to pinpoint the location of Guzmán and associates within the house, and to make sure the suspects were asleep. That gave law enforcement officials the element of surprise they needed to nab public enemy no. 1: "El Chapo."

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