Two Denver area restaurants linked to El Chapo.

Federal prosecutors allege two Denver-area Mexican restaurants are linked to a vast money-laundering operation with ties to recently convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico, court records indicate.

Owners of two Taco Star restaurants in Commerce City and Thornton allegedly helped launder drug proceeds to a Colorado Springs food distributing company, El Potosino Foods, located at 3518 N. El Paso St., and then to Mexican drug cartels, federal court records say.

Attempts to reach El Potosino and the Taco Star in Commerce City on Friday afternoon were unsuccessful. An employee at the Thornton Taco Star restaurant had no comment on the money-laundering allegations.

Prosecutors recently filed a forfeiture lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne, Wyo., against 17 bank and safe-deposit accounts in Colorado and Wyoming, including 11 Wells Fargo accounts, in order to seize $1.52 million allegedly tied to the drug operation.

The lawsuit says that the money was collected through illegal narcotics sales and laundered through a dozen Mexican restaurants throughout the Denver area, Greeley, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyo.

Independent Mexican restaurant owners in Colorado and Wyoming would contract to buy beef through El Potosino Foods, which in turn had business ties to Guzman and Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael Zambada-Garcia, the lawsuit says.

The cartels own cattle ranches in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and actually export beef to the U.S. — but not nearly in the quantities listed in fraudulent sales invoices. El Potosino would then allegedly give bogus sales receipts to the restaurants for phantom beef deliveries, the lawsuit says. Distributors like El Potosino get paid between 6 percent and 8 percent in fees, the suit says.

Narcotics traffickers give drug money to independent “front companies” like cigarette distributors, liquor or retail stores or restaurants, often in large bundles of $100 bills in multi-thousand-dollar increments, the lawsuit says.

One of the advantages to front companies is that they can deduct the amount they paid for phantom beef with drug money as business expenses to reduce their taxes.

The alleged illegal drug operation came to light in July of 2016 when a suspect used more than $10,000 in cash to buy a vehicle in Cheyenne.

Federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Agriculture and Internal Revenue Service combined forces to go after members of the far-flung operation.