MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A Mexican drug lord who had been reported dead more than three years ago was likely killed in a shootout with federal forces in western Mexico early on Sunday, a government official said. 
 
 Nazario Moreno, a leader of a powerful criminal gang that has ravaged the western state of Michoacan, was reported killed by the government in a firefight in December 2010. But his body was never recovered and he was widely believed to be alive. 
 
 Authorities were checking on reports that Moreno was shot dead early on Sunday during a gunfight in Michoacan, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 
 
 “Everything suggests, to a degree of certainty of around 98 percent, that it is this man (Moreno),” the official said. 
 
 If confirmed, the death of Moreno would be another victory for President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government in its campaign to bring Mexico’s powerful drug gangs to heel. The country’s most wanted drug baron, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, was captured last month. 
 
 A government security spokesman said there was an exchange of fire between federal forces and suspected criminals but could not confirm Moreno had been killed. A spokeswoman for the state government of Michoacan also said there was no confirmation yet. 
 
 Moreno was a leader of a drug cartel known as La Familia, which fractured after his reported demise. Moreno’s allies formed the most powerful faction of La Familia, and renamed themselves the Knights Templar after a medieval military order. 
 
 The Knights Templar had much of Michoacan under its control until local vigilante groups rose up against them at the start of this year and began to overrun the gang’s strongholds. 
 
 The government has formed an uneasy alliance with the vigilantes despite concerns that the so-called self-defense groups had themselves been infiltrated by organized crime. 
 
 A number of officials in Michoacan told Reuters earlier this year that Moreno survived the 2010 shootout and continued to play a part in the activities of the Knights Templar. 
 
 A few days ago a top government official was asked about whether Moreno was dead or alive. “Proof that he is alive? Let me put it this way, there’s no proof that he is dead,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. 
 
 RELIGIOUS CARTEL 
 
 Alfredo Castillo, the federal government’s special commissioner for Michoacan, said this month the capture of a man believed to be a son of Knights Templar leader Servando Gomez had provided valuable intelligence to the authorities. 
 
 That information may have helped them track down Moreno. 
 
 Moreno was born in 1970 in an unruly part of Michoacan known as the Tierra Caliente (Hot Country), where traffickers have long grown marijuana and poppies to make opium. 
 
 Working as a laborer in the United States in the 1980s, Moreno converted to evangelical Christianity and when he returned home, he spread his version of the gospel within the drug trade. 
 
 In 2006, Moreno named his cartel “La Familia Michoacana” and in adverts printed in newspapers claimed his troops were good Christians who defended their kind even if they smuggled drugs. 
 
 La Familia was given a boost by the rising crystal meth trade, with smugglers bringing in precursor chemicals to Michoacan’s Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas. 
 
 The Knights Templar took a firm hold on Lazaro Cardenas and would go on to export iron ore from the port to China. 
 
 Federal police caught up with Moreno in 2010, when he was handing out Christmas presents of washing machines and cars in a festival in the village of El Alcalde. 
 
 Police who took part in the strike against Moreno said the 2,000 officers involved in the attack ran into hundreds of gunmen who blocked roads with burning cars and trucks. 
 
 In hours of fighting, five officers were killed, and police shot dead more than 50 gunmen, police said. The cartel carried many of those hit, including Moreno, into the hills. 

 MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican government officials are trying to determine if a man killed Sunday in an early morning shootout in western Mexico was a leader of the Knights Templar Cartel who had been reported dead in 2010. 
 
 FILE - In this Dec. 12, 2010 file photo, a man holds a sign that reads in Spanish "Nazario will always live in our hearts," referring to La Familia drug cartel leader Nazario Moreno Gonzalez during a... (Associated Press) 
 
 The officials tell The Associated Press that forensic teams are trying to determine his identity, but they believe it is Nazario Moreno Gonzalez. 
 
 They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk about the investigation. 
 
 If true, it would be one of the more bizarre twists in Mexico's assault on drug cartels, in which two of the most powerful capos have been captured in the last year without a shot fired. 
 
 Moreno, nicknamed "The Craziest One," would have turned 44 Saturday, according to a government birthdate. He led the La Familia cartel when he supposedly perished in a two-day gunbattle with federal police in December 2010 in his home state of Michoacan. 
 
 No corpse was found, but the government of then-President Felipe Calderon officially declared him dead, saying it had proof. 
 
 Some residents of Michoacan, however, reported seeing Moreno as his former cartel, La Familia Michoacana, was morphing into the more vicious and powerful Knights Templar. The cartel under both names preached Moreno's quasi-religious doctrine and moral code, even as it became a major trafficker of methamphetamine to the U.S. and ruled much of Michoacan through stealing, killing and extortion. 
 
 When federal Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam was recently asked about the rumor that Moreno was still alive, he said: "We can't confirm or deny it officially as long as we have no concrete evidence, and I can tell you that we have nothing." 
 
 After his earlier reported death, Moreno reportedly helped build himself up as folk hero, erecting shrines to himself and to the Knights Templar, which adopted the Maltese cross as a symbol. 
 
 The hunt for him spiked last year as vigilantes, tired of the cartel's control of the state and government inaction, took up arms against the Knights Templar, saying they wanted to get the cartel kingpins. All of the self-defense group leaders said Moreno was alive. 
 
 If true, his killing would come on the heels of the Feb. 22 capture of Mexico's most powerful drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who surrendered in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan after 13 years on the lam. The other top capo, Zetas chief Miguel Angel Trevino, was captured last summer. 
 
 All three operations were carried out by elite forces of the Mexican Navy. 
 
 Though Guzman's capture leaked to the press, Mexican authorities waited several hours before announcing it so that they could solidly confirm the identity of the leader of Sinaloa cartel, Mexico's largest. They later gave a detailed explanation of how they fingerprinted him and measured his facial features against photographs, as well as analyzing genetic markers from a DNA swab.
– Mexican officials say they killed a Mexican drug kingpin three years after the government supposedly killed him the first time, Reuters reports. Nazario Moreno was leader of the drug cartel La Familia when officials said he died in a two-day gunfight with government agents—but as his cartel morphed into the more powerful Knights Templar, rumors circulated that Moreno was alive. "We can't confirm or deny it officially as long as we have no concrete evidence, and I can tell you that we have nothing," said Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, the AP reports. Yet signs were there: The vicious Knights Templar continued the moral code and semi-religious doctrine of La Familia, and residents of the western state of Michoacan claimed to see Moreno around. Now officials say that Moreno, nicknamed "The Crazy One," has died in a firefight with the government at age 44, though forensic evidence is yet to confirm his identity. If true, Moreno's killing wraps up a strange year in which two Mexican drug kingpins—Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Zetas chief Miguel Angel Trevino—were taken without a shot fired.