FinCEN Issues Alert on Oil Smuggling Schemes on the U.S. Southwest Border Associated with Mexico-Based Cartels
FinCEN
Today, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is issuing an Alert in coordination with the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Homeland Security Investigations, urging financial institutions to be vigilant in detecting, identifying, and reporting suspicious activity connected to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Sinaloa Cartel, Gulf Cartel, and other Mexico-based transnational criminal organizations smuggling stolen crude oil from Mexico across the U.S. southwest border into the United States. In recent years, fuel theft in Mexico, including crude oil smuggling, has become the most significant non-drug illicit revenue source for the Cartels. According to U.S. law enforcement authorities, the Cartels are using complicit Mexican brokers in the oil and natural gas industry to smuggle and sell crude oil stolen from Mexico’s Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to complicit, small U.S.-based oil and natural gas companies operating near the U.S. southwest border. As part of these schemes, the Cartels are stealing billions of dollars of crude oil, fueling rampant violence and corruption across Mexico, and undercutting legitimate oil and natural gas companies in the United States.
