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The US Treasury has slapped sanctions on Mexico’s most powerful criminal enterprise, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), over a fuel theft ring generating tens of millions of dollars a year.

Getting into it: In an announcement on Tuesday, the Treasury confirmed its Office of Foreign Assets Control had targeted two Mexican men and nine companies tied to transportation, financial services and real estate, all accused of being part of a cartel-linked scheme that smuggles fuel across the border, uses falsified customs documents and shell companies, and dodges Mexican taxes.

Collage soldiers in a highway via guadalajara mexico after t 800x420

Alongside the sanctions, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an alert outlining red flags for banks to spot fuel smuggling from the US into Mexico. Among those designated is Oscar Guillermo Juraidini Silva, who Treasury says supports the cartel in a fuel smuggling enterprise that rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The fuel scheme has become a major moneymaker for the cartel. Over the last few years Mexican officials have seized millions of gallons of stolen diesel, gas and other petroleum products from regions near the Texas border, where crime rings tap into pipelines and reroute fuel to gas stations that have no choice but to buy it. American officials have gone as far as accusing the CJNG of running its own gas stations.

This all comes as the cartels longtime leader, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” was killed in a military operation in February, setting off a wave of attacks on businesses that left over 70 dead, 25 of them National Guard members. A possible successor, Audias Flores Silva, was arrested in April by Mexican Navy special forces acting on US intelligence, and last month a federal grand jury piled new charges onto the cartel’s number two, known as “The Gardener,” hitting him with meth trafficking and money laundering counts.

Notably, President Trump designated the cartel and five other Mexican groups as foreign terrorist organizations, which unlocks the full weight of the US military and intelligence communities against the cartels.

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