The United States has imposed sweeping sanctions on a powerful Mexican criminal organization accused of stealing fuel on an industrial scale, marking a significant escalation in Washington’s effort to combat transnational organized crime linked to energy theft and corruption. The US Treasury Department announced that it has sanctioned the Cartel de Santa Rosa de Lima (CSRL) and its notorious leader, Jose Antonio Yepez Ortiz, widely known by his alias “El Marro,” citing their central role in fuel and oil theft operations concentrated in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

According to the Treasury Department, the cartel has built much of its financial power by exploiting Mexico’s vast energy infrastructure, particularly pipelines and refineries operated by the state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which administers US sanctions programs, said the designation reflects growing concern that fuel theft has evolved from a domestic criminal problem into a cross-border threat that undermines energy markets, fuels violence, and drains public revenue.

Fuel theft, known in Mexico as huachicol, has become one of the most lucrative criminal enterprises in the country over the past decade. Treasury officials described it as a sophisticated and deeply entrenched operation involving bribed Pemex employees, illegal pipeline taps, refinery theft, hijackings of tanker trucks, and violent intimidation of local communities. In Guanajuato, one of Mexico’s most important industrial and manufacturing hubs, competition over stolen hydrocarbons has driven some of the country’s worst violence in recent years.

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