Wah-chee-KOHL — The Perfect Crime

Fuel is a hell of a business for organized crime. Everybody needs it, and you can buy stolen gasoline at an ordinary station without ever knowing it.

Huachicol (wah-chee-KOHL) is Mexico’s illicit fuel trade. I’m interested in the companies buying, transporting and selling the product, and the officials who help keep it moving. The man at the pipeline is one part of that business.

Physical theft includes illegal pipeline taps, diversion from Pemex facilities and stolen tanker trucks. Bribery and intimidation help keep the operation moving. Somebody else has paid to produce the fuel; the thieves take it and find a buyer. U.S. Treasury investigations describe all of those methods.

Then there is the sale. In September 2024, Treasury accused Iván Cazarín Molina, known as El Tanque, of running a CJNG fuel-theft network in Jalisco and Veracruz that generated tens of millions of dollars a year. It sanctioned 11 retail gas-station companies in Veracruz, saying his network used apparently legitimate stations to sell stolen fuel.

Eleven gas-station companies means there are buyers and people handling money to investigate. I’d like to see their purchasing records and who approved the deliveries.

The word huachicol also covers a business in which the fuel was purchased legally to begin with. In huachicol fiscal, gasoline or diesel is bought in the United States and brought into Mexico through a fraudulent import operation that evades taxes. Commercial intermediaries and false declarations help turn that avoided tax into an advantage when the fuel is sold.

In a June 2026 action, Treasury described a CJNG-linked scheme involving gas-station companies that received the imported fuel and sold it at retail. The original U.S. purchase can be legitimate. The customer at the Mexican gas station may never know that the fuel arrived through an illegal operation. Treasury’s case traces the commercial network behind those sales.

There is traffic in the other direction, too. FinCEN has documented stolen Mexican crude moving north through brokers to complicit U.S. energy businesses. Crude still needs refining; it is not gasoline ready for someone’s car. The American side belongs in this story because some of the buyers are there. FinCEN names CJNG, the Sinaloa Cartel and the Gulf Cartel in its oil-smuggling alert.

Pemex estimated that 19,600 barrels of fuel were stolen every day in 2025, up 15.3 percent from the year before. Over a year, that works out to roughly 1.14 billion liters, or 300 million U.S. gallons. Its reported loss was MX$23.49 billion, approximately US$1.17 billion. Those are the company’s own figures in its 2025 annual filing.

The wider fuel business produces a different set of losses. In October 2026, Mexican authorities reported discrepancies involving 8.824 billion liters in the previous year’s fuel records, with an estimated MX$61.785 billion—about US$3.09 billion—in lost IEPS excise taxes. That is a government assessment of irregular trade and missing tax revenue. It does not establish that all those liters were stolen from Pemex. The figures concern 2025.

Those losses tell us what Pemex and the government are missing. They don’t tell us what the cartels actually pocketed.

The pipeline figures also tell us where physical theft is concentrated. IGAVIM’s compilation of Pemex records counted 9,366 illegal taps in 2025. Hidalgo led with 2,660, followed by Jalisco with 1,711, Guanajuato with 837, Querétaro with 660 and the State of Mexico with 507. Those are detected taps, not a ranking of stolen volume or cartel control. The underlying report separates petroleum pipelines from LPG theft.

In Guanajuato, the fuel business is central to the fight. In December 2025, Treasury said the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel derived the vast majority of its illicit revenue from fuel and oil theft there. It identified the fight with CJNG over that business as a major driver of the state’s violence. Fuel is worth fighting a territorial war over. That assessment appears in Treasury’s designation of the group.

CJNG has extensive documented involvement across theft, transport, retail and cross-border schemes. Santa Rosa de Lima stands out for how heavily it depends on fuel. Sinaloa and the Gulf Cartel are in the U.S. record as well. I have not found a credible national accounting that ranks their fuel profits or stolen liters. Anyone claiming to know which cartel earns the most should be able to show where the numbers came from.

A drug operation needs crops, chemical inputs, manufacturing or a supplier of finished drugs. With stolen fuel, the finished commodity is already there. With import fraud, it can be bought from a lawful supplier. The criminal operation makes its money by taking the product or cheating the taxes, then getting it into a market that already needs it.

Moving fuel means moving volume. A large operation needs trucks, storage and buyers who can take the deliveries. That takes businesses and leaves records. Investigators have something to work with beyond whoever gets caught driving the load.

The same organizations can use threats, corrupt protection and control of territory to keep both businesses running. FinCEN describes fuel theft, including crude smuggling, as the cartels’ biggest illicit revenue source outside drugs. These businesses can help finance the same organizations trafficking narcotics.

Pemex warns that illegal taps can cause explosions, deaths and environmental damage. People living near the theft are exposed to the danger while the fuel is being taken.

Seize a tanker and the load is gone. The buyer can still be in business. I want to know who ordered the fuel, who was going to sell it and whether either of them lost more than a delivery.

Dollar equivalents use a rounded exchange rate of MX$20 per US$1 for comparison.