U.S. drug enforcement agents seized more than $10 million in cryptocurrency linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel during raids that also netted massive quantities of fentanyl and other drugs, officials said Tuesday.
The Sinaloa cartel is one of six Mexican drug trafficking groups that President Trump has designated as global “terrorist” organizations.
The cryptocurrency seizure in Miami was part of nationwide operations that netted 44 million fentanyl pills, 4,500 pounds of fentanyl powder and nearly 65,000 pounds of methamphetamine since January, the Justice Department said in a statement.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in coordination with its FBI partners “seized over $10 million dollars in cryptocurrency, directly linked to the Sinaloa cartel,” it added.
It comes days after Ovidio Guzman Lopez, a son of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, pleaded guilty to drug charges in Chicago in a deal struck with prosecutors in return for a reduced sentence.
His father was convicted in a high-profile trial in 2019 and is serving a life sentence in prison.
“DEA is hitting the cartels where it hurts — with arrests, with seizures, and with relentless pressure,” DEA Acting Administrator Robert Murphy said.
The cryptocurrency haul was among several major seizures across the country in recent weeks, including in California, Texas, Georgia and other states that netted thousands of pounds of drugs and dozens of arrests.
In Galveston, Texas, agents uncovered more than 1,700 pounds of methamphetamine worth more than $15 million hidden inside a vehicle.
Other raids yielded drugs hidden in produce shipments, including 705 pounds of methamphetamine concealed in cucumbers in Georgia and 783 pounds found in a refrigerated truck carrying blueberries in Texas.
The Sinaloa cartel is known for its ruthlessness, as two recent instances show.
Late last month, the Justice Department revealed that the cartel hired hacker who was able to infiltrate phone data and Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill FBI informants.
Also late last month, Mexican authorities said twenty bodies, several of them decapitated, were found on a highway bridge in a part of Mexico where factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel are fighting each other.
