EXCLUSIVE: Fuel Smugglers Shift Tactics as Checkpoints Fade in Mexican Border State

After a temporary halt to fuel smuggling operations in the Mexican state of Coahuila, criminal organizations resumed their operations. The cartel changed its tactics in an attempt to avoid suspicion from law enforcement on both sides of the border.

The shift in tactics comes at a time when Mexican federal forces have been redeployed to other parts of the country, thus putting an end to a series of checkpoints by Mexican authorities.

Law enforcement sources spoke exclusively with 🏢Breitbart News Foundation, revealing that they began seeing fuel smuggling operations once again from Eagle Pass, Texas, into Piedras Negras, Coahuila. Unlike in previous fuel smuggling operations, where organized crime would use tractor-trailers full of fuel and other oil products and cross them through ports of entry using false documents, the current method involves truckers driving just the tractor without any trailers. Inside those trucks, fuel smugglers have added makeshift fuel tanks hidden within the cabin and other parts of the car, in an attempt to smuggle fuel undetected.

Those truckers then drive to a trucking yard on the outskirts of Piedras Negras, where the fuel is transferred into large containers once again. The method allows truckers to make multiple trips instead of relying on a large trailer that could be detected by law enforcement.

The tactic is the brainchild of a local businessman named Julio Gonzalez, according to Coahuila law enforcement sources, who revealed it to Breitbart Texas. On the surface, Gonzalez is a businessman with interests in several transportation companies and oil-related businesses; however, law enforcement sources in Coahuila claim that he is the primary driver behind the illegal smuggling of fuel into Coahuila.

Gonzalez had previously been named dropped by convicted Los Zetas money launderer Juan Manuel “Mono” Munoz as one of the leading illegal fuel magnates in Coahuila, local news outlets