11 Members of Mexico's National Guard Charged In Connection With Fuel Theft Ring

11 members of the Mexican National Guard were formally charged in a fuel theft case, a week after they were caught extracting fuel from an illegal tap using official patrol vehicles.

Guanajuato Interior Secretary Jorge Jiménez Lona confirmed the charges during an interview with Telediario Nocturno. He said a federal judge charged the soldiers with hydrocarbon theft, a crime commonly known in Mexico as "huachicol."

"Today we were informed they were formally charged. They are in a federal prison," Jiménez Lona said. "If someone acts improperly and belongs to a corporation, the full weight of the law should be applied."

According to Proceso, a judge also ordered preventive detention for the 11 National Guard members. They were transferred to Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 12 in Ocampo, Guanajuato.

Jiménez Lona emphasized that illicit acts committed by authorities or federal armed forces will not be tolerated in Guanajuato and vowed that this case will not go unpunished.

The arrests took place on May 24 in the rural community of El Espejo, located less than 10 miles from the Guanajuato-Querétaro state border.

The soldiers were caught extracting fuel from a clandestine pipeline tap. At the time, Celaya Mayor Juan Miguel Ramírez noted that none of the soldiers were assigned to duty in Guanajuato, but had been operating in other states.

"I was told the officers were from another state," Ramírez said on May 26. "What stands out is how they were able to come from outside the state and still know exactly where the fuel lines and equipment were located."

Ramírez added that the case serves as "a warning to all" involved in illegal fuel tapping, stressing that there will be no impunity or cover-ups.

Often referred to as "huachicoleros", those involved in this black-market trade tap pipelines to steal fuel and resell it. The activity has become a lucrative enterprise for drug cartels and other criminal organizations, with the federal government estimating losses of more than $3 billion annually.

The term huachicolero gained national prominence under former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who made cracking down on fuel theft a key pillar of his administration. Since 2018, the Mexican military has been deployed to guard oil pipelines and prevent criminal groups from accessing them.

In a high-profile case in April, the Utah-based Lael-Jensen family was indicted for allegedly conspiring with Mexican criminal groups to smuggle nearly 2,900 shipments of stolen crude oil into the United States. Prosecutors say the family mislabeled the shipments as "waste oil" to bypass import regulations. The operation, which ran through their facility in Cameron County, Texas, reportedly relied on oil stolen from Pemex, Mexico's state-owned petroleum company.