The Treasury on Wednesday announced that it is imposing new sanctions on a cartel network involved in the smuggling of fentanyl and methamphetamine into the U.S., as part of the administration’s crackdown against the movement of fentanyl into the U.S.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it is designating six Mexican nationals and Sinaola Cartel members involved in the trade, as well as six related Mexican entities.
The agency said that the network, led by Ludim Zamudio Lerma and Luis Alfonso Zamudio Lerma, is “responsible for diverting illicit precursor chemicals directly into the hands of Sinaloa Cartel members and laboratory operators, further bolstering the Sinaloa Cartel’s role as the preeminent facilitator of illicit fentanyl and other deadly drugs being trafficked into the United States.”
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The U.S. has been in the throes of an opioid crisis for years, with fentanyl at the heart of the crisis and responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans each year.
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The opioid is deadly in tiny doses and is often mixed into other drugs so that users are unaware that they are ingesting fentanyl. Officials have said that of the 108,000 overdose deaths in 2021, more than 80,000 were linked with opioids like fentanyl.
The drug is primarily created in Mexico using Chinese precursors and then transported across the land border, primarily through ports of entry but also between them as well. The head of Border Patrol recently announced that agents had seized enough fentanyl since October to kill 100 million Americans.
The Treasury says that the brothers supply precursor chemicals to Sinaloa Cartel members, which are then used in “super labs” to create the drugs in large quantities for the cartels.
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The six cartel members are designated for “having engaged in, or attempted to engage in, activities or transactions that have materially contributed to, or pose a significant risk of materially contributing to, the international proliferation of illicit drugs or their means of production.”
H/T Fox News (read more at FoxNews.com)
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