The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday announced sanctions against six members of a Mexican network accused of shipping massive amounts of a substance used to make fentanyl and methamphetamine, two deadly drugs.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC for its acronym in English) blocked all the properties of the brothers Ludim and Luis Alfonso Zamudio Lerma, as well as several other people with whom they did business.
The six individuals listed sent substances to large-scale labs that produce 10 pounds or more of an illegal drug per production run, to manufacture methamphetamine and fentanyl for the Sinaloa Cartel, the agency said in a statement.
The Zamudio Lerma brothers and their network are enabling the production of synthetic drugs that are destroying American lives and at the same time padding the pockets of Sinaloa Cartel leaders, OFAC Director Andrea Gacki said in the statement.
The network allegedly sent the substances to leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, such as recently imprisoned Ovidio Guzmán, son of that organization’s imprisoned leader, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Mexican authorities have found grow facilities where the substances, often imported from China, are used to make methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Mexican cartels often turn fentanyl into pills and try to pass them off as legitimate drugs, exacerbating the possibility of an overdose.
More than 70,000 Americans died from overdoses in 2020, mostly from fentanyl.
The US agency also imposed sanctions on two Mexican companies belonging to the Zamudio family: Aceros y Refacciones del Humaya, SA de CV and Farmacia Ludim.