Tigers, jaguars, bison among 135 exotic and endangered animals found in raid on fuel smugglers near U.S. border

Mexican authorities said Thursday that they had rescued Bengal tigers, mandrills, hyenas and even a camel during raids on a fuel smuggling ring in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, on the U.S. border.

The 135 animals found at a ranch also included lions, buffalo, sulcata tortoises, spider monkeys, jaguars, an American bison and a green macaw.

Thirty-five of the animals, including the green macaw and sulcata tortoise, are classified as endangered species.

Mexican authorities regularly rescue exotic animals from properties owned by wealthy drug traffickers. Some Mexican drug cartels are known to house exotic cats as symbols of power and, occasionally, to dispose of their enemies.  According to a 2023 U.S. indictment, some victims of a Sinaloa cartel faction were “fed dead or alive to tigers.”

On this occasion, however, the military found them during an operation targeting fuel smugglers.

Smuggling gasoline and diesel from the United States into Mexico and reselling it tax-free is a huge money-maker for organized crime gangs, including drug cartels.

During these latest raids on five properties, the military seized 18,000 gallons of diesel, fuel tanks, pumps, firearms, and tools.

One person was arrested.

Mexican authorities cracked down on fuel smuggling in 2025, when high-ranking navy officers and officials were implicated in the illegal trade.

Some 10 billion liters of black market fuel were seized at that time in Tamaulipas.

The attorney general’s office on Thursday formally charged Fernando Farias, a high-ranking officer who was expelled last week from Argentina, with fuel smuggling.

A former governor of Tamaulipas, Ernesto Ruffo, was also recently arrested on charges of fuel theft.

Fuel smuggling a growing problem

Fuel theft — more commonly known as huachicol in Mexico — has risen to the second most profitable revenue stream for Mexican cartels behind drug trafficking, according to the U.S. Treasury. 

U.S. officials allege that some cartel members steal fuel and crude oil from Pemex by bribing insiders, tapping pipelines, siphoning refineries, hijacking tanker trucks, and intimidating employees.

The stolen fuel is then sold across Mexico, the United States and Central America, while crude oil is smuggled north via complicit brokers — frequently disguised as “waste oil” to evade taxes and environmental scrutiny, the U.S. Treasury discovered.

Once inside the United States, the oil is then funneled to unscrupulous importers along the southwest border, sold at deep discounts on U.S. and global markets with proceeds quietly funneled back to the cartels.

U.S. authorities have even accused the Jalisco New Generation cartel of operating its own service stations.

The United States has been cracking down. In June, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on two Mexican men and nine companies involved in transportation, financial services and real estate, accused of being tied to a cartel-linked fuel theft ring.

In December, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a violent Mexican fuel-theft cartel and its imprisoned leader, nicknamed “The Sledgehammer.”