멕시코 마약 사업의 규모가 연간 5천억 달러인가?

[하토브.]

POLITICS DRUGS MEXICAN CARTELS 27 FEB 2026

멕시코 마약카르텔은 연간 얼마나 버는가?

(1)다음의 워싱턴 포스트 기사는 연간 5천억 달러 정도인가

하는 2019년 기사 제목이었는데,

당시 공화당 상원의원인 데이비드 퍼듀 의원이 추정치로 상원에서 2019년 6월 11일 밝혔기 때문이었습니다.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexican-drug-cartels-make-billion-year/

그런데 다음의 몇 기사들은 여러 측면에서 추계했을 때

1)    마약류의 미국내 거래 금액이 연간 2000억 달러에서 7500억 달러에 이른다는 점

2)    미국내 마약의 거리에서 거래되는 가격 (Street Value)이 연간 5천억 달러라는 말은 과장이 아니라 실제에 가깝다는 것입니다.

3)    다만 멕시코 마약상들이 버는 돈은 그것의 1/10인 500억 달러 정도로 추정됩니다.

2009년도 기준 연간 400억 달러를 멕시코 갱단 카르텔이 마약으로 번다고 추정

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6344&context=sourcemex

 마약류 거래 2천억-7500억 달러 연간 ( 미국)

https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/drug-addiction/drug-trafficking-by-the-numbers/

(2)엘 멘초의 CJNG 사업규모

최근 중상을 입고 붙잡혀 이송되다가 죽은 엘 멘초의 CJNG의 사업규모에 관한

조회는 다음과 같습니다. 마약으로 연간 대략 200억 달러, 기타 착취, 석유절도, 아보카도 사업, 인신매매, 매춘업, 미국으로의 불법이민자 침투 사업, 통닭 매매업, 상가 보호비 착취, 등으로 연평균 250억 달러 등으로 추정됩니다. 합계 연간 450억 달러를 번 것이었습니다.
이에 따라 그의 사업의 자산은 500억-550억 달러 즉 70조원이 넘고 연간 수익 60조원으로 한국의 전체 국방 예산보다 많으며, 장갑차와 각종 차량, 중화기등을 보유하고 있습니다.

The  Jalisco New Generation Cartel  (CJNG) generated double-digit billions annually from drug trafficking alone, according to conservative estimates. 

·        Cocaine: Approximately $8 billion per year. 

·        Methamphetamine: Around $4.6 billion per year. 

·        Fentanyl: Dominant shares of the trade, with low production costs and extremely high street margins, contributing significantly to overall revenue. 

Additional income streams include:

·        Extortion ("derecho de piso") on businesses and truckers: ~$1.1 billion/year.

·        Avocado industry in Michoacán: Skimming ~$770 million annually from $2.9+ billion in US exports.

·        Fuel theft from Pemex: Estimated at $55 billion during a previous administration.

·        Human trafficking, prostitution, illegal mining, logging, and timeshare fraud. 

These diverse operations, combined with drug sales, make the CJNG’s total annual revenue well into the double-digit billions, with the Mexican government estimating the cartel’s total assets at around $50 billion.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=How+much+money+did+CJNG+make+a+year&source=desktop&summary=1&conversation=08c8c60a5bf8865dffd02c6da635a5df28d2

(3)마약 카르텔의 사업 다각화

멕시코 마약 카르텔들은 사업분야를 다각화하여 여러 산업계에 침투하고 있습니다.

A) 불법이민자 미국 침투시켜주는 사업.

2022년 통계로 마약 카르텔은 불법 이민자들을 미국으로 침투시켜 주고 130억 달러 약 19조원을 벌어들이는 것으로 알려졌습니다.

https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/cartels-making-13-billion-a-year-off-smuggling-migrants-through-border-nyt-report-says-mexio-immigrants-coyote-texas

B) 기타 다양한 카르텔 사업

인신납치, 여성 납치후 매춘강요 사업, 아보카도 농장에서 미국 캐나다로 수출할 때는 반드시 카르텔을 거쳐야 함, TOTTILLA 제조 공장에서 매출의 15% 착취, 통닭, 생닭 거래에서 착취, 거리의 식당, 주점, 상점에서 보호비 명목으로 월 600달러 정도를 착취

C) FUEL THEFT 기름 절도

송유관에 구멍을 뚫어서 수년간 550억 달러어치를 절도 ( 전임 정부기간 동안)

멕시코의 부패는 상상을 초월하며, 경찰 간부들도 카르텔들에게 절대 복종하고 있는 수준입니다.

이것을 트럼프가 개입하여 군사작전을 펼치려하자 쉐인바움 멕시코 대통령이 반대하면서 자기가 알아서 처리하겠다고 한 것이 최근의 작전이었습니다. 과거 바이든 정부나 오바마 정부는 이런 마약 카르텔을 제거하려는 노력을 하지 않았습니다.

미국에서 먀약으로 죽는 사람이 연간 8만명이라고 하는데 트럼프는 25-30만으로 추정한다고 밝혔습니다. 아마 10여만이 넘는 수로 보이는데 최근에는 줄었다는 것입니다. 최근 미네소타주에서는 엄청난 양의 마약들이 수거되었는데 주로 소말리아이민자들이 거래하여 돈을 벌고 있던 것으로 알려졌습니다.

마약은 종말 때까지 괴롭히는 아주 고약한 것으로 성경은 말하고 있습니다( 계 9:21 복술로 번역된 단어가 파마케이온- 마약류임)

하나님의 정의와 사법의 실행되기를 바라고 기도합니다.

2026. 2. 27 하토브

Mexican cartels are diversifying business beyond drugs. Here's where they are profiting

The cartels' reach extends into many parts of Mexico's economy, from food production to fuel.

Karol Suárez

For the USA TODAY Network

Updated July 5, 2024, 9:07 p.m. ET

MEXICO CITY — In a small town in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán, members of a criminal group forced residents to pay for high-cost internet service — or face death.

After these threats, residents made monthly extortion payments while simultaneously reporting the situation to authorities.

After months of investigations, officials raided three properties, finding evidence such as antennas, internet repeater equipment and connections, which were handed over to the prosecutor's office.

While it may sound surprising for Mexico's drug cartels to be involved in internet service, those who follow the criminal groups' activities aren't at all surprised.

"Drug cartels have diversified their operations since their inception," security analyst David Saucedo said. "Many of them started as criminal organizations whose main activity wasn’t drug trafficking."

Some gangs were involved in, for example, fuel theft, others were involved in vehicle theft and others specialized in robbing public transportation, Saucedo said.

“Criminal groups that joined drug trafficking already had these other activities beforehand.”

Besides the billions of dollars cartels make from the drug trafficking industry, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says the most powerful drug cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation (CJNG), are involved in many illegal ventures that result in profits.

“The Sinaloa Cartel is most closely identified with drug trafficking but is also engaged in extortion, the theft of petroleum and ores, weapons trafficking, migrant smuggling, and prostitution,” the 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment states.

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CJNG directs the theft of fuel from pipelines, extorts agave and avocado farmers, migrants and prison officials, and taxes migrant smugglers, the report said.

"The portfolio is extensive. However, while drug trafficking is the most profitable activity, it has a longer recovery time for the investment compared to other ... criminal activities, which yield almost immediate profit," Saucedo said.

From cartels calling older Americans to offer timeshares in Mexico, leading to the loss of nearly $40 million, to cartel-backed smugglers reaping growing profits in the trafficking of migrants a

cross the U.S-Mexico border, their criminal range is extensive.

Here are some ways where the cartels have extended their reach:

Fuel theft

Fuel theft, known as huachicoleo in Mexico, is a highly profitable activity for organized crime groups. In the first nine months of 2022, Mexico's state-owned oil company, Pemex, lost $730 million from illegal pipeline taps.

Cartels in Mexico have developed a sophisticated approach to fuel theft, which involves corruption, precision and violence.

This includes tactics such as bribing Pemex employees and local officials for information, drilling precise illegal taps into pipelines, and using modified tanker trucks to transport stolen fuel for distribution in black market networks.

Several cartels are involved in this criminal activity. For instance, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel, led by Jose Antonio Yepez, also known as El Marro, established its dominance through fuel theft before entering into drug trafficking.

Additionally, CJNG and the Gulf Cartel are also linked to fuel theft, which supports their criminal activities.

Avocados

Mexico's multibillion-dollar avocado industry, which continues to break records for exports every year, has also been one of the main targets for drug cartels.

Avocados are known as “green gold” in Mexico, and the country has become the world’s largest producer of the popular fruit.

But as growers’ fortunes have risen, they have faced increasing threats from drug cartels seeking a share of the profits.

In Michoacán, the only state authorized to export the fruit to the U.S., CJNG and local gangs demand payments from farmers, often referred to as "protection fees."

These fees can range from $135 to $500 per hectare monthly, depending on the size of the farm and the level of perceived threat.

The extortion process begins with cartels identifying and targeting profitable farms. Armed cartel members then approach the farmers, issuing threats of violence or property damage if the farmers refuse to comply.

In February 2022, the U.S. suspended avocado imports from Mexico after a U.S. official received a death threat while working in Uruapan.

The imports resumed a week later following new safety measures applied by Mexico’s government in the region.

Two years later, locals say the situation hasn’t changed much, and avocado growers continue to deal with criminal organizations in the area.

Tortillas

The average Mexican consumes about 70 kilograms of tortillas annually, according to the Mexican Agriculture Ministry. It is a staple in Mexican cuisine, which is why cartels have decided to profit from it.

Extortion from cartels affects nearly 20,000 tortillerías, directly impacting the prices paid by Mexicans.

According to the National Tortilla Council, in an interview with The Washington Post, out of more than 130,000 tortillerías in the country, between 14 to 15% percent suffer from extortion.

Homero López García, the organization's president, told El Sol de México that establishments must pay between $135 and $190 weekly to multiple criminal groups to continue operating.

"Well, look, nothing surprises me anymore," Saucedo, the security analyst, said about cartels extorting tortillerías. "Perhaps it's a somewhat insensitive and cynical posture from me, but the truth is that I remain open to all possibilities in this regard."

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Chicken

In a video posted on social media two days before Christmas 2023, an armed group was seen arriving at a poultry shop in Toluca, Mexico, kidnapping four workers and putting them into a white van.

The Mexico state prosecutor's office said the victims were retailers who were forced to buy chicken in some establishments. Likewise, they had to pay a fee of $2.50 per kilo in exchange for not getting killed by the Familia Michoacana cartel.

Authorities said as a result of their efforts to combat extortion, the criminal groups La Familia Michoacana and CJNG lost over $43 million from threatening poultry and egg vendors in municipalities of the Toluca Valley and the southern part of the state.

The state prosecutor's office said in 2023 alone, they received 4,010 complaints for this crime, of which they determined that only one in four was made in person, with the rest being indirect through phone calls, social media, and emails.

Three months later, the four workers kidnapped in December were found alive, and four perpetrators were detained, but those behind the abductions remain on the loose and the extortion of poultry vendors continues, officials said.

'Piso' fee

"They were asking me for $600 monthly for cobro de piso; we reported it, and we had to close for a month," Guillermo, a businessman in downtown Mexico City, told local media, recalling the extortion from the cartel.

The cobro de piso, which is the fee cartels charge business owners in exchange for "protection," has been the main problem for merchants in Mexico City.

"The first group of affected businesses are restaurants, followed by convenience stores in second place, and then jewelry stores in third place," said Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, president of Mexico City’s Chamber of Commerce.

In the past few years, extortions have been on the rise. Depending on the areas, some establishments would receive calls, emails, or in-person visits from armed men asking for the cartel's fee.

"They have tried several times, it's through calls," restaurant owner Israel Zavala told Mexican media. "The trust in the authorities isn't very high; complaints have been filed, but they don't proceed."

Analyst Saucedo said the problem with the metrics is that we have never had access to their accounting books.

“We will never have the total amount of the taxable fee because many do not report it to the authorities.”

In Mexico City, there are many criminal organizations involved in activities such as drug dealing, but also charging extortion fees to small business owners like tortilla shops, street vendors, and taxi drivers.

"Since Mexico City is a densely populated area, and we have a very large informal economy, many people are unfortunately susceptible to paying protection money. Consequently, it is a profitable activity for the local mafias," Saucedo said.

 "Besides paying an official tax to come to work, you have to pay another one to them," Angel Campos, a vendor at a street market in Mexico City, said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/06/20/mexican-drug-cartels-migrant-vip-package/74154061007/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/07/05/mexican-cartels-diversify-fuel-tortillas-piso/74286304007/

Do Mexican drug cartels make $500 billion a year?

June 24, 2019More than 6 years ago

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Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) claimed the cartels in Mexico have higher earnings that Walmart by trafficking people and drugs on June 11. (Video: C-SPAN)

Analysis by Salvador Rizzo

“At half a trillion dollars — $500 billion — that makes the cartel business and the drug traffic just in Mexico alone coming across to the United States bigger than Walmart, to put it in perspective. So this is larger than our largest companies.”

— Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), at a hearing of the Senate international narcotics control caucus, June 11, 2019

Mexico’s violent drug cartels operate in the shadows, so it’s difficult to assess how much money they make. They’re not filing tax returns or getting audited.

But that hasn’t stopped governments and researchers from trying to pin down the number. These estimates are all reverse-engineered, derived from other figures such as street values and drug-consumption rates, or the amount of U.S. dollars repatriated from Mexico to the United States.

The results are all over the map, ranging from $6 billion to $29 billion in estimates released since 2006. But none of them pegs Mexican drug traffickers’ revenue at “half a trillion dollars,” as Perdue claimed.

The Facts

The underground economy for drugs is huge. The United Nations estimated in a 2011 report that worldwide proceeds from drug trafficking and other transnational organized crime were equivalent to 1.5 percent of global GDP, or $870 billion in 2009.

✅

Following Fact-checking politicians

Following

At a drug caucus hearing June 11, senators heard testimony from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and several experts. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the caucus co-chair, began her remarks by noting: “The illicit drug trade is a business, valued at anywhere between $426 [billion] and $652 billion. Its reach is global. Its distribution is growing. Its leadership is criminal.”

Those numbers come from a 2017 study by Global Financial Integrity, a Washington think tank studying illicit flows of money. The report estimated $426 billion to $652 billion in the retail value of transnational drug-trafficking crime.

Perdue prefaced his remarks by saying: “I want to focus on Mexico in my first question. Having worked down there pretty much most of the last 30 years, inside Mexico and in Central America, the cartels are really still the problem. ... At half a trillion dollars — $500 billion — that makes the cartel business and the drug traffic just in Mexico alone coming across to the United States bigger than Walmart.” (Walmart reported just over $500 billion in revenue for 2018.)

But the report Perdue was relying on estimated drug-trafficking proceeds worldwide, not just what the Mexican cartels reaped. In response to our questions, Perdue’s office said he meant to speak about the global drug trade and was referring to the same report as Feinstein.

“Senator Perdue intended to cite the $500 billion figure to reference the estimated value of the entire international drug trade,” an aide to the senator said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The senator was doing so during a line of questioning that emphasized the outsize role that the Mexican cartels play in that trade, particularly as it relates to the United States.”

That’s hard to square with Perdue’s phrasing: “I want to focus on Mexico in my first question” and “$500 billion ... just in Mexico alone.”

It’s also hard to square with what happened next. After the hearing, Perdue’s staff issued a news release and video highlighting the $500 billion claim. Perdue’s campaign tweeted a Breitbart article about his remarks (headline: “Sen. Perdue: Drug Trafficking Business from Mexico to U.S. ‘Larger than Walmart’”). The senator’s intentions did not come through at all.

When we asked about this, Perdue’s staff modified the transcript of his remarks in their news release. It’s an odd way to go about a correction. Perdue is now quoted in the news release talking about worldwide drug trafficking, but that’s not what he said in the hearing and the news release doesn’t mention the original error.

Even the studies estimating on the low end say Mexican drug cartels pull in billions of dollars a year. But how many billions? That’s where things get hairy.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s strategy book for 2006 said: “The US Government estimates that Mexican traffickers receive more than $13.8 billion in revenue from illicit-drug sales to the United States; 61 percent of that revenue, or $8.5 billion, is directly tied to marijuana export sales.”

A 2010 study by Rand found “there is no empirical justification for this figure that can be verified” and noted that the White House drug office later distanced itself from those estimates. “Often, big numbers of dubious origin are tossed around in drug policy discussions with little thought and, frankly, little consequence,” the Rand study says.

Criticizing another estimate, the Rand study says: “The $20 billion figure appears to come from multiplying a $525-per-pound markup by an estimate from the Mexican government that 35 million pounds were produced in Mexico and then rounding up. However, no data support the claim that U.S. users consume 35 million pounds (~16,000 metric tons) per year, let alone that they consume this much marijuana from Mexico. ... This is three times the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s ... upper bound for total U.S. consumption and nearly four times the amount estimated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

The parade of numbers goes on:

·        In a 2007 report, the Government Accountability Office said: “According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, drug proceeds in Mexico in 2005 ranged from $2.9 billion to $6.2 billion for cocaine (including Central America), $324 million to $736 million for heroin, $3.9 billion to $14.3 billion for marijuana, and $794 million to $1.9 billion for methamphetamine. Mexican drug traffickers also grow marijuana in the United States; therefore, the amount of proceeds returned to Mexico is likely greater than the reported estimates.” Adding up the midpoints for each range, the total would be roughly $15.5 billion, though we note there’s a wide disparity in the marijuana estimates.

·        The Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center estimated in 2008 that “Mexican and Colombian DTOs [drug-trafficking organizations] generate, remove, and launder between $18 billion and $39 billion in wholesale drug proceeds annually, a large portion of which is believed to be bulk-smuggled out of the United States at the Southwest Border.”

·        In 2010, the Department of Homeland Security was working with a different range. In a passage that doesn’t mention Colombia, a DHS report said “an extraordinary amount of cash — estimates range from $19 [billion] to $29 billion — travels annually from the United States into Mexico to fuel the operations of the increasingly violent and brazen criminal enterprises involved in drug trafficking.”

·        The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime in a 2011 report said: “According to estimates collected for a study on US-Mexico Security Cooperation (2010), the Mexican Government estimated drug-related cash flows from the USA to Mexico at some US $11 [billion] per year.” Mexico’s attorney general in 2007 said “Mexican banks receive about $1 billion from their US counterparts annually, but return up to $16 billion, of which about $10 billion ‘does not have an explanation … and could be attributed to the flow of drug trafficking money,’ ” this report adds.

·        Reuters reported in 2018 that “the cash-rich cartels [are] believed by the Mexican government to generate well over $21 billion each year.”

·        The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in a 2018 report noted that the Sinaloa cartel, until recently run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, “by some estimates ... had grown to control 40%-60% of Mexico’s drug trade by 2012 and had annual earnings calculated to be as high as $3 billion.” That would indicate the drug trade in Mexico was $5 billion to $7.5 billion, assuming El Chapo brought in $3 billion a year and had cornered 40 percent to 60 percent of the market.

·        The 2010 study by Rand is careful to limit its scope. It estimated $6 billion to $8 billion in Mexican drug-trafficking organizations’ gross revenue from export and distribution of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine to wholesale markets near the American Southwest. The lead researcher, Beau Kilmer, told us that covers product trafficked by the Mexican cartels, but the drugs themselves might come from Mexico or another country such as Colombia.

Kilmer said he wasn’t aware of any credible estimate of total drug revenue for Mexican traffickers, who make money through other means such as smuggling migrants across the border and charging them several thousand dollars, according to DHS, or tapping pipelines in Mexico to siphon fuel and sell it on the black market.

“We did not estimate DTO revenues from moving the product throughout the U.S. or attempt to calculate their revenues from non-drug-trade activities,” Kilmer wrote in an email. “I’ve been looking for funding to update that analysis, but have not had any success. Given changes in U.S. drug use patterns, state-level drug laws and drug prices, I’m sure that the distribution of the export revenues attributable to cannabis, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine has changed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the total figure grew larger, but I cannot tell you by how much.”

Kilmer was sure of this much: “The export revenues would be in the single- or double-digit billions, not triple.”

The Pinocchio Test

There’s a world of estimates for the Mexican drug trade, none of them remotely approaching $500 billion a year. The highest we found was $39 billion and it includes Colombia. Perdue took a report with global figures and applied them solely to Mexico.

We’re told Perdue meant to reference the worldwide drug trade. But there was no ambiguity in what he said: “I want to focus on Mexico” and “at half a trillion dollars — $500 billion — that makes the cartel business and the drug traffic just in Mexico alone coming across to the United States bigger than Walmart.” Perdue said twice that his question was focused on Mexico to the exclusion of other countries, and his office and campaign later amplified these remarks. His intentions were completely undetectable.

This would have been an easy Four Pinocchios had Perdue dug in. After we reached out, Perdue’s staff conceded the error, and after we reached out again, his staff corrected the news release that repeated the $500 billion claim. The correction was oddly done, but at least it stanched the misinformation.

As regular readers know, we often withhold Pinocchios when a politician acknowledges an error. Perdue barely avoided Pinocchios in this case because of his efforts to set the record straight. In that spirit, his staff should seek a correction from Breitbart and his campaign should add a note to the tweet linking to their article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/24/do-mexican-drug-cartels-make-billion-year/

The  Jalisco New Generation Cartel  (CJNG) generated double-digit billions annually from drug trafficking alone, according to conservative estimates. 

·        Cocaine: Approximately $8 billion per year. 

·        Methamphetamine: Around $4.6 billion per year. 

·        Fentanyl: Dominant shares of the trade, with low production costs and extremely high street margins, contributing significantly to overall revenue. 

Additional income streams include:

·        Extortion ("derecho de piso") on businesses and truckers: ~$1.1 billion/year.

·        Avocado industry in Michoacán: Skimming ~$770 million annually from $2.9+ billion in US exports.

·        Fuel theft from Pemex: Estimated at $55 billion during a previous administration.

·        Human trafficking, prostitution, illegal mining, logging, and timeshare fraud. 

These diverse operations, combined with drug sales, make the CJNG’s total annual revenue well into the double-digit billions, with the Mexican government estimating the cartel’s total assets at around $50 billion.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/06/20/mexican-drug-cartels-migrant-vip-package/74154061007/