Mexican authorities raid hidden crypto mine, suspecting power theft and money laundering

Mexican authorities raided a covert crypto mining operation in Puebla, where they found hundreds of GPU chips in a remote mountain community, Reuters reported Saturday. 

Federal prosecutors, the Mexican navy, and state security officers seized the property in Tlaola, according to a Sept. 6 statement from Puebla's government. They found about 300 GPUs, a transformer, roughly 80 medium-voltage terminals, and eight satellite internet antennas.

Mexico said investigators were examining whether the crypto mined at the site was used to hide proceeds from illicit activity. Three similar mining sites were discovered in the vicinity last year, and local authorities are working with neighboring states to investigate other possible operations, Reuters reported. Prosecutors are also investigating whether the operations were siphoning power from the nearby hydroelectric dam. 

"Drug cartels appear to have reached a new level of sophistication," security analyst David Saucedo told Reuters, citing the expertise and financing needed to run such a clandestine site. Mexico's federal attorney's office declined to comment to the news agency because of the ongoing investigation. 

Mining's role in laundering

Mining has featured in earlier investigations into how criminals disguise funds. The Block reported in 2019 that an Elliptic compliance report identified the purchase of mining equipment with illicit proceeds as one way to obtain newly created, and therefore "clean," cryptocurrency. 

A separate Chainalysis study covered by The Block in 2023 also examined suspected money laundering through mining pools. Researchers identified exchange deposit addresses that received both funds associated with ransomware or scams and mining income.

"Cryptocurrency mining is a crucial part of our industry, but it also holds special appeal to bad actors, as it provides a means to acquire money with a totally clean on-chain original source," Chainalysis wrote in the report.

Though those cases illustrate different ways that illicit actors could use mining pools to conceal funds, neither establishes how the Puebla operation handled its funds. The local investigation will likely focus on two questions: whether its operators used stolen electricity for mining to generate revenue, and whether the operation helped to disguise money from other crimes. 

U.S. authorities have also targeted cartel crypto transfers outside of any mining operations. In May, the Department of the Treasury sanctioned a network allegedly run by Armando de Jesus Ojeda Aviles that collected proceeds from drug sales in the U.S. and converted the cash to crypto for transfer to the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, The Block previously reported. 

Chainalysis estimated that flagged illicit addresses received at least $154 billion in 2025, with the increase driven largely by officially sanctioned entities. Illicit activity remained below 1% of the total transaction volume tracked by the firm. Chainalysis says its totals generally exclude traditional payments to drug traffickers, though, unless additional information is used to establish their criminal origin, since blockchain records alone may not distinguish them from legitimate transfers.