The capture of José Antonio Cortes Huerta—nicknamed *El Titán* (The Titan) or *El Mamado* (The Muscular One)—which took place this Sunday, has tightened the net around the fugitive Roberto Blanco Cantú, a central figure in the “fiscal *huachicol*” operations: the massive criminal scheme that defined the previous presidential administration.
As this newspaper has learned, the four addresses raided by the Attorney General’s Office in recent hours—where authorities discovered weapons, drugs, cash, vehicles, and seven tigers—are all linked to Blanco Cantú. Nicknamed *El Señor de los Buques* (The Lord of the Ships), he is described as the “majority partner” of the company Mefra Fletes. According to authorities, the company—which specializes in trading “hydrocarbons of illicit origin imported from the United States”—is linked, much like Blanco Cantú himself, to the Northeast Cartel (*Cártel del Noreste*).
Blanco Cantú has a brother, Rigoberto, who has been linked to organized crime groups by the U.S. Department of Justice. Roberto has been a fugitive since September 2025, when—almost simultaneously with the announcement of the arrest and dismantling of a fuel smuggling ring operating within Mexico’s customs system (a ring commanded by high-ranking naval officers)—another arrest warrant was issued for eight individuals linked to Mefra Fletes.
In addition to Blanco Cantú, the warrant targeted the company’s founders—Brenda Mariena Salas Ramírez and Gustavo Jesús Guillen Chávez—as well as other partners and legal representatives. These included Anuar González Hemadi—the disgraced judge involved in the “Porkys” case—Héctor Manuel Portales Ávila, José René Tijerina Mendoza, and José Isabel Murguía Santiago. The latter is the brother of José Ascensión Murguía Santiago, the municipal mayor of Teuchitlán, Jalisco, who stands accused of organized crime and forced disappearance in connection with the Izaguirre ranch.
Mexico is not the only entity scrutinizing the companies involved in this scheme. In the United States, in the middle of last month, Homeland Security Investigations conducted a search of the offices of Ikon Midstream in Houston, Texas. This firm is the exporting company that appears in the vast majority of the identified smuggling operations.
Mefra Fletes was founded in 2015 in Guadalajara, Jalisco. Its stated objective is the “transportation of hydrocarbons and petroleum products via pipelines, tanker trucks, semi-trailers, railcars, or tanker ships,” and it rose to prominence in April 2025 following the seizure of the vessel *Challenge Procyon* in Tamaulipas. At the site where millions of liters of smuggled fuel were confiscated, the Attorney General’s Office discovered several tanker trucks bearing the logos of Mefra Fletes, Autolíneas Roca, and Transportes Especializados Amol.
Cantú Blanco’s name has appeared in Mefra Fletes’ registration documents since March 2019, when a shareholders’ meeting approved the “transfer of company shares,” resulting in the corporate capital being held by Mr. José Isabel Murguía Santiago, José René Tijerina Mendoza, and Roberto Blanco Cantú; he is also a co-founder of Autolíneas Roca, alongside Héctor Manuel Portales Ávila. In the case of Transportes Especializados Amol, the owners are the brothers Cristian Noe and Jesús Tadeo Amaya Olvera. Cristian Noe and Portales Ávila have been in custody since September 2025.
Mefra Fletes—as well as Autolíneas Roca and Transportes Especializados Amol—features in the investigation into the fuel smuggling network uncovered by the Navy. Mefra Fletes is the entity cited most frequently and given the most extensive coverage in the investigation, where it is identified as the primary entity responsible for transporting the illicit gasoline. It is noted that its tanker trucks were spotted at Piers 289 and 290 in Tampico, and that it was, in fact, one of its tankers that transported the police from the *Challenge Procyon* to the facility in the neighboring city of Altamira—where they discovered the millions of liters of smuggled gasoline that ultimately prompted authorities to turn their investigative focus toward the customs agencies.
“Santo”—the codename of the protected witness who participated in the smuggling operation while serving as the Director of Customs for Altamira—identifies the tankers belonging to Autolíneas Roca, in addition to those of Mefra Fletes; he recognizes the former because their logo features an anchor. In his sworn statement, he explains that each fuel offloading operation required approximately 300 tanker trucks. On behalf of Transportes Especializados Amol, customs broker Benito Abad Pérez requested authorization for the company’s vehicles to enter the port to offload the *Challenge Procyon*. In total—according to an investigation conducted by this newspaper—since 2023, this network has coordinated 69 smuggling operations across various Mexican ports, primarily in Altamira and Tampico.
