Sanctioned in Public, Protected in Private

While Mexico’s elite anti-narcotics intelligence units burn safehouses and seize shell companies, 17 members of El Chapo’s family entered the U.S. last month.

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) recently updated its sanctions list to include 13 businesses and multiple high-ranking individuals linked to the Chapitos—the faction of the Sinaloa Cartel controlled by El Chapo’s sons. This move, the latest in a flurry of symbolic crackdowns, is meant to cripple their financial infrastructure. But behind the headlines is a deeper, more ironic truth: even as Washington slaps designations on beauty spas and beachfront tour companies in Mazatlán, the children and extended relatives of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán are crossing the U.S. border with legal blessing—under a deal reportedly struck with the Trump administration.

Let that sink in: while Mexico’s elite anti-narcotics intelligence units burn safehouses and seize shell companies, 17 members of El Chapo’s family entered the U.S. last month, according to internal communications from Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. The same week that Mazatlán’s “Carpe Diem Spa” and “Sea Wa Beach Club” were blacklisted by OFAC for laundering cartel funds, the relatives of the man who made Sinaloa a narco-state were likely walking through CBP checkpoints with stamped papers in hand.

This is what the drug war looks like in 2025: a public performance of pressure, sanctions, and arrests, while covert diplomacy redefines who is “untouchable.”

OFAC’s latest additions to the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals) list target not only individual operatives like José Raúl Núñez Ríos ("El Lic") and Victor Manuel Barraza Pablos ("El 40"), but a commercial ecosystem that includes everything from luxury spas to real estate shell companies. Núñez Ríos alone is linked to at least 10 companies, most registered in Mazatlán—far from the blood-soaked terrain of Culiacán but equally crucial to laundering capital.

Their holdings include beachfront properties, holding companies, and advertising firms designed to obscure money movement through legitimate-seeming invoices.

You'll need to subscribe if you want the full story. But here’s what you get: exclusive interviews with insiders, access to a group chat where you can ask questions and discuss, and deep-dive reports that cut through the noise. With major developments on the horizon, now’s the time to get ahead of the news. Stay informed, not just intrigued.