May 20, 2026 — The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned more than a dozen individuals and entities on May 20, 2026, dismantling two Sinaloa Cartel-linked money laundering networks and adding six Ethereum wallet addresses to the federal blocklist — a direct application of the government's crypto-tracing capability against a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The action targeted networks operating on two sides of the same financial pipeline. Armando de Jesus Ojeda Aviles ran the crypto conversion leg: collecting bulk cash generated by fentanyl sales in the United States, then converting it to cryptocurrency for transfer to Sinaloa Cartel leadership in Mexico. He took over that role after OFAC designated his predecessor, Mario Alberto Jimenez Castro, in September 2023. Jesus Gonzalez Penuelas — a fugitive under active DEA indictment since 2017 and 2018, with a $5 million reward on his head since January 2024 — ran a parallel network responsible for drug distribution and proceeds laundering dating to 2007.
Five Ethereum addresses are linked directly to Ojeda Aviles on OFAC's SDN list: 0x038989cbb1710c72b9920dc4fa529158f463e72c, 0x14779CEC0B117d5194c750C55Ea1f42086631964, 0x32dA24Ca413F3E7B53145D4737e172C3bdF81e3e, 0xf2235d55b2950a0b1317469d72d07ae65b2e27cb, and 0x4F428c11Dc82388fa5136D636e613ad923Eb700B. A sixth address — 0xaC4cC4B68ea24BbFAAC8fD127B67Ed445ACcCE22 — is tied to Rodrigo Alarcon Palomares, an Ojeda Aviles associate federally indicted in Colorado in April 2024 on three counts of laundering drug proceeds through cryptocurrency. One of the Ojeda Aviles addresses, ending in e27cb, transacted as recently as April 27, 2026, sending $894 in USDT — verifiable on Etherscan.
The legal basis covers both narcotics and terrorism authorities: E.O. 14059, which targets illicit drug proliferation, and E.O. 13224 as amended, which targets terrorists and their supporters. The Sinaloa Cartel received its Foreign Terrorist Organization designation from the State Department on February 20, 2025.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the action in explicit counterterrorism terms: "Treasury will continue to target terrorist cartels and their fentanyl trafficking networks to protect our communities and Keep America Safe."
The investigation was led by the Homeland Security Task Force, with DEA involvement and coordination with Mexico's financial intelligence unit, the Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera. It sits inside a broader enforcement push: the DOJ reported in July 2025 that DEA had seized more than $10 million in cryptocurrency from the Sinaloa Cartel over the course of that year.
Crypto is not peripheral to cartel operations here — it is the mechanism for moving value across the border. OFAC's willingness to publish specific on-chain addresses, including one active weeks before the designation, signals that transaction-level blockchain analysis is now a standard enforcement tool, not a trailing annotation on traditional financial charges.
All designated parties' U.S.-based property and assets are blocked. Any entity 50 percent or more owned by a blocked person is also blocked. U.S. persons are prohibited from transacting with any of the listed addresses or individuals without an OFAC license.
Sources: U.S. Treasury press release (home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0503); OFAC designation list (ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20260520).