American magnate James Jensen and his family members are not, for the moment, at risk of being extradited to Mexico, despite their alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar scheme of theft and smuggling of crude oil from Pemex, the state company. The Mexican Government has not requested the extradition of any member of the Jensen family from the United States, according to sources from the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE), the agency responsible for this procedure, who confirmed to EL PAÍS. The clarification is relevant because the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said at a February press conference that her Government had requested Washington to hand over the clan, among other businessmen involved in the fiscal huachicol, the smuggling of fuel through customs without the corresponding tax payment.
Read more An endless bout of drowsiness
On Tuesday this week, Sheinbaum’s Government spoke of a list of 269 people whose extradition from the United States had been requested since January 2018, without the northern neighbor having completed any to date. The Jensen family does not appear on that list of priority targets, even though their own country accuses them of bringing more than 4,000 shipments of oil disguised as lubricants and distillates into Texas to evade customs taxes. According to the US Prosecutor’s Office accusation, the Jensens have directly collaborated with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), which President Donald Trump classified as a terrorist organization along with other Mexican drug trafficking groups.
For this reason, Washington not only accuses the Jensens of conspiracy to launder money and smuggle goods through false declarations, but also of financing terrorism. The investigation mainly targets the patriarch, James, and one of his sons, Maxwell, although it also implicates his wife, Kelly Ann, and his youngest son, Zachary, in the illicit business. The criminal scheme allegedly led by this family from Utah is notable because it is fiscal huachicol in reverse. Last year, a huge gasoline smuggling network from the US was uncovered in Mexico through false customs declarations. The Jensens reversed the business route, in which the main input is oil stolen from Pemex.
EL PAÍS has documented the details of the investigation into the Jensens based on court files in the US courts. The papers include statements from the intermediary between the Jensens and the CJNG. According to the US Prosecutor’s investigation, the value of the oil trafficked between May 2022 and April 2025 — when the FBI dismantled the illegal business — is 300 million dollars. The crude was allegedly stolen by the cartel of Nemesio Osegera, El Mencho, through tapping pipelines or oil terminals of the Mexican state oil company.
The intermediary, who collaborates with US agencies in the trial against the Jensens, revealed that he has a sustained and direct relationship with certain CJNG leaders, especially Iván Cazarín Molina, El Tanque, and César Morfín Morfín, Primito. The former was identified by the Treasury Department in 2024 as part of a fuel theft network generating millions in profits for the CJNG, and was considered a member of El Mencho’s inner circle, who died in an operation last February. As for Primito, the Treasury identified him as the cartel’s plaza leader in Tamaulipas. In a May 2025 report, it indicated that Primito had focused his business on hydrocarbon theft and smuggling to the United States, and controlled extortion collections for the passage of fuel tanks at crossings between Tamaulipas and Texas.
While the US Government has been mapping the Jensens’ network of complicity on both sides of the border, it is not officially known in Mexico whether the Prosecutor’s Office has pursued the same line of investigation. The Jensens’ case is a good example of a problem shared by the two countries, although Mexico is the most affected due to the losses represented by not collecting the corresponding taxes at customs and the direct theft of fuel from Pemex pipelines.
Read more Malú premieres ‘Quince’: “It is the first time in my life that I really enjoy what I do”