Cartel-Linked Bitcoin Mine Found Stealing Power in Mexico

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Mexican police have shut down a clandestine bitcoin mining operation hidden in the mountains of Puebla state, which investigators suspect was running on power stolen from a nearby hydroelectric system.

Noise gave the site away

The ramshackle building sat beside a rarely used gravel road in the Sierra Norte region, roughly two kilometers from the nearest village.

Two residents of neighboring communities, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said the mechanical whirring carried for a full kilometer.

Inside, authorities found 300 graphics processing units, 80 medium-voltage terminals and eight satellite antennae, the fourth such farm uncovered in the area since early last year.

David Saucedo, a Mexico-based security analyst, said the setup would have required real technical expertise and money behind it:

“Drug cartels appear to have reached a new level of sophistication.”

Mexico’s federal attorney’s office declined to comment, citing an active investigation.

Electricity is the whole game

Chainalysis estimates that addresses tied to criminal activity received about $154 billion in 2025, up from $59 billion the year before, with much of the jump traced to sanctions evasion.

Caio Motta, the firm’s Latin American specialist, said mining sites tend to cluster where power is cheap or where it can simply be taken:

“These locations will have very cheap electricity, or be in an area under the influence of organized crime so they’re able to steal electricity and establish a large infrastructure to mine cryptocurrency.”

Cambridge’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index puts the cost of minting one bitcoin near $45,000, a figure that has climbed alongside energy prices and rising mining difficulty, yet still leaves a wide profit at current prices around $78,000.

Samuel Leon, an energy theft expert at Mexico’s Iberoamericana University, said of the Puebla operation:

“If they were stealing the electricity, the main costs of the operation would be, well — nothing.”

Raids reach other regions

Three other farms turned up last year near the same dam in northern Puebla, and local officials say they are working with neighboring states to find more.

Comparable raids have hit Brazil, the United States and Southeast Asia, including a bitcoin mining operation in Thailand that stretched across five provinces.

Motta expects the pattern to intensify as virtual currencies become easier to reach, even as investigators sharpen their tracing tools:

“Law enforcement agencies are becoming far more equipped to fight organized crime using cryptocurrency.”

Source: bitbo.io