The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday on more than a dozen Mexican companies and four people it says worked with a powerful drug trafficking cartel to scam elderly Americans in a multimillion-dollar timeshare fraud.

The network of 13 businesses in areas near the seaside tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta were accused of working with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a group designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.

In a scheme dating back to 2012, four cartel associates are accused of defrauding American citizens of their life savings through elaborate rental and resale schemes, according to a Treasury statement. In the span of six months, officials said they were able to document $23.1 million sent from mostly people in the U.S. to scammers in Mexico.

The sanctions imposed by the Trump administration would prohibit Americans from doing business with the alleged cartel associates and block any of their assets in the U.S..

"We will continue our effort to completely eradicate the cartels' ability to generate revenue, including their efforts to prey on elderly Americans through timeshare fraud," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

In past years, the administration of then-President Joe Biden also sanctioned associates and accountants related to such schemes.

In December 2023, U.S. officials said the Jalisco cartel was so bold in operating the frauds that the gang's operators posed as U.S. Treasury Department officials.

Violent cartel allegedly behind timeshare scam
The Jalisco cartel, known by its Spanish initials as the CJNG, has reportedly killed call center workers who try to quit. In June 2023, U.S. and Mexican officials confirmed that as many as eight young workers were confirmed dead after they apparently tried to quit jobs at a call center operated by the Jalisco cartel.

The cartel is better known for producing millions of doses of deadly fentanyl and smuggling them into the United States disguised to look like Xanax, Percocet or oxycodone. Such pills cause about 70,000 overdose deaths per year in the United States.

The Department of Justice has called the Jalisco cartel "one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world." The cartel's leader, Nemesio Oseguera, aka "El Mencho," is among the most sought by Mexican and American authorities. The U.S. government has offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to "El Mencho's" arrest or conviction.

The Wednesday announcement was made amid an ongoing effort by the Trump administration and the Mexican government to crack down on cartels and their diverse sources of income.

The U.S. Treasury Department has slapped sanctions on a variety of people from a Mexican rapper who it accused of laundering cartel money to Mexican banks facilitating money transfers in sales of precursor chemicals used to produce fentanyl.

The announcement also came one day after Mexico sent 26 high-ranking cartel figures to the U.S. in the latest major deal with the Trump administration as Mexico tries to avoid threatened tariffs.

"These transfers are not only a strategic measure to ensure public safety, but also reflect a firm determination to prevent these criminals from continuing to operate from within prisons and to break up their networks of influence," Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said in a news conference on Wednesday.

The mass transfer was not, however, part of wider negotiations as Mexico seeks to avoid higher tariffs threatened by President Trump, officials said.

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