The Mexican Government auctioned on Sunday luxurious properties seized from criminal cartels, raising only one third of the expected US$8.8 million as buyers showed limited appetite for gang safe houses and mansions with swimming pools and escape tunnels that belonged to drug traffickers.

Mexican avocado growers ran ads in national newspapers on Friday begging the government to help protect their produce from organized crime as it’s sent for export around the world, local media reported.

Mexican journalist Norma Sarabia Garduza, who reported on organized crime in the country’s southeast Tabasco State, was murdered Tuesday evening in front of her home in the city of Huimanguillo, the State Attorney confirmed. Norma Sarabia is the sixth journalist killed in Mexico this year.

Mexico’s Finance Ministry announced on Monday that it had frozen the bank accounts of Emilio Lozoya Austin, the former head of the state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), due to allegations of corruption.

After the United States sanctioned a Mexican judge and a former governor for allegedly taking bribes from drug cartels, Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador announced on Tuesday that he will go after other judges who have made similar deals.

Animal conservationists have warned that only 10 vaquitas are left in the world and have urged Mexico to eradicate illegal fishing in the northern Gulf of California, the animal’s sole habitat.

A Mexican journalist who reported on organized crime and drug gangs was shot dead on Friday at his home in northern Sonora state. He became the third reporter murdered in the country this year.

A federal jury in Laredo, Texas found six individuals guilty in connection with a two-year multi-million dollar money laundering scheme, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

Jesus Eugenio Ramos Rodriguez has become the second journalist to be murdered in Mexico so far this year, after he was shot while having breakfast on Saturday morning.

Mexico is one step closer to getting a new ‘National Guard’ to help the fight against endemic organized crime after the lower house voted overwhelmingly in favor of the force on Wednesday.

Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman paid a US$100 million bribe to former Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, according to a witness at Guzman’s trial on Tuesday.

A former state attorney general from Mexico is facing life in prison for using his position as a top law enforcement official to facilitate drug trafficking into the United States in exchange for bribes, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York announcedlast week.

On his first day in office Sunday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador proposed a new national guard and a militarized approach to the country’s fight against violent drug crimes.

A former associate in charge of the Sinaloa cartel’s finances testified against Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman on the second day of the trial against the alleged former leader of one of the biggest drug trafficking groups in the world, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

While Mexico’s drug traders make over US$31 billion per year, the country’s legitimate economy is taking a toll from being targeted by criminal groups, according to new reports released Monday.

Estimates of the amounts of money smugglers make from trafficking people into the US are way below their actual revenue, Dallas News reported on Monday.

Days before the trial against drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman begins, a new analysis shows the crime group he used to lead, the Sinaloa cartel, still dominates Mexican crime.

The US is offering US$10 million for information on “El Mencho,” the alleged leader of a Mexican drug gang that has replaced the infamous Sinaloa Cartel as the country’s largest and most violent drug-traffickers.

A Mexican court Wednesday sentenced a former Mexico governor who once lead the embattled state of Veracruz to nine years in prison and fined him US$3,100 after he pleaded guilty to criminal association and money laundering charges, the Guardian reported. 

Organized crime-related killings in Mexico hit a record high according to a report that came one week after the newly elected Morena party, which promised to tackle corruption and organized crime, was accused of creating a fund that was allegedly used to buy votes.