Pemex told Congress earlier this year that fuel theft was on the rise in Mexico and had become a source of income for transnational criminal organizations.
Coroner’s office specialists and emergency management office personnel pick up one of the four bodies found on Saturday, Dec. 29, and believed to be those of four members of a family who may have been killed by a Mexican gang involved in fuel theft.
The killings of four members of a family in Puebla, a state in central Mexico, may have been committed by a gang involved in fuel theft, police said.
The bodies of the four victims were found near the Valsequillo dam outside Puebla, the capital of the like-named state.
The victims may be members of a family that fled from the eastern state of Veracruz due to threats from organized crime groups, the Puebal Attorney General’s Office said.
One member of the family worked for state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, in Veracruz and was presumably involved in fuel theft from pipelines, the AG’s office said in a statement.
The family was reported missing on Dec. 21 from its residence in Puebla, where they had relocated from Veracruz, one of the states most affected by drug-related violence in Mexico.
The decomposing bodies found near the dam were those of a man and woman between the ages of 45 and 50, and those of two young people between the ages of 18 and 20, all members of the same family, the AG’s office said.
Authorities have found millions of liters of fuel stolen by gangs in Puebla and Veracruz this year.
The gangs are also involved in kidnappings, officials said.
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