Mexico has become a major hub for both wildlife and Drug Trafficking, especially for transnational criminal syndicates. This has likely been prompted by a combination of existing Drug Trafficking infrastructure, high levels of biodiversity, and the lack of strict wildlife trafficking penalties in Mexico. For example, the Sinaloa Cartel, primarily a Drug Trafficking group, has been linked to foreign Organised Crime groups. The cartel smuggles totoaba – an endangered fish endemic to Mexico – abroad, with a single swim bladder costing as much as tens of thousands of dollars. Whereas traders in both legal and illegal wildlife commodities previously transacted directly with local poachers and fishermen, Mexican cartels have, increasingly, forcibly inserted themselves as middlemen, extorting both legal and illegal fishermen for fees, sometimes threatening violence for non-compliance, and once dominion over an area has been established, demanding that all catch be sold to them at a price of their choosing. They subsequently sell - at a hefty markup – to foreign traders and traffickers who move the product from Mexico’s borders to other international markets. Some studies have identified a trend in which Mexican cartels illegally trade wildlife, especially higher-value marine species like the totoaba, with other international crime syndicates in exchange for chemical precursors for drug production – particularly for methamphetamine and fentanyl – which are then manufactured in Mexico and often smuggled across the border into the US. This enables cartels to forego the challenge of laundering illicit profits through other more traditional and labour intensive or convoluted means.