The proliferation of social media across Latin America has forged a volatile nexus between young content creators and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs). Evidence documented across Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru illustrates a strategic evolution: Drug trafficking networks are adapting to the digital landscape, leveraging the visibility of influencers and social media to consolidate operations and broaden their reach. This integration of digital culture and illicit enterprise represents a hybrid threat with profound implications for regional defense, and the traditional security architecture.
Social media platforms: Tools for organized crime
Social networks such as TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram have transcended their role as entertainment hubs to become strategic operational theaters for organized crime. According to research published in the Journal of the British Academy, the United Kingdom’s premier national forum for humanities and social sciences, these platforms are used to recruit, coordinate operations, and mitigate detection risks through vast transnational reach and regulatory oversight gaps.
The academic study highlights how features like anonymity, end-to-end encrypted communications, and transnational connectivity facilitate a new era of digitally enabled logistics for criminal networks. These tools enable the creation of false digital identities, discreet coordination of operations, and an accelerated recruitment process. From a defense perspective, social media is no longer a peripheral; it is a direct extension of the criminal setting, enabling TCOs to operate with agility.
Security expert Yadira Gálvez, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, explained to Diálogo that these platforms “allow for the promotion of lifestyles and cultural references aimed at building social legitimacy around illicit activities, especially among young audiences.”
Gálvez cautioned that this normalization of criminality functions as a psychological operation targeting the rule of law. “These actions degrade fundamental values and principles of social coexistence, justifying criminal practices,” she said, emphasizing how the digital ecosystem facilitates the erosion of public trust in state institutions.
Influencers and organized crime in Latin America
The convergence of influencer culture and criminal organizations takes many forms in the region. In Mexico, TCOs have used TikTok to disseminate covert job offers targeting young people, using attractive visual resources. Research from the Colegio de México suggests that this digital brand-building is a cornerstone of modern criminal identity.
“The deliberate display of armed and operational capabilities on social media responds to a logic of strategic visibility,” Gálvez noted. “By making themselves visible, these groups send messages of intimidation and generate symbolic attraction, even among audiences that will not necessarily be recruited.”
This “narco-influencers” phenomenon has attracted particular attention in Mexico. The Financial Intelligence Unit has identified profiles with direct fiscal ties to groups like Los Chapitos. According to reporting by Mexican daily Milenio, these digital revenues may be bypassing traditional banking systems to subsidize illicit activities.
Furthermore, a content creator speaking with El Universal exposed a scheme involving digital laundering. In this model, criminal organizations use botnets and click farms to artificially inflate the engagement of affiliated influencers. This manufactured popularity is then monetized through legitimate platform payouts, effectively cleaning illicit capital through the global digital economy.
The situation reached a crisis point in January 2025, when the use of social media transitioned into direct intimidation. Anonymous flyers dropped in Culiacán, Sinaloa, listed 25 influencers allegedly linked to organized crime. The subsequent assassination of six individuals from that list underscored the consequences of digital association, drawing intense scrutiny from intelligence agencies monitoring the nexus of social media and illicit activities.
In August 2025, the U.S. Treasury Department underscored this threat by sanctioning the Mexican rapper and influencer known as El Makabelico. Authorities accused him of laundering money for the Northeast Cartel through concerts and digital streaming royalties.
Case studies in transnational expansion
The use of influencer culture by criminal networks is not limited to Mexico. In Peru, on January 12, 2026, two 22-year-old influencers were apprehended at Jorge Chávez International Airport while attempting to smuggle cocaine and synthetic drugs to Asia. According to media outlet El Pulzo, the suspects used their social media accounts to project a lifestyle associated with international travel, thus camouflaging their participation in a global drug trafficking operation.
In Brazil, in October 2025, the influencer known as Buzeira was arrested for alleged links to drug trafficking. During the operation, authorities seized high-caliber weapons, luxury vehicles, and evidence of money laundering through digital activities at his residence, according to Publimetro Colombia.
In Argentina, the September 2025 arrest of Leandro Colella, alias El Musulmán, in Mar del Plata highlighted the use of digital platforms for logistics. La Nación reported that Colella used his YouTube and Instagram accounts to coordinate door-to-door sale of cocaine, using messaging apps to bypass police surveillance.
Similarly, in Colombia, in January 2024, authorities arrested influencer Yulisa de las Aguas Contreras in Medellín. El Nuevo Día Colombia reported that the influencer was allegedly tasked by the Clan del Golfo with the administration of assets related to illicit activities.
“It is essential to determine whether influencers are directly linked to a criminal structure or whether they function as advertising spaces,” Gálvez remarked. The expert stressed, however, that regardless of the specific role, these figures are cogs in a broader machinery designed to sustain and legitimize criminal dynamics.
The digital frontier: A new domain for defense
The overlap between influencers and organized crime represents an urgent paradigm shift for regional security forces. According to Gálvez, the challenge lies in understanding and identifying the links between artists, content creators, and digital narratives that normalize criminality. “The risk is not only violence, but its social penetration and the progressive normalization of illegal activities,” she said.
Gálvez emphasized the need to expand international cooperation capabilities, given the transnational nature of these organizations. “Information sharing and joint capacity building are essential to combat these dynamics,” she said. She also stressed that strategies must go beyond simple cyber monitoring. “Greater coordination is needed in the design of shared strategies and in the technical strengthening of security areas.”
Ultimately, the expert highlighted a critical point: the diffuse nature of the digital ecosystem. “With influencers, there is a visible figure, but there are also numerous anonymous accounts that amplify criminal narratives from anywhere, without a face or identifiable identity,” she concluded.
This evolving dimension of organized crime, which combines the power of social media with established illicit structures, redefines the regional security landscape, demanding a response that is as adaptive and digitally fluent as the threats it seeks to neutralize.
