Killed on February 22, Mexican drug lord El Mancho could be found thanks to his girlfriend, authorities announced. Immediately, Mexican influencer Maria Julissa was accused of being the girlfriend in question, based on images that turned out to be generated by artificial intelligence. The influencer denounced “false” claims.
Published on: 02/25/2026 - 6:38 p.m.
“I urge you not to share unverified content and not to believe everything you see on social networks”: on February 24, Mexican influencer Maria Julissa took to her social networks to denounce “baseless” claims circulating about her, asking her 3.6 million subscribers on Instagram not to relay them.
What is the Mexican model referring to? As reported by the Associated Press news agency, the trafficker "El Mencho", killed in a police operation by the Mexican authorities, was allegedly betrayed by a "romantic partner". During a press conference on February 23, the Mexican Minister of Defense, General Ricardo Trevilla, declared that investigators had identified and started following a relative of one of the companions of the 59-year-old trafficker, whose real name is Oseguera Cervantes. However, he did not give the identity of the companion.
But online, many accounts are starting to accuse Maria Julissa of being that person. Several images – at least three – showing El Mencho in a nightclub in the company of the influencer accompany these accusations. Most of the time, accounts that share these images claim that they show the drug lord's final moments.
Fake photos generated by AI
In all these images, the Mexican influencer is on a sofa, embraced by El Mencho, with a nightclub setting in the background. But nothing has so far supported such accusations, and none of these photos are real: all were generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
By passing each of these images through the Google Lens tool, our editorial team was able to see that these images had been modified or generated using generation tools offered by Google.
The detection method is simple: Google, which now places an invisible watermark on each image modified or generated by AI by one of its tools (like the Nano Banana image generation tool for example), specifies each time when an image was "created with Google's AI".
For each of the three images, the result, which is found in the “About” tab of Google Lens, clearly indicates that the visual had been created by AI.
Images that take an old photo of El Mencho?
These visuals could have been reproduced from an old ID photo of El Mencho which has circulated a lot in recent days in the media.
Originally published in several wanted notices from the American authorities, this difficult-to-date photo was published in press articles at least 11 years ago, in May 2015.
We find many similar elements between this ID photo and the false images generated by AI, whether for example the thin mustache, the lock in the middle of the forehead or even the facial expression
It is also unlikely that El Mencho, aged 59 at the time of his death, would have retained the same face eleven years after this photo. Other photos of him older were published by the American authorities in 2018 in a wanted notice published by the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), responsible for the fight against drug trafficking (see below).
Also read: Mexico: panic at the airport after rumor of an attack by drug traffickers
A few hours after Maria Julissa spoke, the influencer's legal team, represented by the company Sonus Legal, also argued that "the dissemination of rumors of this nature constitutes a serious violation of the fundamental rights of our client, in particular her honor, her reputation, her personal integrity and her security, and could even endanger her life and physical integrity."
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