Daniel Arizmendi López, known as 'El Mochaorejas', has been absolved of kidnapping charges by a federal judge after 27 years in prison, due to insufficient evidence. While freedom was ordered for that specific case, he will remain incarcerated for other crimes. The ruling revives memories of his gang, notorious for ear mutilations in the 1990s.
Daniel Arizmendi López, alias 'El Mochaorejas', was born in 1966 in Mexico City and became the leader of a kidnapping gang that operated mainly between 1996 and 1998. His group was responsible for at least 12 documented kidnappings, though authorities estimate up to 40 cases in states including Querétaro, Morelos, State of Mexico, Puebla, and Mexico City, targeting businessmen. The nickname 'El Mochaorejas' came from his brutal method: cutting off victims' ears and sending them to families as leverage for ransom payments, a practice confirmed by the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR).
Arizmendi was captured on August 18, 1998, in the State of Mexico by a joint operation of the PGR and Federal Judicial Police. He confessed to 21 kidnappings and three murders, the last one just before his arrest. In 2000, he was sentenced to 393 years in prison for organized crime and kidnappings, later adjusted; by 2006, he had accumulated nearly 400 years. His accomplices received sentences ranging from 7 to 160 years.
On December 24, 2025, Judge Raquel Ivette Duarte Cedillo of the Second District Court in Criminal Matters in the State of Mexico absolved him of the crime of illegal deprivation of liberty in the modality of kidnapping. 'No existe señalamiento o imputación directa en contra de Daniel Arizmendi López que permita arribar, aún de manera indiciaria, a su plena responsabilidad (...) se absuelve de la acusación ministerial,' states the ruling. However, she sentenced him to eight years for organized crime, a term already served after 27 years in the El Altiplano maximum-security prison.
Arizmendi will remain imprisoned due to other pending processes. His case marked Mexico's criminal history, spurring the creation of specialized anti-kidnapping units and highlighting institutional failures in the 1990s, when kidnappings terrorized the capital without regard for social class.
