A security task force convened by the Ministry of Public Security (Spanish initials: MSP) in Costa Rica arrested a citizen from the United States who will be charged with crimes against nature. According to an official press release by the MSP, the U.S. expat was apprehended along with a citizen of Costa Rica; both men will face charges stemming from activities related to the illegal extraction of gold from Corcovado National Park.

In recent weeks, park rangers and officials from the Ministry of the Environment have intensified their patrols in the wild Corcovado National Park, located in the Osa Peninsula of the Southern Pacific region of Costa Rica. These patrols intend to catch poachers, smugglers and illegal miners; the task force was recently augmented by sappers from a special MSP unit that is dedicated to explosives and ordnance disposal.

During previous patrols, park rangers and nature protection officials had found evidence of elaborate equipment used to suction and sift river sand in order to find gold fragments. The sappers were called in to provide their pathfinder expertise as well as their engineering skills to locate the makeshift mining rigs, which also needed to be carefully dismantled to avoid further environmental damage.

Sapper scouts encountered a network of hoses, cables, generators, and pumps in a river within Corcovado National Park. Using the thick vegetation for cover, the sappers moved stealthily along the banks of the river and startled the aforementioned suspects just as one of them was in the river manipulating the mining contraption with the assistance of his partner in crime.

The last name of the arrested U.S. expat is Knight, and MSP officials could not ascertain his legal immigration status in Costa Rica. The suspects are now in custody; they are waiting to be interviewed by prosecutors from Golfito.