If you still don’t have the basics of the “Cementazo” corruption case in Costa Rica, we invite you to read our previous article “Understanding the Cementazo” to get you up to date on this scandal that has occupied the covers of all Costa Rican newspapers and sites since late June this year. For the past few weeks the commission investigating the case has continued with the interviews with all p...

Controversy never seems to end for the northern Costa Rican town of Crucitas. After a Canadian gold mining company, Infinito Gold, was denied access to the land to mine, the case continues to die. The company appealed the Costa Rican government's decision, but finally gave up on the case in 2015 and packed up their bags. However the after effects continue. Not only have over 300 Nicara...

The Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) has identified five out of the nine man that robbed the Eurochronos jewelry and the Tiempo Global jewelry in Multiplaza Escazú and Plaza Colonial respectively this past October 31st and confirmed they are of Mexican origin. The group reportedly entered the country at the end of October and stayed in different hotels in the San José area, which they abando...

This Halloween, clients of the upscale Multiplaza Escazú shopping center had the scare of a lifetime - but not from goblins or ghosts. Clients reported running for cover as shots rang out on the first floor of the glitzy shopping center as robbers assaulted Eurochronos around 2 p.m., according to police reports. This same store was robbed last April. It is estimated that the robbers made off...

Reports of a shooting were received by police yesterday, Sunday, October 29, at 8:30 p.m. in a farming community outside of the tourist destination of La Fortuna - Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica. The incident involved the head of the Traffic Police unit for La Fortuna in the district of San Carlos, Alajuela in the north-central region of Costa Rica. Pedro Arce Araya (56) fatally shot his 19-year...

Walking through downtown San José between the hours of 3 - 10 p.m. is considered the most likely way to be the victim of an assault in Costa Rica, according to the most recent data from the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ). San José's central area - comprised of the Hospital, Merced, Catedral and El Carmen districts - is where most of the country's assaults occur, according to Marco Carrión,...

One of Russia's wealthiest individuals had over $20,000 in cash seized yesterday afternoon, Thursday, October 26, 2017, at Costa Rica's main Juan Santamaría International Airport near San José when he was leaving for his home country after a vacation. Andrei Bokarev, 51, whose wealth is estimated by Forbes at $1.69 billion, had arrived in a private jet earlier in the week and participated in a ...

A 59-year-old Israeli man, Lita Jake, was deported from Costa Rica Monday, October 23, 2017 due to his alleged ties with the criminal structure led by the murdered Lebanese, Elías Akl. Akl was assassinated May 15 in Escazú, Costa Rica at the front entrance to a private school in Guachipelín. Police have continued to investigate those connected with Akl, and have made other arrests since his ...

Costa Rican border police agents detained a suspected human trafficker, in Spanish what's known as a "coyote," with six Ecuadorians in the mountains near the Panama border yesterday. The area of southern Puntarenas province where the man was leading the six undocumented migrants  is called ​​Guaycará de Golfito. The Costa Rican man, Agüero, knew of a route over the border that circumvented p...

At 4 a.m. yesterday morning, hundreds of Costa Rican police busted into homes in northern Costa Rica, capturing 28 alleged drug dealers, said Walter Espinoza, director of the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ). The narco group, perhaps the largest in northern Costa Rica, has been under investigation for the past year-and-a-half and is considered one of the largest police raids in recent years....

Heavy rains last night and early this morning, Monday, October 23, caused flooding in the low-lying Upala region of northern Costa Rica, said Costa Rican National Emergency Commission (CNE) officials. The swollen rivers caused at least 15 people to be evacuated from the San José de Upala neighborhood. According to Leonel Jiménez, the region's Fire Department director, a temporary shelter was...

A Guatemalan woman is under investigation in Costa Rica for allegedly forcing another Guatemalan woman to work 17 hours a day without pay, and also without food during her workday or any days off, according to reports from the Costa Rica Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ). The woman, with the last names Martínez López, was arrested Thursday morning October 12 in La Fortuna de San Carlos, Alaju...

Once again officers of the National Coast Guard Service in Costa Rica found cocaine packets floating in the ocean. The Ministry of Public Security explained that a total of 24 packages were found this Friday, October 20, about 200 kilometers southwest of Golfito in the South Pacific when the officers were patrolling the area. Just this past October 6th the Coast Guard came across 44 cocaine p...

Six Nicaraguan women, including a minor, who were sexually exploited in a bar in Upala, Costa Rica, were rescued in mid-September by the Costa Rican Immigration Police in a sting operation in coordination with the public prosecutor's office and the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration (DGME). During the operation, five suspects were arrested at the Pino Bar in Santa Clara de Upala f...

A Costa Rican man with the last names Alvarado Leiva, an official at the Costa Rican National Registry (Registro Nacional), was arrested this morning on suspicion of hacking into a woman's WhatsApp account, monitoring her private communications, and sending her death threats, said the Costa Rican Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ). It appears that Alvarado Leiva is obsessed with the woman, who...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff. Next week the horror of heroin-opioid-related deaths will finally and formally be recognized as a national health emergency by President Donald Trump in response to the fact the families in the United States of America are losing more than 140 of their sons...

The Costa Rican man who has been held in detention since his arrest in early February following the gruesome murder of five university students in January in the northern Costa Rican city of Liberia, capital of Guanacaste will attend a preliminary hearing Thursday, said the Public Security Ministry. The hearing, which was originally scheduled in Liberia for October 6, was postponed due to the n...

Timothy Stubbs is an American man from Grand Junction, Colorado who fled to Costa Rica in December of 2015 two weeks before receiving final sentence for tax evasion and failing to file personal and corporate tax returns. According to the evidence that was presented during the case, Stubbs was the owner of National Rebate Fund Inc., an investment fund in Grand Junction which earned over US$7 mil...

You’ve probably heard the term in the news over the past few months, or maybe a friend or coworker has mentioned it to you, but the amount of information is overwhelming and of course in Spanish, even for a Spanish speaker the craziness of this case has been hard to follow. “Cemento” is the Spanish word for cement; and like with Odebrecht or the Panama Papers, “Cementazo” is just the term being...

Officials of the Costa Rica Tourist Police division stationed in Limón apprehended a man considered the main suspect in the assault of a foreign tourist on Wednesay, October 11. The suspect, a young man with the last name of Walcott, allegedly threatened the tourist and proceded to take away his cell phone and cash on Wednesday afternoon. According to police information, the victim - a Spani...

Desperate times call for ... desperate packing? Officials with the Costa Rican Drug Control Police (PCD, its initials in Spanish) detained a Costa Rican passenger at the airport with seven packets of cocaine tossed into his carry-on luggage along with his clothes and other everyday personal items, said the Ministry of Public Security. Yesterday, Tuesday, October 10, a 59-year-old man with th...

Costa Rica Coastguard officers came across between 800-1000 kilograms of cocaine floating about 60 kilometers from Golfo Dulce in the South Pacific, confirmed the Ministry of Public Security (MSP). The National Coastguard Service was patrolling the area on Thursday afternoon when they found the cargo tied to a radio buoy. The cargo included 44 packs which the police estimate could weigh betw...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  Fifty-nine dead with 527 wounded in Las Vegas in the worst mass shooting in the modern history of the United States of America. Some 24 guns – including 12 converted fully-automatic assault rifles -- were recovered by police in the hotel room of Steph...

A total of 2,430 gas cylinders were destroyed recently by the Costa Rican Public Services Regulatory Authority (Aresep), because they presented some problem and were considered dangerous. This is done as part of the Gas Quality Assessment Program of Aresep, which reviews the condition of the cylinders. Among the considerations used to determine if cylinders should be discarded include: Havin...

Police made eight arrests this weekend thus breaking up two alleged groups of delinquents operating in the Jacó Beach area of Garabito, Puntarenas on Costa Rica's central Pacific coast. One group targeted focused on stealing cell phones, mainly in tourist areas and also apparently targeted tourists, and the other apparently was dedicated to breaking into vehicles. Both groups had Costa Rican an...

Five men in the northern region of Cañas, Guanacaste had their Sunday afternoon deer hunting spree put to a quick end by police who were tipped off on the subjects entering the forest with hunting dogs and rifles, said the Ministry of Public Security. Police were aided by officials of the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC, in Spanish), who have been on alert in recent weeks for deer ...

The brother of Stephen Paddock, the suspected gunman in the shooting deaths of at least 50 people at a Las Vegas concert - which also left at least 400 injured, said he cannot understand his brother's motive. Eric Paddock of Orlando gave a statement Monday to local police regarding his brother Stephen who shot himself to death as police entered his Las Vegas hotel room. Stephen Paddock, 64, ...

Update at 10:30 a.m., Monday Oct. 2: The death toll in the shooting has risen to 58, according to national U.S. media. Las Vegas, Nevada was the scene last night of the deadliest mass killing in modern U.S. history. More than 50 concertgoers were killed and hundreds were injured late Sunday at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. The gunfire began around 10 p.m. on the south end of La...

The Criminal Court of Quepos and Parrita in Costa Rica's Central Pacific region sentenced Freddy Cortés Peña, yesterday, Thursday, September 28, to 25 years in prison for assaulting and raping a U.S. tourist, according to the public prosecutor's office. The crimes date to April 20, 2006 when the American tourist and her boyfriend were on the beach at Manuel Antonio National Park adjacent to the...

Update; Sunday, October 1: The suspect in this case, Andrew Roy Willis, will be kept in detention for 4-months while the case is investigated, report the courts. Andrew Roy Willis, a U.S. citizen, was charged with homicide yesterday, Thursday, September 28, in the southern Costa Rican town of Pérez Zeledón after his sentimental partner, Melania Calvo Víquez (33), was discovered buried near thei...

Diners at McDonalds along the main drag in San Rafael de Escazú, an upscale district west of San José, were in for more than they bargained for when they went out for a bite last night. At around 9:40 p.m., two armed men entered the locale and robbed all customers and cash registers at gun point, reported police. No one was physically harmed in the hold up, but customers and workers were lef...

A United States citizen was taken into police custody late this afternoon, Wednesday, September 27, near the southern mountain town of Pérez Zeledón. The detention occurred shortly after police at around 4 p.m unearthed the body of a woman who is preliminarily presumed to be the man's wife. The body was found partially buried about 500 meters from their rural home, according to a press conferen...

Traffic police and municipal governments in 16 of Costa Rica's counties are joining forces to bolster monitoring at specific areas with high car accident rates, such as Jaco beach said the Ministry of Public Works and Transport this week. The effort comes as the calendar approaches the end of the year, a time when car accidents historically spike in Costa Rica. "We want to focus on areas that ...

Experts alert that from August-December, when Costa Rica's crocodiles are breeding, there is often an uptick in attacks on humans. This is due to the fact that when males compete with other males for a mate, weaker males are often displaced from their usual habitats in and around river mouths and make forays into other areas such as oceans, beaches, canals, and mangroves. Sunday, September 2...

A group of residents in the small Central Pacific port town of Quepos, bordering the popular tourist destination Manuel Antonio National Park, have come together to seek to increase safety on the streets. The initiative, "Quepos Seguro, Quepos Libre" (A Safe and Free Quepos), held a kick-off meeting Monday afternoon at the site of the weekly local farmer's market. Their Facebook page already ha...

Gilberto Ventura Ceballos was arrested today in Jacó by Costa Rica's Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) and the Directorate of Intelligence and National Security (DIS) officials. The Dominican national, who has a knack for evading arrest, is wanted in Panama for the murder of five people in 2010 and 2011. The young man has been on the run since December 2016 when he escaped from La Joyita pris...

With criminal proceedings underway on a human organ trafficking case involving the trial of four Costa Rican doctors and their alleged accomplices, many interesting details are coming to light. Intersecting forces of greed, corruption and international black markets are being identified and dissected as evidence is presented in this first of a kind trial in Costa Rica. More details will be fort...

Police assault data for Costa Rica's counties continue to rank San José as being the most violent, and Escazú fell three places in the judiciary police's ranking of the country's regions by number of assaults, according to data released this week by the OIJ, the country's investigation bureau. Hojancha and Nandayure, Guanacaste registered no assaults this year so far, and have historically had ...

Early on Thursday, September 21, the Costa Rican Police reported the finding of a body in a vehicle near the Juan Santamaría International Airport in Alajuela; however, the identity of the person was not revealed until later that day. According to the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) the body corresponds to an 80 year-old German woman by the name of Rosemarie Bockhold Koopman. The victim ...

Police in Costa Rica have been busy both on land and at sea intercepting drugs. Since January the police force has racked up over 14.5 tons in drug seizures, some of which was destined for local consumption, and much of which was in transit from South America to points beyond Costa Rica. The country's drug control police (PCD, in Spanish) reports that so far this year, 89 narco criminal stru...