At around 10:30 this morning, police closed the Pequeño Mundo in San Rafael de Escazú for several hours while they apparently searched for possible counterfeit items, according to police reports. All 11 branches of the large outlet type store will be searched by judiciary investigative police officials (known in Spanish as the OIJ), continued reports. The store, which is reminiscent of Kmart...

Last Thursday, Playa Hermosa in Guanacaste was once again the scene of a double murder, two Costa Rican men, identified as Brayan Duarte and Gary Strattman Mata were shot to death, the first outside a residential area and the other outside of a local bar “Bar Bahía Culebra” which was closed down months ago by the Municipality of Guanacaste. According to the police both men apparently were membe...

Remember back in mid-May when a man was shot dead as his car pulled into the gate of a private school in Guachipelín, Escazú, Costa Rica? Well, the victim of the shooting, Elias Akl, and his brother, Ziad Akl, both of Lebanese descent and with U.S. connections as well, appear to have run a money-lending organization in a sort of thug-like manner. Two men who are alleged to have formed part o...

  Starting this week and lasting until November 30, hearings are taking place at the San José Criminal Court on the case of five men who are accused of illicit trafficking of human organs in Costa Rica. The defendants are Mauro, Fonseca, Monge, Katsigiannis and Mora and are allegedly part of a transnational organization dedicated to human organ trafficking. The men were arrested in 2...

Two reforms to Costa Rica's weapons and explosives law that have recently been proposed are being met with opposition from the country's libertarian party. One project aims to reduce the number of weapons that can be registered by an individual, and would limit that number from a current total of three to only one. Likewise the number of weapons corporations would be allowed to register under t...

When Alejo Leiva Lachner, a university student from San José, went to Guanacaste, Costa Rica for Spring break at the beach with friends, nobody ever imagined he'd never return. Last March at Guanacaste's Playas del Coco, what appeared to be a small disagreement between the students and a pirate taxi driver turned into a mob killing that stunned the entire country. Five men are facing trial o...

U.S. citizen, Randall Lindner, who was also a resident of Costa Rica, was the second person to die in an airplane accident this morning, Tuesday, September 5, in the western San José, Costa Rica district of Pavas. His death was registered at the San José Calderón Guardia Hospital this afternoon, said the Costa Rican Social Security Agency (CCSS) which runs the country's national hospital and cl...

More details are starting to become available on the deadly small aircraft crash early this morning near the Pavas, San José airport which affected six individuals. However, Nature Air, who operated the flight, said they were not making public statements on the event due to the fact that the crash is under investigation by the Civil Aviation Department. A woman identified as Costa Rican Marí...

A plane operated by NatureAir with five passengers plus a pilot on board crashed into a river in Pavas, a western sector of San José, Costa Rica early this morning which were confirmed by the airline. It is confirmed that five passengers were on board, and one of them, a woman estimated to be 40 years old, died as a result of the crash. Information on the identities and nationalities of the pas...

Assassinations, whether for settling a score between drug-related groups or for other motives, are increasingly part of the daily news in Costa Rica. This weekend saw what appears to be another such killing, this time on the popular central Pacific beach of Herradura, named for its horseshoe-shaped bay, which neighbors the tourist hotspot of Jacó. A man sitting near the beach was shot at by ...

Wednesday, September 30 the Juan Santamaría International Airport in Alajuela, Costa Rica was the scene of the 18th capture of a "drug mule" so far this year, said the Ministry of Public Security. Officials with Costa Rica's drug control police (PCD) stopped a 54-year-old Romanian man surnamed Oprisoni who was heading for Spain, and later discovered he was carrying packets of cocaine in his sto...

Costa Rica's recently completed National Police School, which will open in October, has the capacity for housing 810 police officers, said the Ministry of Public Security. The campus consists of 29 buildings that make up the police training complex in La Rita de Pococí in the province of Limón. The infrastructure is estimated to have cost 12 billion colones, of which 9 billion were donated b...

Conservationists have lauded the proactive actions by park officials in the Tortugero, Costa Rica Conservation Area (ACTO, its initials in Spanish) to restrict areas where jaguars have been sighted. This meant some of the park's trails were closed to visitors for a period. However, this has not stopped a "small but powerful tourist business" from organizing unauthorized forays into such area...

On Thursday, officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) and the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) signed a cooperation agreement that will allow for police to operate out of  facilities inside the country's nature conservation areas, such as national park and wildlife refuges. This was confirmed by the Minister of Public Security, María Fullmen Salazar, who explained that pol...

The case of four medical doctors and a Greek businessman suspected of running an illegal organ trafficking operation out of Costa Rica is moving forward. The Office of the Prosecutor Against Organized Crime (FACDO, its initials in Spanish) cited 25 witnesses to appear in court to testify in the case. The Costa Rican Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) and Public Security Ministry uncovered t...

So far this year, Costa Rica's police forces have captured over 17.5 tons of cocaine, both in land and sea operations, informed the Public Security Ministry in the wake of an incident at the Moín, Limón port on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. On Thursday August 17, drug control police detained and inspected a ship where they discovered 50 kilos of cocaine attached to its hull, said the ministry. ...

The Costa Rican Frontier Police located this Saturday a truck used for the transportation of pineapple carrying 50 Nicaraguan citizens with irregular migratory status. The driver of the truck was a Costa Rican with last name Pérez, he has apprehended and presented to the district attorney’s office in San Carlos charged with presumed human smuggling. The truck entered the country from Nicarag...

When U.S. citizens Luda and Rome Gimelfarb's son David disappeared after heading on a hike in northern Costa Rica, they never thought they would still be searching for him eight years later. The couple continues to hold out hope they will locate their son whom they say they feel is still alive. On August 11, 2009 David Gimelfarb set out for a hike in Rincón de la Vieja National Park, never t...

Jean Todt, acting in his capacity as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety, met with stakeholders in Costa Rica to promote United Nations road safety legal instruments and share established road safety best practices, said the Costa Rican Ministry of Health. Todt is president of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA, an association found...

On July 26, 2010, an American couple was arrested when trying to enter Nicaragua from Costa Rica over land; according to reports in local and international media. They were William Dathan Holbert (b. September 12, 1979), also known as Wild Bill, described by Wikipedia as a self-confessed murderer from Hendersonville, North Carolina,and his ex-wife, Laura Michelle Reese. They have been held i...

Costa Rica's drug control police unit raided the home of an alleged mother-daughter drug dealing duo Friday, bringing the number of family-run narco rings they have busted since the start of last year to 311, reported the Public Security Ministry. The team presumably led a drug dealing operation out of their home in a neighborhood in Sixaola, Talamanca, in the Caribbean province of Limón Pol...

A Belgian boy who was on vacation with his family died Tuesday afternoon, August 8, apparently from causes related to having eaten prior to entering his hotel swimming pool in La Fortuna, San Carlos, Costa Rica. The 8-year-old apparently jumped into the pool soon after eating, was rescued alive from the pool and his vital signs were kept going by a doctor on site and emergency rescue workers be...

A recent analysis by the London-based IHS Markit concluded that homicide rates in Costa Rica are likely to continue rising while ongoing fiscal crisis limits government resources for increasing the security forces’ capacity. The report also said a concurring trend of rising violent robberies in Talamanca canton, Limón province, raises the likelihood of declining popularity for Caribbean beach a...

Local Costa Rican media revealed the sorrow in the small rural community of Los Angeles, outside of the tourist town of La Fortuna, San Carlos near Arenal Volcano, unleashed by a fatal accidental shooting of a teen yesterday. According to police testimonies, a 14-year-old was with a childhood friend on his family's farm and was showing his friend his dad's gun. Thinking it was not loaded, he fi...

Costa Rican authorities yesterday reported the discovery at the Pacific port of Caldera of 1.3 tons of cocaine in a container hailing from Buenaventura, Colombia. Costa Rican security minister Gustavo Mata said Monday at a press conference that the seizure occurred on Sunday during a routine container inspection, and that it is the first time that drug has been found at the Caldera port in the ...

Three tour operators have been ordered to stop offering walks and tours in areas of the Arenal Volcano National Park that are off limits, said the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) this week. Improvised trails that lead to the crater of Cerro Chato, the twin peak of Arenal Volcano, were closed with barbed wire by park rangers, due to informal tour operators using them for touris...

In the small town of Madison, New Jersey, a 50-year-old Costa Rican man last week was turned over to U.S. federal authorities after he was found to be on the run from justice in Costa Rica for the rape of a minor, according to reports on July 28 in the Daily Record of Rockaway, NJ Eugenio Castillo Muñoz, a resident of Waverly Place in Madison - a borough of some 16,000 inhabitants in Morris Cou...

Costa Ricans and Panamanians marched Friday along their shared border to bring awareness to the problem of human trafficking, reported the Spanish news agency EFE. The event came on the heels of the arrest of a Dominican man in Paso Canoas for alleged drug and human trafficking. He is accused of trafficking three Ecuadorian migrants who appear to have paid him to take them to the U.S. The fi...

In February, the community of Ostional, Costa Rica on the Nicoya Peninsula in the northern Guanacaste province carried out a tsunami evacuation drill. This was the first time such a drill has been carried out in Costa Rica. Ostional is home to the Ostional Wildlife Refuge, which the World Wildlife Fund considers “one of the two most important nesting areas in the world for Olive Ridley turtl...

There's more than turtles, whales and sharks lingering off the shores of Costa Rica these days. While Costa Rica has been steadily chipping away at the never-ending flow of drugs from South America passing near and through its borders, Colombia has meanwhile been boosting coca production. An over 1-ton capture of cocaine packets floating out at sea off the southern Pacific coastal town of Pu...

When American Brian Lynn Hogue decided to retire in Costa Rica, he probably never imagined he'd disappear into the blue one night after discovering people he had held in confidence had tried to cheat him out of his properties. On March 8, 2016, four people were arrested in connection with his 2015 disappearance in Limón, Costa Rica. And a trial this week found two sisters guilty of his disappea...

A Costa Rican field hand by the last names of López Rojas was intercepted yesterday at 5 a.m. by police while traveling to work in a rice field by motorcycle near Loma de Parrita in the Central Pacific region of Parrita, near Jacó. The man, a resident of Loma de Parrita, is suspected of having murdered two women this year in the Parrita area, one on February 14, Valentine's Day, and the other o...

The Costa Rican Treasury yesterday sent out a nationwide alert. The agency has discovered in-person and email scams happening in their name. One method used by scammers is to visit businesses in person and pose as Fiscal Control Police (Police de Control Fiscal) agents claiming to be collecting taxes for the treasury department. The treasury (Hacienda) said that they do not send their age...

Nature guides and environmental educators at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve welcomed an atypical group last week to their outdoor classroom. Ten young men from the Ofelia Vincenzi Specialized Center, a rehabilitation center run by the Ministry of Justice and Peace, visited for the first time the world renowned forest as part of their educational experience. Those chosen have ...

The Ministry of Public Security has carried out national aerial surveillance over the past year to identify, and eradicate, clandestine airstrips throughout the country, said the ministry in a statement. The finding yesterday of the charred remains of a light aircraft that apparently caught fire upon landing on an airstrip on a private property in the jungle in the Pacific area of Savegre, Quep...

Immigration Authorities and the Ministry of Security of Costa Rica were able to track 88 foreigners that entered the country by land or air and are linked with organized crime in just 6 weeks and with the help of international alerts. After the shootout that took place in front of a Costa Rican private school in Guachipelin area that left two people dead, the authorities announced they’d be re...

The U.S. Ambassador in Costa Rica, S. Fitzgerald Haney presented the donation of six virtual shooting ranges for the use of the Costa Rican police bodies. The value of the virtual shooting ranges is estimated in USD$789,000.00 and the donation includes the training of 10 representatives in the adequate use of this technology; these 10 individuals will then be in charge of preparing other offici...

A transnational effort to combat organized crime is taking off with leadership from the European Union. A 3-day meeting this week in San José marks the kick-off with representatives from 18 Latin American countries joining the new effort: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela an...

  A 22-year-old Colombian man who threatened an attack on an Ariana Grande performance July 9 at Parque Viva in Costa Rica got a big surprise - as did his family - when police stormed his house early Sunday morning in advance of the event. After police received reports Saturday about a message sent via social media to one of the event organizers, the search began, and security for the e...

Costa Rican police were busy this weekend. They arrested eight members of a drug and crime ring in Jacó, and a Honduran trucker near the Nicaraguan border with cocaine hidden in his rig. This truck entered the country July 6, and when it attempted to leave Costa Rica Saturday near Los Chiles in northern Alajuela province, police acted on confidential information, and searched the truck. They de...