Source: Pixabay Commons Members of a credit card cloning crew arrested in Costa Rica earlier this week reportedly placed skimmers at nude cabarets, among other commercial establishments, where they made off with account information that was ultimately used to make fraudulent purchases and payments. As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, a citizen of the United States was one of four...

(Illustrative image / Flickr) A U.S. citizen was one of four suspects arrested in a series of coordinated raids in Costa Rica on Tuesday to dismantle a criminal group that stole thousands of dollars from credit and debit card holders by cloning their cards, according to the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ). According to an investigation, the suspects used devices known as “skimmers” to s...

Michael Adrian Salmeron, the Nicaraguan man suspected of murdering 57-year-old U.S. expat, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife and three of their children in Costa Rica. (Photo: La Prensa/Nicaragua) Michael Adrian Salmeron, the 24-year-old Nicaraguan man accused of murdering 57-year-old U.S. expat, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife and three of their small children ...

12 kilos of cocaine were found in the house where the kidnapped pilot was being held. (OIJ Photo) A Canadian man is amongst seven foreigners who were arrested in Costa Rica on Thursday on charges that they kidnapped a pilot in order to force the pilot to fly a shipment of cocaine out of the country. The other kidnappers include five Colombian nationals and a Romanian, according to officials...

FARC child fighter. Flickr Commons Bogota, Apr 17 (EFE).- The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrilla group said in a post on social media this weekend that it did not have a fortune of $10.5 billion as reported by Britain's The Economist. FARC chief peace negotiator Ivan Marquez called the article a "joke" in a Twitter post. "They should check their sources and not be...

The gunmen reportedly spent an incredible 25 minutes looting the store. (Image from Eurochronos web site) Four gunmen posing as customers on Friday conducted a brazen armed robbery during business hours of a jewelry store located in the Multiplaza shopping center in Escazu.   According to Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Security (MSP), the four gunmen entered the Eurochronos store, ...

The incident took place in Ciudad Quesada, San Carlos. (Archive/Wikimedia Commons) Authorities in Costa Rica are searching for a woman who sold her 10-month-old child - complete with birth certificate - for two US dollars to a stranger last week. The incident took place in Ciudad Quesada, San Carlos, according to authorities. Apparently, the mother – whose identity is known by authoritie...

Wikimedia Commons San Francisco, Apr 14 (EFE).- Microsoft Corp. filed a lawsuit Thursday against the U.S. Justice Department, challenging so-called secrecy orders that bar the company from notifying its customers when the government has reviewed their e-mails and other data. The tech giant says in the suit that it has received 5,624 requests from the government for customer information or d...

(Photo courtesy of the MSP) Costa Rica’s Air Surveillance Service (SVA) said this week that it has managed to locate 33 clandestine airstrips along the country’s Pacific coast in just the last five months. Authorities say they believe the clandestine airstrips are the work of drug traffickers, mostly linked with Mexican drug cartels. The airstrips range from 500 meters to a kilometer in ...

(MSP Photo) A small aircraft crashed into the sea just two kilometers off the coast of Puerto Jimenez in the southern zone of Costa Rica during the early morning hours Tuesday, according to Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Security (MSP). The aircraft went down just two kilometers off Carate beach, while apparently coming in for a landing at a clandestine airstrip, according to authorities. ...

Nicaragua’s Supreme Court decided Monday that it will not extradite Michael Adrian Salmeron, the Nicaraguan man suspected of murdering 57-year-old U.S. expat, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife and three of their children in Costa Rica. (Photo: La Prensa/Nicaragua) Nicaragua’s Supreme Court decided Monday that it will not extradite Michael Adrian Salmeron, the Nicaraguan man susp...

Alejo Leiva Lachner (Facebook) Two more suspects wanted in relation to the mob killing of a 21-year-old Costa Rican man who was on vacation during the Holy Week holiday in Playas del Coco, a popular beach town in Costa Rica’s northwestern province of Guanacaste, are now in custody after turning themselves in Friday afternoon, according to the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ). The suspect...

ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Eight members of a gang that smuggled up to two tons of cocaine per month through Central America and into the United States were arrested by police in an operation targeting four cities in Colombia, officials said Sunday. The gang's unident...

Illustrative image. (Flickr) A 57-year-old German man suspected of killing his Costa Rican girlfriend reportedly committed suicide in a holding cell of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) over the weekend, though authorities have yet to release an official statement on the matter as of early Monday morning. The man, identified originally as Karl Alwanmeyer though there is some ...

Illustrative image. (Flickr) Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) identified the German man stopped Thursday morning while driving with his deceased girlfriend in the passenger seat of his car as 57-year-old Karl Alwanmeyer, and confirmed that the man is being held on suspicion of homicide. During a brief press conference on Thursday, the OIJ also identified the victim as 51-yea...

Illustrative image. (Flickr) UPDATE: German man suspected of killing Costa Rican woman identified as more details emerge   Costa Rican police officers made a grisly discovery in the early morning hours Thursday after stopping a suspicious vehicle in the area of La Virgen, in Sarapiqui.   According to preliminary information, residents of the area alerted authorities to a ...

Costa Rica’s President Luis Guillermo Solís and U.S. Navy Adm. Kurt Tidd, commander of U.S. Southern Command, greet each other prior to the opening ceremony for the Central American Security Conference April 7 in San Jose. Photo by Jose Ruiz, SOUTHCOM By Jose Ruiz and Michael Wimbish, United States Southern Command SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- Top government, defense, and police leaders from Cen...

The aircraft burst into flames after crashing shortly after takeoff. (MSP Photo) A single-engine aircraft crashed and burned around 5 p.m. Thursday evening near Nosara, in Costa Rica’s northwestern Guanacaste province, killing both of the aircraft’s occupants, officials have confirmed. The aircraft is believed to have had trouble gaining altitude shortly after takeoff from a clandestine air...

Source: Spanish National Police Spanish customs agents at the Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas International Airport detained a man who had flown in from Costa Rica carrying 400 grams of cocaine hydrochloride in powdered form. The incident, which took place last Friday, made headlines in Europe due to the ill-chosen smuggling method. According to a news report filed by Fran Hurtado of online Sp...

Source: Villa Thoga Tamarindo, Costa Rica - April 5, 2016 /PressCable/ — Popular Tamarindo Beach, Costa Rica vacation villa rentals complex Villa Thoga announced the release of a new report providing extensive information on the safety of Costa Rica and Tamarindo as family holiday destinations. More information is available at http://villathoga.com/is-costa-rica-safe/. The report provide...

Source: Alfredo Guzman Twitter Mexico City, Apr 4 (EFE).- A Mexican government contractor, a former CEO of state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and an associate of notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman are some of the individuals whose names appear in the Panama Papers. Mexican media outlets Aristegui Noticias and Proceso magazine, part of the International ...

FILE/ARCHIVE image for illustrative purposes only. (MSP) Locals and tourists alike will soon be able to submit formal criminal complaints to Costa Rica’s Tourist Police rather than having to travel to the closest office of the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) in select coastal communities as part of an “experimental” pilot program that will begin next month.   Under the pilot pro...

Source: Boxing Promotions Facebook San Juan, Apr 3 (EFE).- Young Puerto Rican boxer Alexander "El Pollo" de Jesus was shot multiple times and killed Sunday morning on a street in San Juan's Hato Rey district, where he lived. Police said that the body of the 33-year-old fighter was found on Belmonte Street after being taken by force from his home nearby. According to local dailies, a few ...

ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Two aircraft from Costa Rica’s Air Surveillance Service (SVA) were able to guide a Costa Rican Coast Guard vessel in recovering 607 kilos of cocaine that were spotted floating at sea, tied to a buoy, the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) said o...

EFE/File Washington, Apr 3 (EFE).- The largest journalistic leak in history, which came to light on Sunday with the participation of the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, suggests that 140 politicians and officials from around the globe, including 72 former and current world leaders, have connections with secret "offshore" companies to escape tax scrutiny ...

Robert Allen Lopez had been on the run for nearly 20 years. (WFOR Miami / Screen capture / Fair Use) An American fugitive who has been on the run for nearly 20 years was deported to Miami from Nicaragua on Saturday, escorted by officers of the United States Marshals Service. Robert Allen Lopez, 49 was arrested by Nicaraguan authorities on November 14th, 2015, after entering the Central Amer...

The late Mr. Herrera, on the left. Facebook Former police officer and self-confessed neo-nazi Ronald Javier Herrera Borges took his own life on Saturday. Mr. Herrera was found in his home located in the neighborhood of La Capri, part of the populous Desamparados canton of the San Jose province. The suicide note posted on Facebook by Mr. Herrera asks for forgiveness while labeling himself a ...

New quick-action gesture iPhone 6s Austin, Texas, Mar 31 (EFE).- The FBI has agreed to unlock two Apple devices belonging to a pair of teenage murder suspects in Arkansas, the prosecutor in the case said. The bureau is providing that assistance after the Justice Department said Monday it had gained access to the iPhone used by one of the shooters in last December's San Bernardino, Californi...

(Facebook/OIJ) Officers with Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigate Police (OIJ) along with SWAT officers from the Special Tactical Response Service (SERT) conducted a series of raids beginning shortly after 10 a.m. on Friday, making five arrests in the murder of a 21-year-old man who was attacked by a mob of at least 20 people outside the popular Lizard Lounge bar in Playas del Coco, Guanacaste on...

Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Costa Rica’s Ministry of Public Security (MSP) and Drug Control Police (PCD) are expecting a record level of cocaine trafficking through the country and its territorial waters this year, due in large part to increases in production in the source countries of...

(Photo courtesy of the Costa Rican Coast Guard) Costa Rican Coast Guard officials were able to recover a significant amount of cocaine that was thrown overboard during the chase. (Photo courtesy of the Costa Rican Coast Guard) Acting on information provided by Costa Rica’s intelligence service, the DIS, Costa Rica’s Coast Guard were able to seize 875 kilos of cocaine after intercepting a s...

REUTERS/Janine Costa By Anastasia Moloney BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The scale of sex trafficking around illegal gold mines in parts of Latin America - including Costa Rica’s northern neighbor, Nicaragua - is "staggering," and thousands of people working in the region’s gold mines are prey to labour exploitation by organised crime groups, a think-tank said on Wednesday. "When ...

Veracruz, Mexico, Mar 29 (EFE).- The alleged rape of a girl by four young men from wealthy families in the Gulf state of Veracruz has rocked Mexico, prompting people to take to the streets to protest the case's handling. The girl was leaving a disco in January 2015 in Boca del Rio when she was forced into a vehicle by college students Enrique Capitaine, Jorge Cotaita, Diego Cruz and Gerardo Rod...

A green sea turtle that was seen tied to and being dragged behind a car in Limon, Costa Rica in a shocking online video on Tuesday was subsequently tortured and killed, according to the environmental activist and lawyer who uploaded the video. Alvaro Sagot told the Spanish EFE news agency that in the full version of the video, the sea turtle is tortured and killed in a “very cruel” manner after...

Costa Rican environmentalist Jairo Mora was murdered in 2013. (ARCHIVE / Photo courtesy of WIDECAST) This is a developing news story.  Stay tuned to The Costa Rica Star for updates. A criminal court in Costa Rica found four out of seven defendants guilty of murder and other crimes on Tuesday, sentencing all four to the maximum sentence permitted by law and concluding the second trial in the...

New quick-action gesture iPhone 6s San Francisco, Mar 28 (EFE).- The U.S. Justice Department said Monday that the FBI had accessed the iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack last December and will not need the help of Apple to unblock the device. "The FBI has now successfully retrieved the data stored on the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone a...

A shocking video, which shows a live sea turtle tied to and being dragged behind a car, sparked outrage in Costa Rica and social media on Tuesday.   The video is believed to have been filmed recently in Moin, Limon, on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. The vehicle’s license plate is clearly visible in the video, which could assist authorities in identifying the subjects in the video, though...

Illustrative image. (Flickr) A 21-year old man was fatally stabbed while on vacation in Playas del Coco, a seaside vacation hotspot of Guanacaste and one of the Gold Coast beaches of Costa Rica. According to a news segment broadcast by national television network Repretel, the murder took place on Good Friday at a crowded bar.   Agents from the Office of Judicial Investigations (Spa...

Source: Pixabay Commons As a commercial pilot and flight school instructor, Bruce Wayne (seriously) Wallis flew air passengers around the world for a major United States airline; however, when darkness set upon the Lone Star State, he became Bruno the Pimp, a prostitution impresario who managed a network of brothels in Houston. According to a news report filed by Brian Rogers of the Houston...

Mabel Flores, Flickr Commons More than 70 Fire Departments across Costa Rica will be very vigilant from now until the early hours of Easter Sunday as communities engage in the traditional burning of the Judas Iscariot effigy. The burning of Judas begins with the hanging of the effigy, which happens on Good Friday and is followed by burning on the night of Holy Satruday. This religious tradi...