Pixabay Commons Washington, Mar 24 (EFE).- U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday announced an investigation of seven Iranian hackers, who have been charged with attacking the U.S. financial system and a small dam in New York at the behest of the government in Tehran. "The attacks were relentless, systematic and widespread," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a press conference...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Mar 19 (EFE).- Mexican-born American actress Kate del Castillo said in a televised interview that drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman probably was in love with the powerful, tequila-drinking drug trafficker she portrayed in the 2011 telenovela "La Reina del Sur" (The Queen of the South), which would explain his interest in her. "I don't think it was...

(Photo courtesy of the MSP) While a second wave of more than 1,000 Cuban migrants once again massed on Costa Rica's southern border this week, Costa Rica's immigration police are also simultaneously dealing with a significant increase in undocumented migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa attempting to traverse the country's territory on their way to the United States. Early ...

(Photo courtesy of the OIJ) Agents from Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) arrested Thursday morning four police officers accused of “shaking down” a motorist in December of last year and taking the driver’s mobile phone. The arrests come after an investigation, including the electronic tracking of the motorist’s mobile phone, determined there was sufficient evidence to issue ...

Wikimedia Commons Organized crime groups from Panama operating in Costa Rica may be using a novel method to smuggle cocaine across Central American borders. The new technique involves the use of cows as couriers that can pack dozens of kilograms of powdered cocaine hydrochloride in their intestines and scrotal sacks. According to a news report filed by investigative journalist Carlos Castro...

50-cal rifle. Wikimedia Commons Washington, Mar 17 (EFE).- The U.S. government has confirmed that a rifle found earlier this year at drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman's hideout in Mexico entered the country as a result of the failed Fast and Furious gun-walking operation. In a letter made public Wednesday and sent to members of Congress, the Justice Department confirmed a Fox ...

(Image for illustrative purposes. Stock/123RF/ICR-CRS Archive) COSTA RICA STAR NEWS BRIEF An investigation is underway into the death of a 16-year-old boy who was apparently playing “Russian roulette” with three friends and a loaded firearm in a bar in Venecia de Osa, the tabloid daily, Diario Extra reported Thursday. The unidentified teen reportedly shot himself through the right side o...

Global Peace Foundation Press Release - Five former Central American presidents proposed an integrated regional approach as the only way to tackle the endemic problems of organized crime, drug trafficking, violence, and rising income inequality. “No nation can be an island of democracy, in a sea of conflict,” said former Guatemalan president Vinicio Cerezo. The presidents met at the Organizatio...

Wikimedia Commons The decomposed body of an expatriate from the United States was removed from a luxury condominium tower located in an upscale subdivision of Escazu, a municipality located in the western suburbs of the capital city of Costa Rica. According to a report filed by Pablo Rojas of online news daily Costa Rica Hoy, Red Cross volunteers assigned to Escazu confirmed that they found...

Many suspects awaiting trial are housed alongside convicted criminal in Costa Rica's La Reforma Prison, pictured. (ICR/CRS Archive) The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), an autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS) headquartered in Washington, D.C. is calling on Costa Rica to end what it considers the excessive use of pretrial imprisonment in the country. ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Mar 11 (EFE).- Colombian authorities arrested in Bogota 10 employees of Avianca airlines as part of an international operation against drug trafficking and money laundering, the company said in a statement. Avianca said the 10 taken into custody as part of Operation Pajaro Azul (Bluebird) were turned over to the appropriate authorities, but gave no further ...

(Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Officers of Costa Rica’s border police arrested a suspected people smuggler, commonly referred to as a “coyote,” and four undocumented migrants from Ghana in Golfito on Wednesday. The smuggler, identified by the last name Fonseca, was arrested on charges of human trafficking, while the four migrants – men aged from 24 to 41, were turned ov...

Wikimedia Commons The Government of Canada has updated its travel advisory for Costa Rica with warnings about the Zika virus and new concerns about security for visitors. In general, Canadian travelers are urged to be careful and vigilant when visiting Costa Rica. The summary of the travel advisory states: There is no nationwide advisory in effect for Costa Rica. However, you should exercis...

Mexico City, Mar 9 (EFE).- Mexican authorities say they have located a container of industrial radioactive material that was stolen in late February. The vehicle used to transport the container of Iridium-192 - stolen on Feb. 27 in San Juan del Rio, a city in Queretaro state - was found in the neighboring state of Mexico, Luis Felipe Puente, who heads up the Government Secretariat's national em...

Wikimedia Commons Asuncion, Mar 8 (EFE).- Paraguayan media reported Tuesday that Madeleine McCann, the British girl who suddenly went missing in Portugal in 2007, has been found in the South American nation, though the Asuncion office of Interpol told EFE they know nothing about the private investigator said to have tracked down the girl. The case of the missing girl caused a stir in the me...

(ICR/CRS Archive) Lawmakers in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly are close to a vote on a bill that seeks to eliminate criminal records, which supporters of the bill argue make it difficult for former convicts and those with criminal records to find a job. Under the current law, criminal records remain on a convicted person’s record for 10 years from the time they finish serving their court...

A Costa Rican bus driver was arrested by Nicaraguan Army soldiers on Sunday after the discovery of US $467,000 in cash in a hidden compartment above the driver’s seat of the bus he was driving, authorities in Nicaragua report. The cash was contained in 16 packages of $20 and $50 bills, according to who authorities, who identified the driver as 32-year-old Luis Alberto Corrales Jimenez. The d...

Guatemala Police. Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, Mar 6 (EFE).- A bomb evidently triggered by a cellphone exploded on a public bus in Guatemala, killing at least one person and injurin 17 on Sunday. The incident occurred early Sunday morning in San Jose Pinula, a town located 22 kilometers (14 miles) from the capital. Investigators with the National Civil Police and the Public Ministry...

The United States Department of State submitted the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) to Congress earlier this week, and it included an unflattering report of Costa Rica as a haven for laundering illicit proceeds from drug trafficking and terrorism.   According to the U.S. Department of State:   The two-volume report offers a comprehensive assessment of th...

Source: MSP Officers from the Costa Rica Drug Control Police (Spanish initials: PCD) dismantled various indoor marijuana growing operations this week, and two expats from the United States were arrested during the law enforcement operation.   According to a press release from the Ministry of Public Security (Spanish initials: MSP), the PCD officers had enough information from confid...

Mexico City, Mar 2 (EFE).- Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman has asked his legal team to speed up the extradition process from Mexico to the United States due to the harsh conditions at the prison where he is being held, one of the drug lord's attorneys said Wednesday. Attorney Jose Refugio Rodriguez told Radio Formula that he met on Tuesday with Guzman, who is "desperate...

Illustrative image. (Flickr) Mexico City, Mar 1 (EFE).- The bodies of the five young people who disappeared on Jan. 11 in Tierra Blanca, a town in the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz, were burned, grounded down and thrown into a river, officials said Tuesday, citing a statement given by former police officer Ruben Perez, one of the suspects in the case, to investigators. "Based on the inform...

Flickr Commons Sao Paulo, Mar 1 (EFE).- The vice president of Facebook for Latin America was arrested here Tuesday for repeated non-compliance with court orders, Brazil's Federal Police said. Diego Dzodan, an Argentine citizen, was arrested in Sao Paulo on a warrant handed down by a judge in the northeastern state of Sergipe. Judge Marcel Maia Montalvao ruled that the executive failed to...

Salma Hayek. Wikimedia Commons Miami, Feb 27 (EFE).- Salma Hayek is mourning the death of her dog Mozart, shot in the heart on the Mexican actress's ranch in Washington state, and asks that the culprit be found so that justice can be done. "I haven't posted for a week as I have been mourning the death of my dog, Mozart, who I personally delivered out of his mother's womb. He was found dead ...

U.S. DOJ Press Release - SAN DIEGO - Over four years after the disappearance and death of Yvonne Baldelli, Brian Karl Brimager pleaded guilty in federal court today to her murder, admitting that he fatally stabbed Baldelli in the back with a knife, dismembered her body with a machete and disposed of her remains in a remote jungle on the Panamanian island where they lived as a couple for two months...

Illustrative image. (Flickr) A parking lot attendant at a San Jose bar is being described as a “hero” after being killed by a gunshot wound to the abdomen while trying to defend two women from an armed robber Saturday night. Marco Villalobos Arias, 45, was killed around 8 p.m. Saturday night in the parking lot of Bar Micheladas in Moravia. Villalobos, who was the father of a 16-year-old, wa...

A probe by investigators in the United States is attempting to determine if Englewood, Colorado-based money transmitter, Western Union was aware of gambling transactions by its agents in Costa Rica and other Latin American countries, the company revealed in an annual filing with regulators on Friday. The government is investigating “concerns the company was aware there were gaming transactions”...

Source: Flickr Commons Washington, Feb 21 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- Michigan police on Sunday arrested the prime suspect in a series of shootings in the city of Kalamazoo that killed at least six people and wounded two others. Kalamazoo resident Jason Dalton, 45, was arrested in a search and capture operation on Sunday morning, Lt. Dale Hinz told the daily Kalamaz...

United States Dept. of Justice Press Release - An Ohio man was sentenced to 108 months in prison for his role in laundering money for a Costa Rica-based “sweepstakes fraud” scheme that victimized U.S. residents, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose of the Western District of North Carolina. ...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons Miami, Feb 19 (EFE).- The wife of imprisoned Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman has broken her silence and spoken out in defense of her husband in an exclusive interview with Telemundo, saying she fears for his life and that he is being denied his basic human rights. The U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster uploaded some clips...

Adrian Salmerón Silva (MSP photo) Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security, Gustao Mata announced shortly before 5:30 p.m. on Friday that authorities in Nicaragua have apprehended Adrián Salmerón, the Nicaraguan man suspected of murdering 57-year-old US expat, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife and three children over the Valentine's Day weekend in the small community of Matapalo...

Prisoners prepare to unload computers for their new computer lab. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Justice and Peace) More than 250 computers are being delivered to nine different adult prisons as well as juvenile detention facilities in Costa Rica to set up computer labs for inmates, the Ministry of Justice and Peace announced on Thursday. Amongst the institutions that will receive a com...

Officers from the Drug Control Police force (Spanish initials: PCD) in Costa Rica were surprised to find a fully operational nude cabaret within a drug den located in the Goicoechea metropolitan canton of San Jose. The incident occurred on Wednesday and was reported by means of an official press release issued by the Ministry of Public Security (Spanish initials: MSP). PCD agents had received m...

(Nicaragua state media) Eight leaders of a massive religious cult in Nicaragua that attracted some 650 followers from Nicaragua as well as Honduras and El Salvador to live in “subhuman” conditions in a mountainous area in the municipality of El Viejo, in Nicaragua’s Chinandega department, were sentenced to more than seven years in prison on Monday. According to local media reports, the reli...

Dirk Beauchamp and his wife, Yemmi Duran are pictured in a photo from several years ago. (FACEBOOK) Details into the killing of a US man, his wife and three of the woman’s children in Matapalo de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, began to emerge late Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Officials identified the victims as 57-year-old US citizen, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife, Yemmi Duran...

Adrian Salmerón Silva (MSP photo) UPDATE (click to read): Details emerge in massacre of US expat and family in Guanacaste Police officials in Costa Rica on Tuesday said they have identified the suspect in a brutal murder of an entire family in the northwestern province of Guanacaste as Adrian Salmerón Silva, saying they believe the man has fled to Nicaragua. Reports also confirm that one...

Source: Flickr Commons Editor’s note: This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available. UPDATE 1: (Click to read) Suspect in murder of entire family in Guanacaste identified; US man amongst victims Police on Tuesday morning discovered an entire family of five, including three children, brutally murdered in a home in Matapolo de Santa Cruz in Guanaca...

Quito, Feb 14 (EFE).- A Mexican man who tried to smuggle 11 iguanas out of Ecuador's Galapagos Islands has been sentenced by a judge to serve two years in prison and pay a fine of $20,000, Galapagos National Park said in a Twitter post Sunday. Gustavo Eduardo Toledo Albarran was arrested last year when he tried to smuggle the marine and land iguanas out of Santa Cruz Island. "The judge from ...

Flickr Commons The next time you access your Netflix account in Costa Rica, you may be surprised to find out that you are streaming a movie or a television series you've never heard of. Unless you share your Netflix login credentials with someone else, someone may have illegally purchased your password for as low as $0.25. A recent article by Jacob Brogan of online news magazine Slate.com d...

U.S. Department of Justice Press Release - James L. Porter, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today, that Ann Marie Sheppard, 55, of O’Fallon, Illinois, was sentenced on February 10, 2016, in the U.S. District Court in East Saint Louis, Illinois, on the charges that she engaged in a scheme to steal from a health care program and that she committed two r...