A convicted drug trafficker from the Netherlands who was one of Europe’s most wanted criminals was murdered in Mexico, an official said Friday.
Marco Ebben, 32, was shot and killed on Thursday in Atizapan de Zaragoza, a municipality about 15 miles from the capital Mexico City.
Experts confirmed Ebben’s identity, an official at the state prosecutor’s office told AFP, asking not to be named because they were not authorized to talk about the case.
Ebben, who once faked his death, is listed by Europe’s law enforcement agency’s “most wanted fugitives” list for smuggling drugs from Brazil to the Netherlands.
Europol’s website says he was sentenced in October 2020 to more than seven years in prison. He had managed to evade arrest since that sentence was handed down.
Piroschka Van De Wouw / REUTERS
Between 2014 and 2015, Ebben and his accomplices allegedly smuggled 400 kilograms, or more than 880 pounds, of cocaine in containers filled with pineapples, according to Europol.
To evade arrest, Ebben reportedly faked his death last October in the Mexican cartel stronghold of Culiacan amid a turf war between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to local media, Ebben was accused of links to one of the factions but no evidence of his death was found at the time, except for a statement from an alleged girlfriend who claimed to have recognized the body.
The violence in Sinaloa followed the surprise arrest on U.S. soil of cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in late July, which is believed to have unleashed an internal power struggle.
Mexican authorities said Friday they had arrested a suspected Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficker active in the northern state of Chihuahua who was wanted by the United States.
Local media identified him as Humberto Rivera, alias “El Chato,” “El Don” or “El Viejon.”
