One of Europe’s most wanted drug kingpins was taken out in Mexico in a suspected hit carried out by rival gang members.
Convicted drug trafficker Marco Ebben, 32, of the Netherlands, once topped Europol’s “Most Wanted Fugitives” list before he was shot and killed in the parking lot of a posh residential complex in Atizapan de Zaragoza, just outside Mexico City last week.
Experts confirmed Ebben’s identity, an official at the state prosecutor’s office who wished to remain anonymous told AFP.
The Dutchman, who once faked his own death, was convicted of smuggling 400 kilograms of cocaine in containers filled with pineapples from Brazil to the Netherlands, between 2014 and 2015, according to the Daily Mail.
He was sentenced to seven years behind bars in October 2020, according to Europol’s website, but fled and cops have been hunting him down ever since.
Authorities suspected Ebben hid for two years in Mexico, where he is believed to have once had ties to the Sinaloa cartel.
He had reportedly went under the name Humberto Rivera while in Mexico, along with the aliases “El Chato,” “El Don” and “El Viejon.”
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To avoid capture, the fugitive reportedly faked his own death in the cartel’s stronghold of Culiacan last October amid a turf war between two factions of the Sinaloa.
Ebben was accused of links to one of the factions, according to local media, but no evidence of his death was found at the time, though an alleged girlfriend claimed to have recognized the body.
Details of his actual death have not yet been released.