A Dutch drug trafficker who was one of Europe's most wanted criminals and once reportedly faked his own death has been murdered in Mexico, an official said Friday.
Marco Ebben, 32, was shot on Thursday in Atizapan de Zaragoza, a town roughly 15 miles from the capital Mexico City. European law enforcement agency Europol listed Ebben as one of Europe's "most wanted fugitives" for smuggling drugs from Brazil to the Netherlands. Between 2014 and 2015, Ebben and his accomplices allegedly smuggled close to 900 pounds of cocaine in containers filled with pineapples in 2019, according to Europol.
His father, a well-known criminal from the town of Schiedam in the Netherlands, was sentenced to 11 years for bribing a customs official in the same trial. After being sentenced to seven years and seven months in prison in 2020, Ebben managed to escape, living in Dubai, Russia, Italy, and Turkey, until his name finally appeared on Interpol's most wanted list, the El Diario de Mexico said.
To evade arrest, the 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. His luck ran out this week when he was on his way to his armored car when he was shot 15 times. Authorities said the attackers used a .223 rifle and a 9 mm pistol. Fake identity papers were found beside his body, the paper reported.
According to Dutch News, Ebben marketed his expertise in smuggling to the Sinaloa cartel, a prominent drug cartel in Mexico. The cartel attached him to the Los Mayos gang. Ebben's death is likely the result of the ongoing turf war within the Sinaloa cartel.
The drug-related violence in the region followed the arrest in the U.S. of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, the powerful longtime leader of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel. El Mayo's arrest is expected to have led to an internal power struggle and a wave of subsequent killings.
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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