Xcaret Resort Shooting Victims Linked to Drug Trafficking & Wanted Vietnamese-Canadian Money Launderer

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

Two people were killed and one woman injured following a shooting at a popular tourist resort in Quintana Roo.

According to local reports, the 34-year-old subject served as the right arm of the leader for whom $50,000 Canadian dollars were offered in December 2019, but who would have escaped to Vietnam before charges were filed against him for commanding an organization that sent important amounts of ecstasy and marijuana in the southern United States, as well as cocaine in northern Canada.

The Quintana Roo Prosecutor's Office has only reported that Robert James Dinh had a long criminal history in his country of origin, while the first deceased after a shooting on January 20 at the tourist complex, Thomas Cherukara, was linked to drug trafficking, robbery, weapons, crimes against property and false identity use.

Robert James Dinh, one of the two Canadians murdered at the Xcaret hotel in Quintana Roo, would be linked to ringleader Cong Dinh, a criminal target of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). 

The criminal ringleader would have laundered money since 2009 and his links were located from Vancouver to California by sending money through the remittance system, whose amounts would be left in stores such as Starbucks.

In the events that occurred in the municipality of Solidaridad, in the Riviera Maya, a woman identified as Ceara Jessica Sahadee Yari, 29, was also injured by a firearm. The authorities have not reported their serious condition after the foreigners were attacked with five bullets by a hotel guest and after an argument.

A photo released before the shooting showed the gunman walking with one of his victims. Presumably, the assailant was also staying at the Xcaret hotel, but had an argument and then opened fire. A white car that entered the facilities would have taken the handgun.

After generating terror among the rest of the tourists, the man in sportswear entered the jungle undergrowth of the theme park located near federal highway 307 that connects Playa del Carmen with Tulum. Although he was wanted by state, Army, and National Guard agents, his capture has not yet happened.

One of the victims is linked to Cong Dinh, the Canadian police and the DEA are targeting the transnational criminal organization, whose links were identified in Mexico, in addition to California, Australia, Vietnam, and on the streets of Canada.

According to investigations, the leader of the criminal faction has been persecuted since 2009, but the accusations against him were made until 2013 in a California court, where his boss, Minh Nguyen, has already pleaded guilty. Just over two years ago, when the reward was announced, Canadian authorities said Cong Dinh is charged with five counts of money laundering and one count of possession of property acquired through illegal gains.

Óscar Montes de Oca, the prosecutor of Quintana Roo, has said that the attack was direct aggression and suggested that the case goes beyond other shootings in hotels and in which tourists have been killed by hitmen from the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, that dispute the so-called tourist paradise.

Hence, an international execution on foreign territory is presumed due to confrontations between groups and cells that operate in another part of the world. But the official did not highlight that the scope of the Vietnamese-Canadian organization had already been located in Mexico through drug trafficking, without taking into account that the two main cartels in the country send drugs to the United States, Canada, Europe, and South America.

Not only do the CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel operate in the Riviera Maya, but also the Romanian mafia for years, linked to the looting of ATMs and credit card fraud. Now the execution of someone linked to criminals from Vietnam and Canada has been reported, but it has not been highlighted how established they were, how they entered Mexico with their criminal history, or their intentions in Quintana Roo.

Sources

Infobae

Infobae

BBC