Cancún extortion ring charged for terrorizing bus drivers

Cancún, Quintana Roo

A woman accused of collecting protection money from collective transport drivers and five other members of a criminal organization have been formally charged with extortion.

The now-indicted individuals are Lucía Zuleyma “N”, Moisés Arif “N”, Benny Jonathan “N”, Raúl Antonio “N”, Francisco “N”, and Ernesto de Jesús “N”. They were captured in recent days under arrest warrants for this crime against a victim whose identity is reserved.

The State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) reported this Sunday that it provided sufficient evidence for a Control Judge to formally charge them with criminal proceedings. They are accused of keeping 27 collective transport operators under threat to contribute a weekly fee of 100 pesos each, with the warning that they would be executed otherwise.

Investigations by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Kidnapping and Extortion Crimes determined that the events began in June 2024, when members of this criminal group went to the collective transport unit base located in Supermanzana 249.

In this manner, the operators were coerced, intimidated, and threatened with firearms to demand payment of 100 pesos weekly per driver, with the warning that if they did not comply, they would be deprived of their lives.

The victims made this payment on Tuesdays, and for more than a year they complied with this demand. If someone did not pay or was late with their contribution, they were located and threatened with a firearm.

According to investigations, on August 26 of last year, the woman identified as Lucía Zuleyma “N” was presented as the new person in charge of collecting these fees. She was taken to the operators’ base by Francisco “N”, who ordered them to deliver the protection money fees to her from that date forward.

The woman was identified as the person in charge of collections at the collective transport unit base in Supermanzana 249 and others. For this reason, she would arrive on Tuesdays to make collections and would also order some of the operators to take her to other bases to make more collections.

For these events, the six detained individuals were formally charged with extortion and received the precautionary measure of preventive detention during the development of the criminal proceedings against them.