Costa Rican authorities detained a woman sought in the largest organized-crime investigation this afternoon, moments after she stepped off a flight from Switzerland at the San Jose Airport. The Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería identified her by the surnames Smith de la O and said officers of the Policía Profesional de Migración carried out the stop during passport control.
She is 29 years old and held an active capture order for the offense of international drug trafficking, along with an Interpol red notice, according to the agency. Omer Badilla, vice minister of Gobernación, said the officers were stationed at the terminal and detained her within minutes of her arrival, and that she was placed at the disposal of the judicial branch immediately afterward.
The Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) took custody at the airport to continue the process. Smith de la O is a defendant in Caso Riverside, the investigation Costa Rican prosecutors and the OIJ have built around an alleged criminal structure they attribute to Edwin López Vega, better known by the alias Pecho de Rata. She had been declared a fugitive in that case. She has not been charged in a public hearing, and the specific accusations she will face have not been detailed by prosecutors.
According to the OIJ, agents at the Interpol office in San José received an alert during the early morning hours indicating that she was at an airport in Switzerland and preparing to board a flight bound for Costa Rica. Investigators verified that she had boarded before assembling the operation that met the aircraft on arrival.
López Vega was extradited to the United States on March 20 of this year to face charges tied to international drug trafficking. Weeks before that transfer, while he was in custody and his extradition proceeding was underway, the two were married inside the La Reforma penitentiary.
Caso Riverside was executed as a single coordinated sweep involving 146 raids and roughly 1,500 judicial agents. As of the most recent official count released by the OIJ, 68 people had been detained in connection with the file, among them several of López Vega’s relatives. Prosecutors from the Fiscalía Adjunta de Legitimación de Capitales y Persecución Patrimonial requested a year of preventive detention for dozens of the defendants in early August.
Smith de la O was outside Costa Rica when the main operation was carried out, which is why she could not be located at the time. The OIJ subsequently requested Interpol alerts for her and for a second woman, and said at the time that both were believed to be in Switzerland. Investigators have described the alleged participation of both women as connected principally to money laundering, and the case file lists Smith de la O as a person of confidence within the structure.
The second woman, whose surname has appeared in official statements as Mullings, remains the subject of a separate search. Authorities have not said whether she traveled on the same flight or whether she remains abroad.
Sunday’s detention was carried out without incident, according to preliminary information from the Policía Profesional de Migración. Smith de la O will remain in custody while the Ministerio Público determines her legal situation and requests whatever precautionary measures it considers appropriate. Under Costa Rican procedure, that determination is made by a judge at a first appearance, and detention at this stage carries no finding of guilt.
The case has drawn attention well beyond Costa Rica because of the scale of the original operation and because the extradition of López Vega came in the same period as that of a former Supreme Court justice, both sent to face United States drug charges. Riverside remains open, and the OIJ has said the search for additional people named in the file continues.
