City security chief warns of continued risks to revellers after capture of ‘La 57’
Dangers from drugging in Bogotá’s late-night hotspots were highlighted this week with the dismantling of a gang dedicated to drugging and robbing victims in the busy bars of Teusaquillo and Chapinero.
Eight members of the ‘La 57 gang’ – referring to the Calle 57 which was their hub – were arrested by GAULA special police agents that focus on crimes of kidnapping and extortion.
The gangs used drugs to incapacitate their victims before overpowering them, a technique commonly known as ‘Paseo Millonario’ in the city, which in legal terms constitutes the crime of extortion through kidnapping, explained Bogotá security chiefs.
“The gang’s modus operandi involved targeting potential victims in bars and nightclubs. Through deception, they would persuade them to drink adulterated alcohol or drinks laced with substances such as clonazepam and benzodiazepines, rendering them incapacitated,” said General Giovanni Cristancho, commander of the Metropolitan Police
“Subsequently, they would be robbed of their belongings, forced to hand over their bank account details, and in some cases, subjected to physical violence.”
Fatal overdoses
Drugging of victims for robbery and sexual assault has been a problem in Colombia and neighbouring South American countries for decades, with attacks often occurring in bars, night clubs and restaurants but cases also reported from transport hubs such as bus stations and even during taxi rides.
Attackers often belong to organized gangs that target their victims through accomplices working as bar staff or waiters, or through escorts or sex workers contacting potential marks through apps such as Tinder or Bumble.
The drugs can be laced into drinks, cigarettes or food, and in Colombia often include ingredients such as burundanga, a natural source of scopolamine chemical extracted from Brugmansia shrubs that causes hallucinations and delirium. The white powder is often mixed with sleeping pills to create an auto-suggestive state in the victims.
Overdoses can be fatal with most of the 31 violent deaths of foreign visitors reported in Medellín in 2023 linked to drugging, many linked to sex tourism, but a small percentage of cases where Colombians fall victim to the same modus operandi.
In Bogotá alone 1,409 episodes of scopolamine poisoning were reported in 2023 – the last year for which data has been published, record figures for the previous decade, with Chapinero, particularly the Zona T, featuring as the hotspot for cases.
The rise of drugging has been increasingly linked to theft of vehicles and motorbikes, but also robberies of flats and houses, according to city councillor Diana Diago who last year published figures showing in eight months 61 vehicles were stolen and 99 dwellings robbed after their owners were poisoned.
“Bogotá residents are not safe anywhere—not in parks, not at work, not in restaurants, and now not even at home, because organized crime uses drugs like scopolamine to more easily target victims and commit robberies without fear of being caught,” Diago said at the time.
Bitcoiners warned
The rise of digital nomads in Colombia has also triggered a wave of crypto currency thefts, with drugged victims giving up access to hardware and their passkeys in their groggy state.
“Colombia may become the #1 hotspot for physical attacks on Bitcoiners due to the prevalence of scopolamine, a drug that makes victims compliant,” warned crypto expert Jameson Lopp of Bitcoin.page in a recent post on X.
Soon after, in January this year, an anonymous post on a Medellin expat group recounted how he was “drugged and robbed of his laptop and phone” along with US$100,000 in crypto currency.
These sophisticated attacks rely on willingness of the victims to hand over data, or submit to biometric verification, while under the influence of drugs. The auto-suggestive properties of compounds such as burundanga – sometimes described as creating a zombie-like state – has often been queried by medical experts, some reports placed in the basket of urban myth.
However, a review of cases by the College of Family Physicians of Canada in 2017 concluded that submissiveness was a clinical sign of scopolamine posing, along with amnesia. It also pointed out that the chemical is excreted from the body “within the first 12 hours after oral ingestion” making the drug hard to detect in toxicological tests.
Profitable criminal enterprise
The La 57 gang detained this week used drugs mixed with bottles of liquor sold to victims in around Chapinero and Teusaquillo, according to police reports, with one of the gang working as a waiter. La 57 also used three female accomplices to lure male victims to the bars with the promise of sexual encounters.
The gang were caught with a stash of stolen bank cards and dataphones to transfer funds having used drugs and violence to extort the card pin numbers. In several cases the victims were hospitalized for intoxication, but also the beatings they received.
Most observers of crime in Bogotá doubt taking down the La 57 gang will have much impact on city safety; the “resounding blow” against crime claimed by Mayor Carlos Galan after the arrests is countered by the fact that drugging is a profitable enterprise (La 57 were reportedly raking in US$13,000 a month) and drugging gangs flourish.
Just in recent years Bogotá police have apprehended numerous drugging gangs including Los Morringos, Los Temerarios and Las Nanitas to name a few. One gang of nine criminals, Las Despechadas, robbed 2,000 victims by rendering them unconscious, according to a news report in 2024.
In another high-profile case, a career criminal with the pseudonym of ‘Harry Potter’, leader of gang called ‘Los Tomaseros’, drugged and kidnapped two US soldiers in a bar in the Zona T area of Bogotá, before using a fake dataphone to transfer money from their credit cards.
The gang was tracked down after police viewed CCTV of the assailants dumping the sleeping soldiers in a local park. After their capture, the same criminals were revealed to have killed a female Bogotá prosecutor a few months prior when her drugged and battered body was found in a street in the north of the city.
This week Bogotá’s security secretary César Restrepo warned that this modus operandi continued to “leave persons defenceless and at risk of losing their lives”. He also warned revellers in the city of using on-line dating apps: “You don’t know who is on the other end, or what their intentions are.”.
