Dutch drug trafficker Marco Ebben, one of Europe’s most wanted criminals, has been shot dead in Mexico, officials confirmed on Friday.
The 32-year-old fugitive was killed on Thursday in Atizapan de Zaragoza, a municipality near Mexico City. Authorities verified Ebben’s identity, according to an official from the state prosecutor’s office, who spoke to AFP anonymously due to the sensitive nature of the case.
Europol had listed Ebben among Europe’s most wanted fugitives for smuggling large quantities of cocaine from Brazil to the Netherlands. He was sentenced in absentia in October 2020 to over seven years in prison for trafficking 400 kilograms of cocaine hidden in pineapple shipments between 2014 and 2015.
In an attempt to evade capture, Ebben had reportedly faked his own death last October in Culiacan, a stronghold of the Sinaloa Cartel, during a violent turf war. Local reports at the time suggested he had ties to one of the cartel factions, though no conclusive evidence of his death was found—only a claim from an alleged girlfriend who said she had identified his body.
His killing comes over ongoing power struggles within the Sinaloa Cartel, following the surprise arrest of its co-founder, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, in the United States last July. The resulting infighting has intensified violence in cartel-controlled regions.
On the same day as Ebben’s death, Mexican authorities also arrested a suspected Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficker in the northern state of Chihuahua. Local media identified the suspect as Humberto Rivera, known by multiple aliases, including “El Chato,” “El Don,” and “El Viejon.”
