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Edwin Danney López Vega, the Costa Rican alleged drug trafficker known as “Pecho de Rata,” could avoid a full jury trial in the United States after his defense confirmed it is reviewing a plea proposal from federal prosecutors. López Vega’s attorney, Gaylon P. Riddels, asked a federal judge in Texas for additional time to review the government’s proposal, discuss its terms with his client and continue negotiations with prosecutors. López Vega has not agreed to plead guilty, and the terms of the proposed deal have not been made public. Chief U.S. District Judge Amos L. Mazzant III approved the request yesterday and postponed the final pretrial conference from September 4, 2026, until January 8, 2027, at the Paul Brown United States Courthouse in Sherman, Texas. The delay gives the defense several additional months to examine evidence and decide whether a negotiated guilty plea makes more sense than taking the case before a jury. December 18 is now the key date. The court ordere...

One of the oldest and largest bar associations in the United States has asked two international bodies to keep watch over Costa Rica’s judiciary, citing budget reductions imposed by the Executive Branch and the Legislative Assembly’s failure to appoint enough substitute justices to the Constitutional Chamber. The New York City Bar Association published the statement on Monday, August 10. It calls on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers to monitor developments here. Founded in 1870, the association counts more than 20,000 members across the United States and in over 50 countries, among them judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, government lawyers and academics. The statement was prepared by its Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, with Jaime Chávez Alor and Cuitlahuac Castillo Camarena named as authors alongside Christopher Ferguson of the association’s T...

At 10 a.m. Wednesday, offices, schools, hotels, clinics and government buildings across Costa Rica will empty into the street at the same time. Nothing will be wrong.It is the eighth national evacuation drill, and if you are in a building when it starts, someone will ask you to leave it. Follow them, take the stairs, and expect to be back at your desk or in your room within ten or fifteen minutes. You do not need to have signed up to be swept along by it. If your hotel, your child’s school or your workplace registered, you are taking part whether or not anyone told you in advance.If you want to actually use the exercise rather than just stand outside for it, there are three steps. Register at simulacro.cr , write or update an emergency plan for your household or business, then evacuate at 10 a.m. Wednesday and report that you did it through the Simulacro CR app. The middle step is the one that matters and the one most people skip. A plan means deciding now who collects th...

Agents from the INTERPOL San José office of the Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) detained a 46-year-old United States citizen on a public street in Pavas, San José, on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4, acting on an active international arrest warrant. The OIJ identified the man only by the surname Dunning and said he was sought by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation as a suspect in fraud and money laundering. The agency said judicial investigators conducted a series of inquiries to establish that the man was inside Costa Rican territory before moving to detain him. He was placed at the disposal of the competent judicial authority to begin extradition proceedings and will remain subject to whatever precautionary measures that authority imposes while the United States formalizes its request. The OIJ released no further detail about the FBI investigation behind the warrant. Separately, U.S. federal court records describe a fraud case with the same surname, age profile ...

A mysterious white object seen high above several parts of Costa Rica over the weekend triggered a new round of speculation online, with residents sharing photos and videos from communities stretching from the Central Valley to the Pacific coast. Sightings were reported Saturday, August 8, from areas including Quepos, Pérez Zeledón, Acosta, Grecia and Heredia. Additional reports came from Alajuela and Cartago, with witnesses describing a white, roughly circular object that appeared to be floating high in the sky. By today, the object had a likely general explanation but still no publicly identified owner. The National Meteorological Institute (IMN), said the object does not belong to the agency. Based on its visible characteristics, however, the institute said it appears to be some type of balloon. That distinction leaves an important part of the mystery unresolved: who launched it, where it came from and what it was carrying. High-altitude balloons are commonly used for weath...

A Ferrari declared for a fraction of its real value has become the poster case for a customs loophole that Costa Rica’s vehicle importers say is bleeding Costa Rica of millions in tax revenue. The Asociación de Importadores de Vehículos y Maquinaria, (Aivema), is warning that luxury vehicles worth well over one hundred thousand dollars have been declared at Customs for as little as fifteen hundred dollars, and the Ministry of Finance has confirmed similar cases of its own. Among the examples Hacienda has publicly cited is a Toyota Land Cruiser with a real market value near one hundred forty thousand dollars that was declared at only twenty thousand, a gap that allowed the importer to avoid roughly twenty six million colones in taxes. In a separate case, a Ferrari’s undervaluation created a tax shortfall of more than sixty seven million colones, or roughly one hundred thirty five thousand dollars. The heart of the problem traces back to a policy shift Hacienda made i...