A powerful drug trafficker with Dominican citizenship who constantly moved in high-end vehicles hid in Colombia for at least 3 years and has just been extradited to the United States.
Despite his attempt to evade authorities, due to his movements in Mercedes Benz cars and the constant visits of his wife and children, authorities managed to track his whereabouts to a luxurious house in Chía.
‘Red Falcón’
The capo will now have to answer for drug trafficking and money laundering charges in a District Court in New Jersey (United States), for leading a structure that allegedly accumulated more than 166 million dollars in profits from cocaine sales in that country.
He is Erick Randhiel Mosquea Polanco, alias Ramón or ‘E’, who uses that name on his Dominican Republic ID, but according to the extradition concept document of the capo, issued by the Supreme Court and accessed by EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit, he also had a Colombian ID under the name Luis Manuel Santana Luna.
His Colombian identity document states that he was born in Bogotá and is 44 years old.
Alias Ramón was the leader of the criminal organization Red Falcón and is attributed with sending up to two and a half tons of cocaine weekly to the United States, Europe, and Puerto Rico since 2012.
‘Ramón’ was captured on December 6, 2024, in a luxurious house in Chía, where authorities claim he only lived with a woman who helped him with household chores.
This newspaper also learned of the accusation against him in the United States, issued in 2023, which states that since January 2022 he had been tracked due to cocaine seizures from other members of the organization in New York and New Jersey, identified as Heidy Valdez, Samuel Alectur, and Osvaldo Acosta.
The home of the latter, in the Bronx neighborhood of New York, was raided by U.S. authorities, who found part of the network’s illegal merchandise: “Based on information from multiple confidential sources who were members of the organization, law enforcement authorities learned that approximately 20 kilograms of the cocaine distributed by Acosta and seized from Acosta’s residence came from Mosquea Polanco (Alias Ramón).”
The suitcase and the dollars
EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit established that in August 2020, investigators followed another associate of ‘Ramón’, identified as Ramfis Minaya, who was recorded handing a suitcase to a money launderer named Zekang Yao.
Subsequently, Yao’s suitcase was seized and 968 thousand dollars were found, more than 3 billion pesos.
“Law enforcement authorities became aware that the money seized from Yao was the proceeds from the sale of cocaine distributed by Mosquea Polanco (alias Ramón), and was in the process of being laundered for Mosquea Polanco,” reads the document held by EL TIEMPO.
With these findings, authorities in that country raided Minaya’s residence in Eaglewood (New Jersey), and found 5 million 500 thousand dollars, about 17 billion pesos.
(Check out all the articles from EL TIEMPO’s Investigative Unit here)
Authorities in Colombia are reviewing whether alias Ramón used part of the money from the criminal operation in assets and companies in the country.
INVESTIGATIVE UNIT
u.investigativa@eltiempo.com
@UinvestigativaET
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