By A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Prosecutor Office said the
Criminal Court of San Jose ordered
six months of preventive detention
for five of the nine suspects
detained Friday in the kidnapping of
U.S. businessman William Sean
Creighton-Kopko last Sept. 24.
According to the Prosecutor' Office
report, the following suspects were
sent to pre- trial detention:
-A man surnamed Vega-Aguirre, the
leader's brother and reported to be
part of a group of men who were in a
pickup truck where the victim was
transported.
-A woman surnamed Aguirre-Leal,
identified as the leader's
grandmother, who lives on the
property of
La Trinidad
in Moravia*
where the victim was taken.
-A man surnamed Martinez-Chacón, who
was also is accused of being one of
the four men who traveled in a
pickup where the victim was
transported.
-A man surnamed Ford-Dauman, who was
accused of handling the victim's car
which crashed in Heredia*.
-A woman surnamed Sanabria-Abarca,
who is suspected of having done
surveillance on the victim.
All these five suspects will remain
in prison until the Judicial
Investigation Organization finishes
evidence collection and sends the
complete case to the Public
Prosecutor to open the formal trial
process, prosecutors said.
In addition to these five people,
two other suspects, a man surnamed
Medrano-Vargas, identified as
traffic police officer and a man
surnamed Jiron-Lopez, another
traffic police officer, were not
sent to pre-trial jail, but control
measures were ordered to them. They
must sign in court once a month,
maintain the same home address,
meaning they are not allowed to move
out of their homes, not leave the
country and not contact with anyone
who is part of the process.
According to the investigators, the
two transit officers followed the
victim. When they reached the site
known as
Granadilla*
in Curridabat, the officers
pretended to make a routine traffic
stop and asked the victim to pull
the car to the side of the road.
That action allowed the group of
four men to arrive at the site in a
gray pickup truck and kidnapped the
victim.
Two other suspects, a man surnamed
Sánchez-Gamboa and a man surnamed
Rivera-Masis, will not go to
detention. They have to comply with
the same control measures that were
imposed on the two transit
officials.
According to the Public Prosecutor's
Office, an appeal to the control
measures imposed on these four
suspects was already presented to
the judge.
Three people have been arrested in
Spain and accused of being part of
the same gang. They have been
identified by prosecutors as:
-A man surnamed Morales-Vega,
identified as the leader. From his
home in
Cartago*
he had accessed one of the bitcoin
accounts where ransom money was
deposited, said prosecutors.
-A woman surnamed Solis-Chaves,
identified as the girlfriend of the
leader.
-A woman surnamed Vega-Aguirre,
identified as the mother of the
leader.
These three suspects were being held
in the cells of the police in Spain
and awaiting, minimum
two months, the process
before the National Court of Spain
for extradition to Costa Rica.
As A.M. Costa Rica has been
reporting since September when
Creighton was reported missing, this
case started, according to the
judicial investigators' reports,
when the victim left his job
in San Pedro to go to his home in
Curridabat.
As he
did so, he was stopped by
transit police. Prosecutors said
that the four men who then
showed up in a pickup were
Morales-Vega, the leader,
Vega-Aguirre, Martínez-Chacón,
and Ford-Dauman.
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Guardia Civil de
España courtesy video
Click
here to reach the video
of the main
suspect,
his girlfriend and
mother arrested
in Spain.
The
men forced the victim
into the pickup and
drove to a property in
the village of La Trinidad in Moravia*.
This is where the
leader’s grandmother,
surnamed
Aguirre-Leal,
lives, said prosecutors.
One of the suspects,
Ford-Dauman, is accused
of driving the victim’s
car away, but for
reasons that are still
not clear, he crashed
the car in San Isidro in
Heredia*.
He then
communicated with the
others to report what
happened and then left
the car at the crash
site, prosecutors say.
This vehicle was
confiscated by the
police and investigative
analysis was made to
collect more evidence.
After taking the victim
to the property in
La
Trinidad in
Moravia*,
kidnappers communicated
several times with
relatives of the victim.
At first, they asked for
a ransom of $5 million,
but a payment of
$950,800 was accepted.
Once the kidnappers
received the money, all
communication between
the suspects and the
victim’s family ceased.
The payment was made in
bitcoin currencies in
four different accounts.
One of the bitcoin
accounts was accessed
from the house of
Morales-Vega, identified
as the leader, in
Cartago*,
said prosecutors. Then
Morales-Vega left the
country by land to Panama*,
traveled to El
Salvador* and Cuba*
before finally traveling
to Spain and the city of
Zaragoza*.
Two other people,
Morales' girlfriend,
surnamed Solís-Chaves,
and his mother, surnamed
Vega-Aguirre, traveled
to Cuba*
to join him and then
traveled to Spain.
Once investigators
gathered sufficient
evidence, they contacted
an organized crime unit
in Spain. Spanish
investigators placed the
three suspects under
surveillance and
monitored them for about
a month until Friday
when simultaneous raid
were coordinated in
Costa Rica and Spain.
Among the results of the
investigation were:
seizure of vehicles,
evidence linking the
suspects to the
withdrawal of the money,
information on the
distribution of that
money to suspects,
communications between
the suspects, and
records confirming the
places where some of the
suspects surveilled and
tracked the victim.
Investigators said they
theorize that Creighton
was targeted for two
reasons. The victim had
high income as result of
his company of
sportbooks, and the gang
members knew that the
victim’s business
involved bitcoin.
Transactions in bitcoins
are more difficult to
detect and follow.
Investigators are trying
to establish what
happened to the victim
and hope to find him
alive.
-------
Should be faster the
process of extradition of
suspects from Spain? We would
like to know your thoughts
on this story. Send your
comments to: news@amcostarica.com
*Click
on the blue letters to
reach the place in
google maps.
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