In Colombia, a guy named Steven Valdez thought he recognized a woman in Medellin Park. While they were talking, they realized they had matched on the dating app “Tinder”, so they eventually exchanged numbers and made plans to go out.
When they went to their date last Spring, the woman suggested to Steven that he should try a typical Colombian dish which was a creamy soup called “ajiaco”. She carried it from the restaurant to their table. He had two spoonfuls, and Mr. Valdez who is a 31 year old male said “And that’s the last thing I remember”.
Mr. Valdez is a travel blogger said he was at the hospital and that he had ingested a powerful, potentially lethal cocktail of sedatives including a drug called scopolamine. This drug blacks the victim out and experts say it can also make them unusually open to suggestion which include them agreeing to hand over a wallet or reveal passwords.
American officials are so concerned about this that they issued a security alert this month about the sedatives and a wave of violent crime targeting visitors to Colombia, especially in the increasingly popular tourist destination Medellin.
The U.S. Embassy, in a previous security alert, describes scopolamine as an “odorless, tasteless, memory-blocking substance used to incapacitate and rob unwary victims” and warns of using dating applications in Colombia or visiting nightclubs and bars.
Colombian officials say many of the incidents involve the city’s sex industry.
“Unfortunately, due to word of mouth, people are identifying that in Medellín there are pretty girls and you can party really hard at a very low cost,” said Carlos Calle, who monitors the tourism industry for the city government. “Criminals are taking advantage of that.” Since the pandemic, Medellín has also drawn thousands of digital nomads seeking cultural immersion and a cheap Airbnb, and investigators and lawyers say that they, too, are being targeted on mainstream dating platforms like Tinder.
While deaths are relatively rare, authorities in Medellín said the number of robberies involving scopolamine and other sedatives has risen sharply in recent years, though the exact number is unknown, since many victims do not go to the police.
“There are people who feel too embarrassed because if they file a report, people will know what they were doing,” said Manuel Villa Mejía, the city’s security secretary. Jorge Wilson Vélez, a forensic criminologist who works with victims and their families, said there were likely hundreds of victims last year.
Crimes against American visitors have stirred fears in the expat community. An English-language Facebook group, Colombia Scopolamine Victims & Alerts, has about 3,800 members. Americans are being hit, Mr. Vélez said, because they’re going online “looking for company, a relationship,” and especially when they go on dates alone. Scopolamine, also known as “devil’s breath,” has been reported elsewhere in Latin America and beyond, with cases popping up from London to Bangkok.
Although Colombia is known for drugging tourists, it’s not the only country where this is common, and that’s why we always have to be careful no matter how safe we feel. We can’t always trust anyone we see especially in foreign countries.
