Disappeared from call center in Jalisco, did they betray the CJNG with the US?

Bilingual, thirtysomething and middle class. This is how the eight disappeared from a supposed “call center” that, according to the authorities, was perhaps nothing more than a front for an organized crime fraud office in Jalisco and that has raised a couple of questions in the national discussion:

At the beginning of last week, the federal, state and municipal governments of Zapopan, in the metropolitan area of ​​Guadalajara, the state capital, began the search for the group of eight boys who, one by one, were reported by their families as untraceable.

Parents, siblings, cousins ​​or partners tried to communicate with them and, when they did not receive answers, they began the ups and downs to officially report the absence; along the way, they realized that all their relatives had a common denominator working in the same company.

Both relatives and public opinion were surprised by the mobilization of the government, the escalation of attention and the results of the investigation so far.

First, Governor Enrique Alfaro said through social networks that the evidence suggested that the house where the disappeared worked was not a call center, “but an operations center of a different nature.”

Later, Rosa Icela Rodriguez, Federal Security Secretary, explained that the indications showed that the workers “were carrying out some type of real estate fraud” and “extortion by telephone.”

The government evidence comes from a search of the house where they found marijuana, traces of blood on rags, cleaning supplies, as well as information about timeshares, memberships and sales targets.

The Relatives immediately complained about what they considered a “criminalization of the victims.” Among others, Leticia, a relative of Arturo Robles, one of the disappeared whose death has already been confirmed, he told the local press that they would have preferred to have first-hand news from the authorities with whom they have similar meetings instead of finding out through a tweet.

“What we ask is that they appear our missing”

The 45 bags and other hypotheses

The victims disappeared between May 20 and 22 and a week after the official search led to the discovery of 45 bags of garbage in Guadalajara with various human remains, among which could be the eight from the “call center”, according to the authorities.

The families are waiting for the Forensic Medical Service to confirm whether the identity of the remains matches those of Itzel Abigail and Carlos David Valladolid, Jesus Alfredo Salazar, Mayra Karina and Jorge Velazquez.

In recent years the number of of disappeared nationally and mainly in Jalisco. The National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons reports that this state concentrates the largest number of unlocated persons with a total of 15,039 people representing 13% .

For security analysts such as Jorge Ramirez, University coordinator of Disappearance of Persons, these disappearances could be related to the needs of the criminal organization.

“The profile of disappearances in Jalisco is one of young people and, above all, men, we are talking about an average of eight out of 10 cases,” he said. also as specialized technicians in key cartel operations.

The hypothesis about the slavery reasons for the disappearance of people in Mexico has been in the discourse of organizations that are looking for their own for years. In 2010, activists from the United Forces for Our Disappeared in Coahuila made a list of specialists who, according to their professional profile, could be useful to criminal organizations.

Among them, accountants, chemists, company administrators, specialists in telecommunications and other engineering. Also bilingual people.

Faced with desperation over impunity in the country, Delia Quiroa, a human rights defender whose brother disappeared in 2014, published a letter that went viral calling on Mexico's cartel leaders to come to an agreement. social pact.

“All we want is to know what happened to our disappeared relatives,” Quiroga wrote. “We need your help and collaboration.”

Lopez Obrador said he would accept a deal that could end the violence but later retracted the statement, stating that while he supported families searching for their loved ones, “there is no other plan in the offing”

Scammers

In an editorial report, the newspaper Mural, one of the most important in Jalisco, recently accused the CJNG of disappearing the young people from the call center in retaliation for information that the US Treasury Department made public last March about fraud against Americans.

The newspaper pointed out that members of the CJNG, they suspected the timeshare scams were uncovered by information leaking from the call center where the eight disappeared.

The US alerted this year about the operation of 19 Mexican companies, mostly located in Jalisco, that sold time-shares, property rentals or some type of vacation accommodation to senior Americans.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) detailed that the false companies posed as real estate, travel agency, wholesale trade and “other types of business support services”, set up web pages and once their victims deposited money, disappeared.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, for its acronym in English), indicated that during all of 2022 at least 600 complaints were received from Americans deceived. The losses totaled at least 39.6 million dollars (MDD).