Steven Valdez thought he recognized the woman in the Medellín park. While chatting, the two realized they had met on the dating platform Tinder. They exchanged numbers and made plans.
On their date last spring, he said the woman suggested he try a typical Colombian dish: a creamy soup called ajiaco. She carried him from a restaurant counter to their table.
He had two spoons, said Mr. Valdez, 31. “And that’s the last thing I remember.”
Like dozens of visitors to the Colombian city last year, Mr. Valdez, a travel blogger, said he was told in hospital that he had ingested a powerful, potentially fatal cocktail of sedatives, including a drug called scopolamine.
Scopolamine knocks its victims unconscious, and experts say it can also make them unusually open to suggestions, including agreeing to hand over a wallet or reveal passwords.
American officials are so concerned that they have issued a security alert this month about sedatives and the wave of violent crime targeting visitors to Colombia, especially in the increasingly popular tourist destination of Medellín, a city of 2.6 million people in an Andean valley.
The US Embassy, in a previous safety noticedescribes scopolamine as an “odorless, tasteless, memory-blocking substance used to incapacitate and rob unwary victims” and warns against using dating applications in Colombia or visiting nightclubs and bars.
Colombian officials say many of the incidents involve the city’s sex industry.
“Unfortunately, thanks to word of mouth, people understand that in Medellín there are beautiful 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 this.”
Since the pandemic, Medellín has also attracted thousands of digital nomads seeking cultural immersion and a cheap Airbnb, and investigators and lawyers say they too are being targeted on traditional dating platforms like Tinder.
Tinder did not respond to a request for comment.
Although deaths are relatively rare, authorities in Medellín have said that the number of robberies involving scopolamine and other sedatives has increased markedly in recent years, although the exact number is unknown, as many victims do not turn to the police.
“There are people who feel too embarrassed because if they make a report, people will know what they are doing,” said Manuel Villa Mejía, the city’s security secretary.
Jorge Wilson Veléz, a forensic criminologist who works with victims and their families, said there were likely hundreds of victims last year.
The perpetrators see the robberies as a tax on tourists they consider wealthy and in Colombia to prey on women, Veléz said. The intent is not to kill anyone, he added. “They call it ‘giving the kids something to sleep in.’”
Last year, Medellín saw 1.4 million foreign visitors, nearly 40% of them Americans, according to city data.
Crimes against American visitors have sparked fears in the expatriate community. An English-language Facebook group, Scopolamine victims and warnings in ColombiaIt has approximately 3,800 members.
Americans are affected, Veléz said, because they go online “looking for company, for a relationship,” and especially when they go out 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.
But the increase in drugs in Colombia and the embassy’s warning to the Americans represent a serious blow to a country striving to change his image.
Medellín, in particular, has struggled to shed associations with drugs, violence and Pablo Escobar. The city has undergone a major transformation since the 1990s, boasting elegant museums, cafes along tree-lined streets and the country’s only subway system. Although some criminal gangs remain, the city’s murder rate has plummeted.
Crimes against tourists may cloud that rosy picture, but so do the tourists themselves, according to officials and lawyers representing men targeted by thieves, who say some treat Medellín like a filthy playground.
“There’s this strange mystique. Come to Medellín and the normal rules don’t apply,” said Alan Gongora, an American lawyer in Medellín. “Like, anything is possible.”
Some crime victims said they were just looking for a date.
During the pandemic, Mr. Valdez left Los Angeles, where he worked in television production, to travel and work on his blogs, including one called We like Colombia. He was in Medellín last May, working and taking bachata lessons, he said, when he opened Tinder to find a dance partner.
After his date with a woman who called herself Luisa, he said he woke up in his Airbnb, alone and unable to get up. His right leg felt broken.
Police later told him that his captors had beaten him, probably because he resisted being robbed, Valdez said. Hospital blood tests revealed the presence of scopolamine and another drug, clonazepam, a sedative.
He lost his phones, laptop, wallet and about $7,000.
But he felt lucky to be alive.
Mr Valdez reported the attack and, according to the police, his partner and several others were arrested after they attempted to use his bank cards to buy household appliances at a store.
Try to keep what happened in perspective. “I’ve been to Colombia, like, eight times since the pandemic started,” said Valdez, who now lives in Puerto Rico. “I saw that organized crime is rampant because prices there are rising so much. You know, normal citizens can’t afford it.”
Criminal groups that lure victims through dating platforms are typically small, unaffiliated groups from poor neighborhoods, Medellín investigators said.
A 42-year-old New York man recalled being drugged by a Tinder date who served him rum and Coke that he said knocked him out for 24 hours.
He stole her electronic devices, silver jewelry, a credit card and cash. “I thought I had lost everything,” said the man, who asked that his initials, RJ, be used to protect future job prospects. But her passport and his identification documents were right where he had hidden them. A police report seen by The Times confirmed the details of the crime.
Leaving a passport, investigators said, is a signature of these crimes — intended to encourage victims to leave without reporting the robbery or pressing charges.
Some thieves can be sophisticated.
In December, a young German scientist touring Latin America and posting videos under the name Dr. Travel said he was robbed in Medellín by a woman he was “chatting” with after joining her and her friend for a meal.
He drank a pink drink, he said in a video, and later woke up to find his wallet and phone missing. Her phone’s tracking feature was turned off, her Apple ID password was changed, and her bank account was drained. Holdings in several cryptocurrency exchanges were sold, funds were moved to other crypto wallets.
He lost more than $16,000, he said. Attempts to reach the man were unsuccessful.
Scopolamine has long been used to treat motion sickness and nausea, but became popular in larger doses about three decades ago as a recreational drug and for committing crimes, said Guillermo Castaño, a senior investigator with Colombia’s science ministry.
About 10 years ago, criminals in Colombia began using it to target tourists, Dr. Castaño said, often mixing it with benzodiazepines, depressants that typically treat insomnia and anxiety, to further incapacitate victims.
In one widely publicized case, Paul Nguyen, a 27-year-old from California, was drugged to death by a Tinder date in Medellín in late 2022, his body found near a dumpster. The autopsy established that he had been drugged with clonazepam which, combined with alcohol, caused his death.
His partner and several hits were arrested and are now on trial, tracked down with the help of a photo of the woman that Mr Nguyen posted on Snapchat before disappearing.
Authorities in Medellín have said stopping the attacks is a top priority. There were four people recently arrested in connection with the murder of another American tourist who may have set up a date online.
However, arrests are rare.
Mr. Nguyen’s mother, Kimberly Dao, said the family had to hire Mr. Velez, the investigator, to push the police to prosecute the case.
For Ms. Dao, the US Embassy’s warning about online dating in Colombia is a sign that the issue is being taken seriously, even if she wishes it had come sooner.
If that were the case, he said, “I would beg him, I wouldn’t let him go.”
Federico Rios contributed reporting from Medellín, Colombia, and Simon Posada contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia.
