The Public Relations Campaign

The Riviera Maya gang used local media in Quintana Roo as a form of public relations. When former gang member Constantin Sorinel Marcu was murdered outside their headquarters in June 2018, CCTV footage of the alleged kidnapping attempt quickly circulated among local media to corroborate their version of events. In February 2020, the gang’s leader Florian Tudor and his associates published an open letter in a local newspaper, addressed to the President of Mexico, claiming the state police chief was extorting them, abusing their human rights, and inflicting psychological, physical, emotional, and economic damage on them. One month later, Tudor invited journalists into his home for a press conference at which he painted himself as an honest businessman and victim of police harassment. He also claimed Brian Krebs, the journalist who had exposed the gang’s skimming network in 2015, was being paid by Marcu and his brother to smear his name.