In July 2019, two Israeli figures from the underworld sat down with Vanessa Ballar Fallas at a restaurant in Mexico City. At one point in the meeting, Ballar Fallas received a phone call and, moments later, two assailants approached the table and shot and killed the two men up close. Ballar Fallas quietly got up, left the restaurant and disappeared until now.
According to reports from Mexico, Ballar Fallas was arrested Thursday for allegedly plotting the murder of the two men. The couple, Alon Azulay and Benjamin Yeshurun Sutchi, were reportedly in Mexico City to collect a $ 14.5 million money laundering debt they had with them. But the gloomy deal became entangled with the brutal cartels of Mexico City and the men were aware that they were in danger before the meeting.
Messages with mobile phones recovered at the scene – a restaurant in the luxury Plaza Arts mall – revealed that the victims only agreed to meet in person if it all happened in a busy public place. Ballar Fallas reserved the table where Azulay and Sutchi were shot, and was there to meet them before all hell broke loose in the building. The mobile video of the incident showed panicked diners hiding under the shooting tables.
Investigators believe Ballar Fallas, known by the nickname “La Güera”, lured Sutchi and Azulay to the restaurant with the promise of giving them millions of dollars of laundered money. In a statement Friday, Mexico City’s Attorney General’s Office described her as a “trusted partner” in the leadership of the new-generation Jalisco cartel, who has been accused of organizing the killings.
The newspaper the Universal reported that the next-generation Jalisco cartel had tried to use the two Israelis to launder millions, but came to believe that the two would not give them their share, so he allegedly organized the work with Ballar Fallas and hired weapons .
At the time of the murders, the shooters were named Esperanza Gutierrez, a 33-year-old woman, and Mauricio Hiram, a 23-year-old man. Both are believed to have belonged to the Tláhuac cartel, which is said to have allied itself with the larger New Generation cartel of Jalisco. Gutierrez was arrested moments after the July 2019 hit, while Hiram was not tracked down and arrested until September of that year.
The Israeli embassy in Mexico said the two dead had a criminal record in Israel and Mexico, and Mexican police have noted that evidence suggested the shooting was related to a financial dispute between criminal groups with connections to the mafia. israeliana.
“Yesterday’s event leads us to relate the facts to a resolution of scores between criminal groups and / or organized crime,” said Ulysses Lara Lopez, a spokeswoman for the city’s prosecutor’s office in 2019. “It could be a resolution of scores in the Israeli mafia, which is why a complete identification [of the victims] it was possible, along with his criminal record. “
In August 2019, Mexico asked Interpol for help in finding Ballar’s faults. On Thursday, a year and eight months after she allegedly ran the deadly work hit, she was finally tracked down in Mexico City.