Podcast | A Marked House: Extortion in Ecuador

[00:00:08] Steven: The timestamp on the video shows that it’s a little past one in the morning. There’s a light breeze fluttering through what is a deserted residential street, and aside from the whisk of the tree branches, it’s silent. The video is from the security camera footage of a two-story house in the city of Durán, on the coast of Ecuador. Then into the picture comes a motorcycle, slowly edging closer to the house where the camera sits.

[00:00:38] Gavin: The motorcycle has two riders. The one in front is dressed all in black with a black baseball cap. The passenger is also in black with a hood covering his face. The motorcycle slows down in front of a house, and the passenger reaches into his pocket. A metallic glimmer flashes in the streetlamp — a pistol. He fires at the house five times. The bullets pierce the front gate, sending sparks into the air. Then, at the same leisurely pace they arrived, they leave. Their message seems clear: we have our eyes on you.

[00:01:19] Steven: Welcome to InSight Crime’s Podcast, where we take you to the furthest reaches of the Americas to help you understand how organized crime works. I’m your host, Steven Dudley, InSight Crime’s co-director. 

[00:01:32] Gavin: And I’m Gavin Voss, an InSight Crime investigator. In this episode, we’re going to tell you the story of the Ecuadorian family whose house was shot up. In the process, we’ll unpack how one criminal economy, extortion, is tearing apart Ecuador’s sense of community. Steven and I have been coming to the city of Durán for the last several years. Our goal has been to try to understand how Ecuador, which was once one of Latin America’s safest countries, has become a hotbed of organized crime and violence. Durán encapsulates Ecuador’s transformation and went from being a quiet, unremarkable city to the most violent place in Ecuador. It’s a place where two men can ride up on a motorcycle and fire five bullets at a family’s front door without consequence. We went to visit that family in Durán. For security reasons, we’re going to call the parents Andrés and Juliana. We met them at their home, where they lived with their kids on a long, wide avenue packed with other low-rise houses — pretty typical for Durán. There’s a corner shop stocked with soda and snacks, a hardware store nearby, and traffic passing all day long. It was Saturday morning when we arrived.

[00:02:56] Speaker 3: Tú vas con tus camiones, tu trabajo.

[00:02:58] Gavin: The couple led us to their dining room table. Juliana gave us a steaming bowl of encebollado. That’s a fish soup that is a staple in this part of Ecuador.

[00:03:08] Steven: By the way, the soup was awesome.

[00:03:11] Gavin: Andrés and Juliana complement each other well. Andrés is serious, to the point. Juliana, not as much. We joke with her about how the encebollado can help alleviate a hangover.

[00:03:25] Steven: The couple moved to the city in the early 2000s. Andrés already had a small distribution system, looking for a place to grow — Durán was that place. He told us, and I said, “Man, here you can really make some money.” Food and housing were cheap. Durán had some 300,000 residents. It’s basically a suburb of Guayaquil. Lots of people live in Durán and work in Guayaquil, just across the river. But Durán has everything you need: cheerful local restaurants, soccer fields where kids play outside, a riverside park where families can stroll on the weekends. Andrés told himself that this is where he wanted to raise his family.

[00:04:11] Andrés: Aquí me voy a quedar. Esta va a ser para mi familia y todo con seguridad.

[00:04:15] Steven: Plus, Juliana likes the city’s energy. On the weekends, they spent time outside with their neighbors. They formed tight-knit friendships. They were proud to be from Durán, so they decided to buy a house. But shortly after they bought the house, things began to change almost overnight. Durán became one of the most violent cities in the world, caught in the crossfire of an explosive gang war.

[00:04:44] Gavin: There had always been some gang presence in Durán. The first group started forming in the 1990s as rapid urbanization drew more and more people into the city. But Durán’s local government couldn’t keep up with that growth. The jobs that had attracted people to the city turned out to be scarce. Schools became overcrowded and underfunded, and where the state was absent, gangs stepped in. They offered a sense of community and a way to make money for young people with few prospects — that was hard to turn down. Before long, Durán found itself at the center of tectonic shifts in the global crime world. Cocaine production was surging in Colombia, and Ecuador became the bridge connecting that cocaine to consumer markets in Europe and North America. Highways from Colombia made it easy to move cocaine to Durán; the city’s industrial warehouses were perfect cocaine storage centers, while nearby ports could export cocaine to all corners of the world. Traffickers began to take notice; they put Durán in their sights.

[00:05:53] Steven: International drug traffickers looked to local groups to help them navigate the city and secure their turf. Two in particular emerged as Durán’s most powerful gangs. One is called the Latin Kings. The Latin Kings exert strong social influence. They extol the virtues of family, faith, and community. But they also sell drugs, plus they have their own rap music. 

[00:06:21] Speaker 5: Amor de rey. ¿Dónde está mi gente que representa a mi nación? Latin Kings, Ecuador. Los que alzan siempre su corona con amor, son los reyes de Ecuador.

[00:06:32] Steven: Of course, the second gang pops up in rap songs too.

[00:06:39] Speaker 5: Yeah. El respeto y el poder aquí se gana, callando a los bocones y aplastando a todas las ranas. Tenemos el mundo afuera y también en la cana. Somos la misma gente una familia bacana.

[00:06:51] Steven: Chone Killers, that’s their name. The Chone Killers are known as less family-oriented and more violent. Youth were drawn to this mix of belonging, culture, and power, especially during the pandemic. Schools and businesses were shut; teens turned to the internet to fill the void. The two gangs, Chone Killers and Latin Kings, grew, and a war broke out between them. Leveraging their new narco connections, these groups upgraded their arsenals, stockpiling explosives and high-powered rifles. It was like throwing gasoline on a lit fire.

[00:07:36] Noticias: Durán vive un incremento de asesinatos. Este domingo fue un día más de violencia. Seis balaceras se reportaron. “Durán Tierra de nadie.”

[00:07:46] Steven: Durán is no man’s land, the media declared — and they were right. Bodies piled up. The city went from 11 homicides in 2017 to 461 homicides in 2023.

[00:08:02] Noticias: Dos estructuras delictivas. La que empezó como nación, Los Latin Kings, la célula más sangrienta creada por los Chone Killers, son las dos organizaciones que han sembrado terror en Durán, convirtiendo este territorio en el más violento del mundo.

[00:08:18] Steven: These two gangs now work for the big narcos. But they realized they could make extra money by using their power against the people of Durán themselves. This led them to the doorsteps of residents like Andrés and Juliana.

[00:08:32] Gavin: It was around this time when Juliana was approached by someone on a motorcycle as she made some deliveries.

[00:08:38] Juliana: Por ahí sí hubo uno que, como decía mi esposo en su momento, sigue en la moto. “Ran, ran, ran” se me acercó. Mire, tiene que, usted están pagando vacuna.

[00:08:47] Gavin: Look, you have to pay the vaccine, he told her. Vaccines is the local euphemism for extortion.

[00:08:53] Juliana: Yo no soy de aquí soy nueva. Yo aquí soy trabajadora. No sé. Yo le voy a decir al jefe. Le digo nada más.

[00:08:59] Gavin: Juliana feigned ignorance. “I’m just a worker,” she replied. She was trying to stay cool, but her hands were shaking. After that, everything changed. The couple began noticing strange people and vehicles lingering around their house. They suspected the extortionists were posing as fruit vendors on the street, keeping a close eye on them from just a few steps away. Andrés feared they would kidnap him, Juliana, or the kids, as he’d heard had happened to others. Soon, Andrés and Juliana started storing their delivery trucks outside the city. They installed security cameras at their house, and they changed up their work hours in certain neighborhoods to avoid possible run-ins with gang members.

[00:09:40] Juliana: Cuando entra ciertos sectores calientes que se les denomina. La gente tiene que llegar temprano porque es la única manera como ellos duermen.

[00:09:48] Gavin: In hot zones, as we call them, you have to go early in the morning, Juliana said. It’s the only way to avoid the gang members — to go in while they’re sleeping. All around Durán, things were becoming quiet. No one lingered on the streets. Strangers, once the subject of curiosity, were now met with suspicion and caution. And Juliana and Andrés, who were outgoing and social by nature, stopped having people to their house for meals. Neighbors stopped being neighbors.

[00:10:19] Steven: In December 2023, Andrés and Juliana received a threatening message on WhatsApp. It came from extortionists. They wanted money in return — Andrés and Juliana’s kids would be safe, they said. They blocked the message and ignored it. They hoped it was an empty threat; replying would play into the extortionists’ hands, they thought. But just a week later, the gunman on the motorcycle calmly rode up to their front door and shot their front gate five times. Andrés and Juliana heard the shots that night but didn’t think much of it.

[00:10:52] Andrés: Pero recuerde que estamos en Durán, que escuchamos bala, bala, lo vemos como normal.

[00:10:56] Steven: Hearing gunshots had become common in Durán. The next day, however, they discovered the holes in their gate. The family was shocked, and they holed up, waiting for another message. It didn’t take long: “Next time, we shoot your family,” the first message read, in all caps. “It’s up to you,” they said in the next message. “We can solve things — a las buenas o a las malas” — the easy way or the hard way. They were paralyzed with fear.

[00:11:26] Andrés: Es verdad nos gana el miedo. Nos gana bastante el miedo. Pero en esta situación.

[00:11:31] Gavin: Andrés told his family that no one was to leave the house, and fearing corruption, they didn’t call the police. Soon negotiations began. At first, the group demanded $5,000, but that was too much for Andrés. He managed to get it down to a thousand, but that would still bankrupt the family. Desperate, Andrés found a friend — the friend owned multiple businesses in Durán and paid huge fees to the Chone Killers, which, at this point, Andrés suspected was behind his problems.

[00:12:04] Andrés: Ya Estamos contactando. Ya sabemos quién es.

[00:12:06] Gavin: The friend also knew the Chone Killers’ leader, a man named Benjamín Camacho, who went by the nickname Ben 10. Camacho was known as a ruthless killer, but he was also a savvy businessman who understood the importance of keeping his troops in line when they overstepped their bounds, as they were now with Andrés and Juliana. This was typical — the gangs are not totally cohesive and often can’t keep track of what all their members are doing. The resulting chaos trickles down to people like Andrés and Juliana. Andrés’ friend managed to communicate with Ben 10, and later that afternoon Andrés received a new message: “Just talked to the boss,” it read, “sorry for the inconvenience.” After that, the negotiations also shifted dramatically. In the end, instead of money, Andrés sent him a suckling pig for the Christmas holidays. The cost: about $100. “Listo, pase bien.” “Okay, have a good one,” the gang wrote, then, “Felices fiestas” — Happy Holidays.

[00:13:13] Andrés: Listo, pase bien. Felices fiestas. Bendiciones.

[00:13:17] Gavin: They added a sparkle emoji at the end.

[00:13:19] Andrés: Felices fiestas, Vaya diciembre.

[00:13:23] Gavin: It would have been funnier if it hadn’t been so traumatic.

[00:13:27] Juliana: Esa fue la Navidad más triste de nosotros.

[00:13:30] Gavin: It was the saddest Christmas in their lives, they said.

[00:13:37] Steven: Since that Christmas, the situation in Durán has only worsened. When Ben 10, the Chone Killers’ leader who had intervened on behalf of Andrés and Juliana, was killed, his death created a power vacuum, and murders spiked again. Durán set a new homicide record in 2025. Extortion also proliferated.

[00:13:59] Juliana: Digamos, sí, sí, hubo como un revolú cuando murió Ben Diez ese año. En todo Durán.

[00:14:04] Steven: Andrés and Juliana are terrified that whoever took over will be at their door again soon. They keep their kids close, and Andrés is still the only one who goes out for groceries. They don’t have contact with their neighbors and barely see their friends and Durán Residents no longer trust each other.

[00:14:25] Andrés: Porque a mí me gusta sentir el pueblo. O sea, el pueblo. La gente, ya no, ya, ahorita no.

[00:14:31] Steven: I like to feel the people, said, and I can’t do that any longer.

[00:14:36] Andrés: Créame que yo no me siento bien trabajando así

[00:14:39] Steven: Believe me, I don’t like living like this, Andrés added. They’ve considered moving to another city, but they don’t have the money.

[00:14:49] Juliana: No queda de otra.

[00:14:50] Steven: This is it, Juliana said we have no choice. For the time being the family has to stay in Durán.

[00:15:06] Steven: This show was a production of InSight Crime. If you think these stories are important, consider making a donation. Every little bit helps, and it’ll go directly to reporting these types of stories. Stay tuned. In a week, we’re headed to Peru. There we’ll meet the sex workers who first faced social stigma and police violence, and then, in a David-versus-Goliath fight, had to confront the most feared criminal group on the continent: El Tren de Aragua.

[00:15:35] Speaker 12: Tuvimos venezolanos con revólver en mano. Llegan a tu departamento y te dicen “Vas a pagar y si no pagas, te vamos a matar”

[00:15:50] Steven: This episode was produced by me, Steven Dudley, and Elisa Roldán, with the help of Liza Schmidt. Special thanks to our reporters, Gavin Voss and Alina Manrique. To our team at InSight Crime, and of course to Andrés and Juliana for sharing their story. Gavin and I read this story. Our editors are Liza Schmidt and Tomás Uprimmy. Our sound designer is Valentina Fonseca, and our graphic designer is Isabela Soto. See you next time.