I got arrested by corrupted cops while I was heading off to south Cancun on Oct 29th 2017. This post is not to scare people but to make sure everyone stay safe. For the record I am a big fan of Mexico, the culture and I still believe that hosting Ethereum Devcon 3 in Mexico was a good idea. Every continent and every country has its own problems.

Intro

After renting a car from **** in Cancun I decided to leave Cancun for a more natural kind of place. I think Cancun is too artificial. Right after getting into the car, I turned on Waze for showing me the direction to Playa Del Carmen and alerting me about the traffic, speed limit etc. I first came to Cancun back in 2009 when I was studying in the US. I thought I knew what I was doing.

Everything was going well, cars were passing me on the left as I was driving below the speed limit and pretty much every cars were passing me (yes I do emphasise this point as it is important for the rest of the story 😮).

The cops

About 30min of driving, I saw two cops wearing scary black shades and standing by a big 4x4 truck indicating me to stop. Right after stopping, one of them asked me to open my right back window and showed me the screen of his digital cameras used for speed detection. It was written 91 km/h on it and he said that I was going to be fined for speeding. I was really shocked. Firstly, because the speed limit was 90km/h and I was going to be fined for 91km/h. Secondly, according Waze on my phone, I was driving at 81km/h (yes, like a grandpa) and all the car on the left were passing me. So it didn’t make any sense.

I told the cops that it was impossible as my Waze was showing 81km/h and all cars were passing me. But he asked me for my driving licence and told me that they were going to confiscate it and I will need to go to the federal police station on Monday, which meant that I had to leave the car there. I felt a brief moment of panic and then he asked me if I had money to pay the fine immediately because he explained to me that if I was paying the fine on Monday at the federal police station would be really expensive. “You can leave now if you give me 5000 pesos ($260 US dollars)”. Just to put things in perspective — the average household income in Mexico is 13,239 pesos ($843) a month. He was asking me for almost half salary.

I told him that I had only 500 pesos. He started arguing while showing me his hand resting on his gun and said that was not possible and I would need to go to the federal station on Monday. Meanwhile, they stopped another car which was a big 4x4 truck. It was a white man, probably European or American judging by his style. They asked him to get out of the car and put his hands on the car. I was starting to get a little bit scared. I took my 500 pesos and asked him if I could leave right after giving him the money. It looked like they were more focused on the other guy or I should say the big fish! It was a chance for me but I was little bit worried about the other guy.

When he was focusing on the other guy I then tried to take my phone out and started recording the scene but he almost caught me. He was getting angry and asked me to show him my screen. I somehow managed to stop the camera by pressing the power button. I admit now that it was a little bit stupid but the whole scene was so unreal that I needed to have proof of it.

The cop left with my money and the other one came right after on the other side and asked me for the 500 pesos — I lost from my temper and told him that I already gave the 500 pesos to his colleague. After arguing a little bit, he let me go. I started the engine and left completely shaken. I felt like in a movie and completely lost.

The conspiracy theory

I was so angry and thought to myself that I should have taken the bus! Stupid reaction, actually. With all that anger, I started retracing the whole story in my head, etc. You know when something happens and you analyse everything to see if you could have done better. Anyway — I was driving down to Playa Del Carmen at 75km/h with my phone recording the road. I was looking at the other cars and suddenly something dawned on me. Almost all the rented cars (you can easily recognise them with a foreigner behind the wheel) were having their rear license plate missing.

When I was checking the car at the car rental agency, the person told numerous times that the license plates were there. I was a little bit surprised that he was so concerned about a simple thing like license plates. I mean, who steals a license plate? And then before leaving, he asked me three times where I was heading to. Same with the two cops. I am not saying that there is a connection between the car rental agencies, the cops and local people in cities like Playa Del Carmen but it’s really strange. How come there are so many rented cars with a missing rear license plate? If you return the car with a missing license plate you get charged 3000 pesos. Imagine someone in the city stealing license plates and taking a commission? Imagine people telling the cops about your position?

Since I shared my story to different Ethereum Devcon groups to alert people, I’ve heard that pretty much the exact same story happened to many other people who are attending Ethereum Devcon 3 (more than 6 people atm). I’ve also heard that Consensys and other companies/startups have cancelled their venue to Ethereum Devcon Cancun because of potential crypto gangs.

Important: we have now an accidents spreadsheet to record Devcon 3 Arrests and Crime Incidents. Please get in touch if something happened to you.

Please guys — stay prudent and safe. Do not try to get into trouble or conflict with a local or police here in Mexico.

JB