Mexican authorities arrested a woman who controlled most of the organized crime activity in the tourist beach resort area of Cancun, Quintana Roo. The cartel-controlled region is one of the top destinations for American tourists, where more than a dozen of beach goers were shot at a dance festival.

Leticia Rodriguez Lara, the woman known as “Doña Lety” or “La 40”, ran an independent criminal organization with affiliations or alliances with factions of the Sinaloa, Gulf, and Los Zetas Cartels. Through her organization, Doñ Lety ran a growing network that transformed into an extremely violent cell operating in or near the lucrative tourist zones of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, Breitbart Texas reported. The gang she led was heavily involved in street level drug sales, extortion of bars and restaurants in Cancun and Playa del Carmen, and also carried out several attacks against rival groups or civilians who did not pay the fees demanded.

Most recently, a division of Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) aimed at targeting organized crime known as SEIDO tracked down Doña Lety to the central Mexican city of Puebla, where she had been hiding in a hotel. Prior to starting her own cartel, Doña Lety was a federal police officer and an agent with Mexico’s PGR.

Earlier this year, Doña Lety’s cartel carried out a series of simultaneous attacks at both the headquarters of the Quintana Roo State Prosecutor’s Office and the Police Communications Building (C-4), spreading terror among the citizens of the resort city. The attack was carried out by cartel gunmen on motorcycles who fired semi-automatic rifles and threw grenades at the buildings and into the streets.

The brazen attack ordered in January by Rodriguez Lara was believed to be in retaliation for a shooting at a nightclub in Playa Del Carmen that left five dead and at least a dozen more injured, Breitbart Texas reported. The victims were all tourists at a dance festival.

Robert Arce is a retired Phoenix Police detective with extensive experience working Mexican organized crime and street gangs. Arce has worked in the Balkans, Iraq, Haiti, and recently completed a three-year assignment in Monterrey, Mexico, working out of the Consulate for the United States Department of State, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Program, where he was the Regional Program Manager for Northeast Mexico (Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Durango, San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas.)