Jamilton Andrés Ulloa Suárez was an Ecuadorian criminal and gang leader better known as El Topo who illegally controlled the mining, distribution, and marketing of gold from Bolivar State in

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

through his gang Banda El Topo. He is also known for perpetrating the

massacre A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians Glossary of French words and expressions in English#En masse, en masse by an armed ...

of twenty-eight miners in Tumeremo,

in 2016.

Biography

El Topo was born on August 16, 1972, in Santo Domingo, Ecuador as Jamilton Andrés Ulloa Suárez. He first entered Venezuela in 2002 through San Antonio del Táchira and registered as a foreign citizen with resident status in 2004. Prior to moving to Venezuela, El Topo lived in Colombia and received paramilitary training at a young age. He first worked as a miner in Bolivar State, and over time rose through the ranks of illegal gold cartels. He became second-in-command of the illegal gold trade in Bolivar, and grew to manage thirty gold mines in Bolivar and Guyana after the death of his brother in 2009. El Topo was known for his brutal tactics of dismembering opponents and feeding the body parts to animals. On March 4, 2016, residents of Tumeremo reported the disappearance of twenty-eight miners from the town. El Topo became the prime suspect for the disappearance, and the bodies of the miners were discovered in a mass grave with many having been shot in the head. The massacre was reportedly the result of a conflict between El Topo's gang Banda El Topo and another gang led by El Gordo. Following the massacre, El Topo became the most wanted criminal in Venezuela.

SEBIN The Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (, SEBIN) is the premier intelligence agency in Venezuela. SEBIN is an internal security force subordinate to the Vice President of Venezuela since 2012 and is dependent on Vice President Delcy Rodríg ...

, the Venezuelan intelligence service, killed El Topo on May 6 at the El Limon mine in

El Callao Municipality The El Callao Municipality is one of the 11 Municipalities of Venezuela, municipalities (municipios) that makes up the Venezuelan state of Bolívar (state), Bolívar and, according to the 2011 census by the National Institute of Statistics of Ven ...

, Bolivar.

References

{{Reflist 1972 births 2016 deaths Ecuadorian criminals People from Santo Domingo de los Colorados