Three Americans have been found dead in just four days in the Colombian tourist city of Medellin, authorities said Wednesday, amid a spate of thefts involving foreign tourists lured by dating apps, drugged and robbed.

The municipality of Medellín and the US embassy had already sounded the alarm in recent weeks about the increase in deaths due to scopolamine, a hypnotic and sedative used to drug, rob and make victims lose their memory. In large doses, or in combination with alcohol consumption, this psychoactive substance can be fatal.

Dakarai Earl Cobb, 47, was found dead Monday in a hotel in western Medellin, with no personal belongings missing and no signs of violence.

On Sunday, in the tourist district of Laureles, hotel workers found the body of Anthony Lopez, 29, in a room he shared with two women.

Both, according to local press, were US citizens. The findings are expected to be announced after autopsies.

“These are (criminal) structures, these are not isolated incidents,” warned Manuel Villa, the municipal official in charge of security, yesterday.

On Saturday, another American, Manley Mark Conley, was found dead after falling from a 17th-floor apartment in a short-term apartment building in the El Pomblado neighborhood.

On January 19, a Lithuanian man, identified as Tomas Gentrimas, fell from the 12th floor of a hotel in Laureles.

Of the four deaths so far in 2024, Mr Villa highlighted that at least two followed “the use of dating websites”.

In 2023, seven foreign tourists, including three Americans, were found dead in Medellin after being drugged by young women they met using such platforms, according to official data, which may be underestimated.

Organized crime is increasingly taking advantage of Medellín’s tourism boom to rob tourists, drugged or unsuspecting, and “in some cases the robberies escalate into homicides,” the official said. The same phenomenon also affects the capital Bogota. Other victims were kidnapped and ransomed for their release.

In late 2023, the US embassy advised US citizens not to use dating apps in Colombia.

According to municipal data, foreign visitors to Medellin increased from 212,000 in 2015 to 1.5 million in 2023. The city is among the most popular tourist destinations in Latin America.

Notorious in the 1990s for the violence of drug traffickers, Medellín, the “city of eternal spring”, with 2.6 million inhabitants, has now become a magnet for tourists as well as for digital “nomads”.

With an intense nightlife, mainly to the sounds of reggaeton music, and with po