Dominican Republic - American tourists found dead in resorts, same cause of death, 2018/2019

[Herat]

Yes. This.

It's very interesting that at least one of the owners of a major DR All-Inclusive also owns a number of Mexican All-Inclusives

 

[Sherlockhemlock]

Yes. But someone said maybe a poor employee is substituting liquor in the room. Since so few die, it must not be that much of liquor changed. That is why I wonder how it could be worth it for an employee

It could just be one type of alcohol - brandy, one brand or type of rum, flavored vodka. Something that a lot of people don’t go right to. JMO

 

[Herat]

It could just be one type of alcohol - brandy, one brand or type of rum, flavored vodka. Something that a lot of people don’t go right to. JMO

Or something you usually don't drink straight but mix with something that has some flavor to it rather than just soda. I believe one of the fatalities had a drink mixed with ginger ale. This would mask an odd hard chemical taste.

The 4 botttles pictured in the minibar photos were: vodka, rum, tequila, scotch.

I think vodka or rum would be most likely to be drunk with mixers, while tequila and scotch may have been drunk as shots or on the rocks, where the harsh chemical smell and taste of methanol would have been more apparent

 

[human]

Why not just put water in the bottle?

 

[Inthedetails]

Why not just put water in the bottle?

Bootleg booze is still booze - people will get drunk from it. People don't get drunk from water.

And bootleggers don't make money selling water.

jmo

 

[human]

Bootleg booze is still booze - people will get drunk from it. People don't get drunk from water.

And bootleggers don't make money selling water.

jmo

Why pay bootleggers? If only a bit of the booze is being replaced, why not replace it with water?

I don’t think anyone thinks the whole bottle is bootleg booze, do they?

Or why not replace with super cheap booze? Have the name brand and replace with super cheap.

I imagine that they are buying booze by the ship load. The price would be good already but substituting cheap liquor would raise the profits.

 

[Inthedetails]

Or why not replace with super cheap booze? Have the name brand and replace with super cheap.

Snipped by me.

Bingo. You got it!

This is what they are doing - perhaps - filling name-brand bottles with something super cheap .... like bootleg.

I seriously doubt unregulated bootleg is the answer to every single person who got sick or died, but I do think it's an issue.

But I've repeated that so much I've bored myself with it.

jmo

 

[wildebeest]

What does anyone make of the fact that these deaths are from different resorts.

I’ve thought about this, as well, because it doesn’t make any sense. The only idea I have come up with is one or more individuals have stayed or visited the rooms of victims, before the victims arrived, and tampered with the alcohol. This person or persons could have a variety of reasons for doing this. Some of these reasons could be: 1) Another island could want the tourism from the DR, 2) Targeting of Americans, 3) A disgruntled employee, 4) Or just a person with a twisted mind.

IMHO

 

[Bugurl747]

Long Island Pizzeria Owner, 56, Died in the Dominican Republic 'After Drinking Something'

Vittorio Caruso, 56 years old, Boca Chica Resort in Santo Domingo, death June 17 2019

According to his sister-in-law, Lisa Maria Caruso, they received a phone call saying that Vittorio was sick before, minutes later, receiving another call informing them that he had died.

Lisa Maria told Fox News that Caruso had gone into “respiratory distress after drinking something.”

[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.95)][/COLOR]​

 

[Herat]

The precedent has been set after a young woman and her brother blacked out in a hotel pool in Mexico after being served from the swim-up bar, and she drowned.

Business owners around Cancun admit tainted alcohol is an ongoing problem

https://blackdoctor.org/515616/10000-gallons-of-tainted-alcohol-seized-from-mexican-resorts/

As a result last year Mexico seized 10,000 gallons of tainted alcohol in the Cancun area, including alcohol served at all-inclusive hotel bars. And the US Congress pretended to start up an investigation but nothing happened.

I think it's just an open secret that all-inclusives and other hotels or bars are buying cheap bootleg liquor that is contaminated with methanol and selling and serving it to tourists.

Most of the DR all-inclusive resorts are owned by foreign companies, and guess what? A substantial number of those are Mexican. And do you think the DR government, and it's tourism minister, and it's minister of health are going to call out these all-powerful resort companies for allowing cheap or adulterated liquor to be sold to the unuspecting public? Hardly. They'd be found a month later floating up in a swamp with concrete overshoes

And I'll bet the DR Medical Examiner's office is complicit in labeling every death a cardiac arrest, then demanding embalming ( expensive) or cremation ( less expensive) before repatriating the remains to the family in the US. Oh, and yes there toxicology machines aren't working.

The level of complicity just stinks, but that's what happens when you go to a foreign country of substantially poorer means where corruption is easy and complicity is the way.

We don't have to recreate the wheel on this one.

 

[Gunslinging Granny]

Why are more people not dead then?

Less dense substances float in substances of greater density. Does anyone reading on here have a degree in chemistry? Is it feasible that in tainted booze that the methanol "separates out" from the untainted vodka or gin and therefore, some tourists are getting a higher dose of methanol than other tourists? For example, those whose booze came from the top (or bottom-depending on the density) of the bottle received more methanol.

It might also be possible that the methanol is poured into a 3/4 full bottle of untainted booze. Those who drank first from the bottle would end up with pure methanol if the bottle isn't agitated or stirred.

30 mL (1.0 US fl oz) of methanol is potentially fatal. The median lethal dose is 100 mL (3.4 US fl oz). Source is Wikipedia.

A shot glass is approximately 37-44 ml.

 

[Gunslinging Granny]

Why not just put water in the bottle?

taste

You have revealed that you were a very good kid.
I wasn't a good kid. My friends and I stole various amounts of my parents' liquor and then replaced it with water. My dad could immediately taste the difference. When I had kids of my own, I put a lock on my liquor cabinet.

 

[human]

taste

You have revealed that you were a very good kid.
I wasn't a good kid. My friends and I stole various amounts of my parents' liquor and then replaced it with water. My dad could immediately taste the difference. When I had kids of my own, I put a lock on my liquor cabinet.

I have never had a legal drink in my life. I am retired . My drinking all happened before I was legal so it’s been a long time

 

[human]

Where I live, the grocery store owner orders booze by the ship load. He has a tiny fraction of what a resort would have.

It seems foolish to me to use bootleg booze. They could order cheap real certified booze and not have to worry about deaths. They could fill the higher labelled booze bottles with the cheap stuff. Or make it half and half or whatever.

 

[Herat]

Less dense substances float in substances of greater density. Does anyone reading on here have a degree in chemistry? Is it feasible that in tainted booze that the methanol "separates out" from the untainted vodka or gin and therefore, some tourists are getting a higher dose of methanol than other tourists? For example, those whose booze came from the top (or bottom-depending on the density) of the bottle received more methanol.

It might also be possible that the methanol is poured into a 3/4 full bottle of untainted booze. Those who drank first from the bottle would end up with pure methanol if the bottle isn't agitated or stirred.

30 mL (1.0 US fl oz) of methanol is potentially fatal. The median lethal dose is 100 mL (3.4 US fl oz). Source is Wikipedia.

A shot glass is approximately 37-44 ml.

Well, it's not quite that easy. We don't drink 100% ethanol in our alcoholic beverages ( at least not if you want to remain conscious and have a functional liver. We dilute it to about 35-37.5% for the spirits we are talking about coming from these minibars. So if we take the lesser proof ( 70 proof = 35%) you end up with the equivalent of 443 g of ethanol in a liter bottle. So a generous shot has about 20 g of ethanol. A fatal dose of ethanol for an adult is more like 300 g (depends on body weight). So ethanol is not nearly as toxic as methanol. (Thankfully)

So the critical factor is: How much methanol can you have and still make it potable , at least to a consuming tourist population (not alcohol-addicts)? I don't have any idea of what % of methanol makes a tolerable, if not slightly harsh beverage. As methanol also gets you "drunk" it's not easy to assess what kind of a mix you need to make guests happy. But I'll bet someone does.

And then for the most part, guests are diluting the spirits with one of the mixers provided.

 

[Herat]

Where I live, the grocery store owner orders booze by the ship load. He has a tiny fraction of what a resort would have.

It seems foolish to me to use bootleg booze. They could order cheap real certified booze and not have to worry about deaths. They could fill the higher labelled booze bottles with the cheap stuff. Or make it half and half or whatever.

The bonding of alcohol has long been a critical way to provide revenue to governmental agencies. As much as we now understand it provides some degree of confidence that we are not drinking window washing fluid, that bonding seal is always part of the sin tax that is easy to manipulate. If there were no sin taxes on ethanolic beverages, it would be cheaper than Fiji Water. ( joke) It's all a tax game.

Your grocery store owner pays perhaps 100x the cost of making the legal alcohol that he buys.

If you can get "alcohol" and avoid the bonding tax, you make a fortune, hence Moonshine.

Same with imported spirits in foreign countries. Imported bonded spirits that the US public expects are really really expensive. So if local guy can sell a passable vodka or gin for about 10% of the bond price, guess who wins? Super AI Resort owner who probably saves big league money.

And where money is involved, there are "influential" players. No one yet has dared breathe a word about .... group organizations....

 

[human]

What is the cost of a cheap booze compared to the labels that were posted at the resort?

I imagine the bootleg booze is not free.

Are the owners so greedy or are the margins so close?

Resorts and hotels in foreign countries sometimes , or maybe often, are money laundering schemes.

 

[Herat]

What is the cost of a cheap booze compared to the labels that were posted at the resort?

I imagine the bootleg booze is not free.

Are the owners so greedy or are the margins so close?

Resorts and hotels in foreign countries sometimes , or maybe often, are money laundering schemes.

I would answer: All of the Above

If you need money laundering, supplying rotgut alcohol that kills a couple of old American tourists is not of your concern. It's easy to pay off lesser people whose cooperation is needed: Doctors, Medical Examiners, the Funerary business that deals with those pesky dead americans. As I said, we don't know much about connections to....group organizations.

Perhaps that's why the FBI is sorta interested

 

[Gunslinging Granny]

In 2015, methanol was $1.10/gallon.
Methanol’s Moment: With low prices, and proven process, is meth your new best friend? : Biofuels Digest

Cheap vodka at Walmart (1.75 liters or approx. a 1/2 gallon) is $8.00. A gallon would be $16.00. Non-tained, cheap vodka is 16x the cost of methanol. Replacing cheap vodka with some liquid with methanol in it is very profitable to greedy sociopaths.

 

[wary]

In 2015, methanol was $1.10/gallon.
Methanol’s Moment: With low prices, and proven process, is meth your new best friend? : Biofuels Digest

Cheap vodka at Walmart (1.75 liters or 1/2 gallon) is $8.00. A gallon would be $16.00. Non-tained, cheap vodka is 16x the cost of methanol. Replacing cheap vodka with methanol is very profitable to greedy sociopaths.

My guess is that no one’s deliberately substituting methanol—they’re substituting the Caribbean variety of ‘moonshine,’ and some batches just aren’t made well.