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Lesser-known groups from criminal hotspot, Zulia, Venezuela have expanded operations throughout the region.
insightcrime.org
Beyond Tren de Aragua: Venezuelan Gangs Spread Across Latin America
by
Venezuela Investigative Unit
25 Aug 2025
While headlines and political speeches have focused predominately on Tren de Aragua, another criminal group from Venezuela has expanded its operations in Latin America, leaving a quieter but no less violent mark than the more famous Venezuelan gang.
Tren de Aragua is infamous for its rapid expansion throughout Latin America. But a wave of criminals originally from the northwestern Venezuelan state of Zulia who have been arrested or killed in countries like Colombia, Argentina, and Chile reveals another branch of Venezuelan organized crime’s transnational reach.
The most recent case is that of Yeferson Nava Jiménez, alias “Yef Nava,” who was captured in late May in an upscale neighborhood of Medellín, Colombia. Yef Nava was the target of an Interpol red alert and considered one of the most wanted criminals in Venezuela. He is allegedly the main leader of the
Meleán clan, one of the oldest and most powerful criminal clans in Zulia, with more than 600 members, according to official reports.
“Nava is wanted by the justice system in our neighbor country for kidnapping, homicide, and extortion. He was imprisoned in the United States in 2022 and allegedly went to Medellín to make alliances with regional criminal actors,” Colombia’s police chief General Carlos Fernando Triana
posted on X.
After undergoing multiple cosmetic surgeries to alter his appearance, Nava set up an operations base in Medellín to coordinate extortion schemes and expand his criminal network to other regions of Colombia.
But this was not the first time the Meleán clan and other criminals from Zulia had taken root outside Venezuela.
Seeking Refuge
Before Tren de Aragua and its various factions established their
operations throughout Latin America, making headlines around the region, several Zulia gangs had already made their criminal mark in the region — led by the Meleán clan.
On the night of March 24, 2012, a pair of hitmen
killed Nelsón Meleán, who was with his family in a shopping mall in the Colombian city of Santa Marta, located on the Caribbean coast.
Several media outlets presented Meleán as a
well-known businessman from Zulia, but Nelsón was the younger brother of Antonio Meleán, alias “Antonito,” the head of a criminal group that controlled activities such as extortion, car theft, and kidnapping in the Costa Oriental del Lago de Maracaibo, Zulia. Antonito was murdered in 2008 while in a barbershop.
After Antonito’s death, violence in Zulia exploded, with multiple homicides, armed attacks, and bombings targeting members and relatives of the organization. Nelsón Meleán and other members of his clan took up residence in Colombia in search of refuge. But the violence that plagued Zulia followed them into Colombia, as several clashes between rival factions crossed the border.
One of the key players in that violence was Hely Heberto Fernández, alias “El Chamut,” a former policeman who served as a lieutenant for the Meleán clan and was among the top 10 most wanted criminals in Zulia. El Chamut was captured in Colombia in February 2018 after being wounded in a shootout with another criminal organization in Cartagena, Colombia.
Months later, while recovering in a hospital in Barranquilla under police guard, he managed to escape and flee back to Venezuela. According to official reports, El Chamut used false identification to mislead authorities and was seeking alliances with criminals from the Colombian Caribbean coast. The following year, he was murdered in Venezuela in a clash with local security forces.
Another
criminal conflict that spread from Zulia to Colombia and made headlines was the rivalry between “
Yeico Masacre” and “Sleiter.”
Erick Alberto Parra Mendoza, alias “Yeico Masacre,” was a former member of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) and ex-hitman for the Meleán clan. Sleiter José Leal was a former prison gang leader — locally known as a “
pran” — from the Cabimas Detention Center in Zulia, who operated under the Meleán clan.
Both fled to Colombia in an attempt to protect their families from the violence in Zulia and take control of extortion in various cities. But their war followed them. Several of Yeico Masacre’s close family members were killed in Colombian cities. By 2020, at least
30 murders in Colombia had been linked to the dispute between them, and Sleiter himself was killed that year in a gun attack in Bogotá.
After Sleiter’s murder, Yeico Masacre’s subordinates continued to operate in Bogotá and other cities on the Caribbean coast. But the Yeico-Sleiter rivalry prompted a strong government response, which prevented Yeico Masacre’s group from consolidating, and its criminal profile gradually diminished over time.
New Criminal Opportunities
The lack of criminal opportunities in Venezuela — the result of a severe economic crisis, which reduced citizens’ purchasing power — drove several criminal groups to migrate in search of new illicit revenue sources.
“Venezuela stopped being a business for some criminals. So, they had to go to another country where it’s more profitable,” Roberto Briceño-León, sociologist and director of the nongovernmental Venezuelan Violence Observatory, told to InSight Crime.
One such criminal was Bernardino Meleán Frontado, alias “Willy Meleán,” Yef Nava’s former boss and leader of the Meleán clan, who was killed by Colombian authorities in a raid in November 2020 while hiding in a luxury estate in the municipality of Sabana de Torres, Santander department.
“His criminal activities in Colombia began in 2018 and focused on homicide and arms trafficking,” stated Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo in a
press conference confirming Willy Meleán’s death.
To evade local authorities, Meleán
infiltrated a local registry office in Galapa, Santander, and obtained fake identification documents for himself and other members of his criminal organization. The group expanded its operations into at least eight Colombian departments, including the capital city, Bogotá, where they were behind several targeted killings connected to rivalries from Venezuela and the fight for control of illicit businesses like retail drug trafficking, human trafficking, and extortion.
However, the Meleán clan’s presence is not limited to Colombia. Authorities in Chile have also reported crimes connected to the group. The first indication of the group’s presence was in 2022, when Orlando Antonio Báez Montiel was deported to Caracas from Chile. According to media reports, Báez operated a Meleán cell in Santiago, Chile, involved in multiple murders and the extortion of migrant communities in the capital.
Beyond Tren de Aragua
The lack of judicial cooperation from Venezuelan authorities, combined with regional ignorance of Zulia’s criminal landscape, has led to many of the Meleán clan’s top leaders being mistakenly presented as transnational cells of
Tren de Aragua, ignoring their long criminal history in their home state.
In October 2023, Guillermo Rafael Boscán Bracho, alias “
El Yiyi,” was captured in Corrientes province, Argentina, in an operation against a group allegedly connected to Tren de Aragua that was involved in money laundering. According to
official investigations, the 12 individuals detained in connection with Yiyi’s group laundered money from illicit activities in Venezuela and used online applications to clean money through property purchases and luxury items.
However, Yiyi’s criminal activity in Venezuela was concentrated in Zulia, not Aragua. His organization was involved in extortion schemes and grenade attacks against shrimp farming businesses and stores in the La Cañada de Urdaneta municipality. The group was known for
using social media to send intimidating messages to its victims and rival criminals competing for illicit profits in areas near Lake Maracaibo.
And Yiyi was not the only criminal incorrectly linked to Tren de Aragua.
In January 2025, Beraldo Enrique Atencio Padilla, alias “Chocolate,” was arrested in Bucaramanga, Colombia, and
tagged by the authorities as a Tren de Aragua leader responsible for migrant trafficking networks from Venezuela to Ecuador.
Atencio Padilla, who had no influence in Aragua or other states where Tren de Aragua operates in Venezuela, was wanted by authorities for being one of the main criminal figures in Zulia and the successor of El Chamut in the municipalities of Jesús Enrique Lossada and Maracaibo.
InSight Crime could not independently confirm any regional ties between the Zulia gangs and Tren de Aragua beyond official statements. In Venezuela, their relationship seems like that of rival groups competing for different criminal economies, with no proof of an alliance between them.
“Tren de Aragua was never able to establish itself in Zulia. It expanded throughout Venezuela, but not in Zulia,” said Briceño.
