Colombia on Tuesday sent the country’s best-known financial swindler, whose pyramid schemes sparked riots by victims, to the US to face charges he laundered millions of dollars of cocaine proceeds.
David Murcia, mastermind of a financial scandal that cost thousands of Colombian families their savings, wore a bullet-proof vest and was heavily guarded as he boarded a plane to the US.
“We are guaranteeing that he will answer to US authorities,” Luis Ramirez, head of Colombia’s Judicial Police, told reporters.
Murcia, 28, was to appear on Tuesday in a US district court in Florida before being transferred to New York for prosecution.
An indictment unsealed in a Manhattan federal court charges Murcia and six others with laundering millions of dollars of proceeds from cocaine trafficking in Mexico through Murcia’s DMG finance company.
Colombian police seized Colombian currency worth more than US$4 million in the investigation, and the gang is also accused of wiring nearly US$2.2 million to a US bank account, later confiscated by US authorities, the charges said.
The indictment said the defendants sought to conceal the drug money by investing in real estate and in US companies.
Murcia was sentenced last year by the Colombian courts to 30 years in jail for schemes in which investors were promised up to 100 percent interest.
Those who invested early in Murcia’s DMG company, in 2006 and 2007, were handsomely repaid. They earned sky-high returns and some went so far as to mortgage their homes to invest in DMG, which also offered discount debit cards used in a chain of warehouse-like home appliance stores run by the company.
However, those who put their money in later were left flat. Many rioted around the country, burning and looting DMG offices.
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