Mother and Partner of Colombia Ponzi Scheme Fraudster Arrested
Mother and Partner of Colombia Ponzi Scheme Fraudster Arrested
Wife caught in Uruguay
BOGOTA -- Colombian police arrested Saturday in the western part of the country the mother and a partner of David Murcia Guzman, founder of the financial conglomerate DMG who is now in jail for raising funds illegally.
The arrests of Amparo Guzman de Murcia, also a partner of the group, and William Suarez, were carried out by the Dijin judicial police, according to this unit of the National Police that has been on their trail for a month.
The elite Dijin unit took them by surprise in a rural area of Palestina, a town in the western province of Caldas where they were hiding to elude an arrest warrant issued last November by the Attorney General's Office.
The two arrests took place four days after Uruguayan authorities in Montevideo arrested Joanne Ivette Leon Bermudez, wife and partner of the DMG founder, in order to extradite her to Colombia.
Suarez is considered the second in command of the conglomerate, which operated through prepaid cards that allowed clients to buy goods and services before receiving returns on the amount of money invested in shares.
According to a report published Friday in the Bogota daily El Espectador based on data from the AG's office, DMG raised from its clients some 4.79 billion pesos (close to $2.14 billion) in the last two years alone.
Saturday's arrests bring to six the number of executives or partners of the conglomerate that have been arrested by order of the AG's office, which has indicted them for raising money illegally and for money laundering.
The DMG founder was arrested last mid-November in Panama, which extradited him to his own country.
At the same time the Colombian government seized the conglomerate as part of its emergency actions to deal with the collapse of a series of Ponzi schemes that were raising money illegally.
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