In the digital age of hyperinformation, in which we know everything from anywhere in the world, it seems a lie that there continue to be deceptions like the ones that have left Colombians frozen these days. In fact, there are two cases of known scams in the country, which remind us that the spirit of the tocomocho immortalized by Tony Leblanc and Antonio Ozores in Los Tramposos (Pedro Lazaga, 1959) is still alive. The point is that in that comedy the deceived were normal people who survived the hardships of the impoverished and uninformed post-war Francoist society, and in Colombia upper-class people with plenty of education have fallen on all fours.
The first case is the classic pyramid scheme, adapted to the idiosyncrasy of the landowners. Businessman Felipe Rocha, whose family owns the renowned cattle ranch Achury Viejo, promised returns of between 20% and 40% to members of the Colombian elite who gave him their money to invest in a fund rancher When the pyramid collapsed, it was discovered that it had trapped almost a hundred people for 70,000 million pesos (14 million euros). Among the victims is Martín Santos, one of the sons of former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018), according to Semana magazine.
But the most improbable case, which leaves the “stamp scam” as child’s play, happened in Medellín, where a supposed Spanish nobleman – with a well-kept Paisa accent – and his mother swindled 18 wealthy people who in good faith they tried to help him recover a supposed inheritance and a duke’s title.
The sum of this scam is about 1.5 billion pesos, nearly 300,000 euros, most of it paid by a couple of lawyers from Medellín, Kelly Córdoba and Andrés Vasco. The deception has been reconstructed by Radio Ambulante, in a podcast in which the scammer has been renamed as Lord Alejandro.
Manuel Alejandro Estrada Cardona, who said he was 28 at the time, and who introduced himself as his mother, Olga Cardona, contacted the pair of lawyers in 2019 to help the young man recover an inheritance that was bogged down in the Administrative Economic Court of Madrid. The delirious and clichéd story began with his grandfather, one Venancio Cardona, who had left Spain after the Civil War to settle in Colombia after making his fortune with sugar cane plantations in Panama and Costa Rica.
However, the money from the juicy inheritance was in Spain and Lord Alejandro could not access it, due to bureaucratic problems and because grandfather Venancio had left an infinite number of conditions for his grandson to collect the money that would make him one of the five richest young people under 30 in Europe.
After winning the trust and friendship of the couple, the swindlers had an infallible letter in store in a country where any reference to nobility arouses admiration: the inheritance involved becoming Duke of Cardona, a title he held grandfather Venancio.
With the pandemic in the middle, the couple and other friends ended up handing over sums for different tasks in order to collect the inheritance: from paying taxes, procedures or providing capital to start a clothing business, to paying for a group trip to Madrid where, in addition to debunking the issue at the Court, they had to participate in a dinner at the Zarzuela Palace which, of course, was canceled at the last minute.
First they called the Madrid court, where they clarified that they do not deal with successions and legacies. Then they contacted the registry of Spanish noble titles and told them that the current Duchess of Cardona – the twenty-first – is called Casilda Guerrero-Burgos y Fernández de Córdoba and there is no Alejandro among her relatives, no Olga, nor had there been any Venancio before.
The scammers disappeared. ” Andrés, I already know what they are doing. Keep in mind that I’m at the airport, I’m leaving the country. They do what they want.” It was the last time Vasco spoke on the phone with Lord Alejandro.
