In the digital age of hyperinformation, where we know everything from anywhere in the world, it seems unbelievable that scams like the ones that these days have stunned Colombians continue to take place. In fact, there are two cases of notorious scams in that country, which remind us that the spirit of the tocomocho that Tony Leblanc and Antonio Ozores immortalized in Los tramposos (Pedro Lazaga, 1959) is still alive. The caveat is that in that comedy the people who were deceived were ordinary people who survived the hardships of the impoverished and uninformed post-war Franco society, and in Colombia upper-class people with plenty of training have been bitten.
The first case is the classic pyramid scheme, adapted to the latifundista idiosyncrasy. Businessman Felipe Rocha, whose family owns the renowned Achury Viejo cattle ranch, promised returns of between 20% and 40% to members of the Colombian elite who gave him their money to invest in a cattle fund. When the pyramid collapsed, it has been discovered that it has hooked 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 the magazine Semana.
But the most improbable case, which leaves the scam of the little stamp as child’s play, is the one that has occurred in Medellín, where an alleged Spanish nobleman –with a well-rounded paisa accent– and his mother have tricked 18 wealthy people that in good faith they tried to help him recover a supposed inheritance and a title of duke.
The amount of this scam is small compared to that of the livestock fund: about 1,500 million pesos, about 300,000 euros, most of it delivered by a married couple of Antioquian lawyers, Kelly Córdoba and Andrés Vasco. The deception has been reconstructed by Radio Ambulante, in a podcast where the scammer has been renamed Lord Alejandro.
Manuel Alejandro Estrada Cardona, who said he was 28 years old at the time, and who introduced himself as his mother, Olga Cardona, contacted the lawyer couple in 2019 to help the young man recover an inheritance that was bogged down in the Economic Court. Administrative of Madrid.
The delirious and cliché story began with his grandfather, a certain Venancio Cardona, who had left Spain after the Civil War to settle in Colombia after making his fortune with sugarcane plantations in Panama and Costa Rica.
However, the money from the succulent inheritance was in Spain, but Lord Alejandro could not access it, in addition to bureaucratic problems, because grandfather Venancio had left endless conditions for his grandson to collect the money that would make him one of the five richest young people under 30 in Europe. One of those conditions was that the boy proved to be a successful businessman, for which he requested money to open businesses.
After gaining the trust and friendship of the couple, the scammers had kept an infallible letter in a country where any reference to the nobility generates admiration: the inheritance implied becoming the Duke of Cardona, a title held by grandfather Venancio.
In the middle of the pandemic, the couple and other friends ended up giving different sums for different tasks in order to collect the inheritance: from paying taxes, paperwork or contributing capital to start a clothing business to paying for a group trip to Madrid, where, in addition to unblocking the issue in court, they were going to participate in a dinner with the Royal Family at the Zarzuela palace which, of course, was suspended at the last minute.
When last year Kelly and Andrés began to suspect that the one they had treated like their son was a con man, it was already too late. First they called the Madrid court, where they clarified that they were not dedicated to successions and legacies. Then they contacted the registry of Spanish noble titles and they were told that the current Duchess of Cardona –the twenty-first– is called Casilda Guerrero-Burgos y Fernández de Córdoba and among her relatives there is no Alejandro, nor Olga, nor was there any Venancio before. .
The scammers vanished. “Andrés, I already know what you are doing. Keep in mind that I am at the airport, I am leaving the country. Do whatever you want”. It was the last time Vasco spoke to Lord Alejandro on the phone.
