Thread: Colombian Con Man Pleads Guilty in Vt. Border Case

Jun 9, 8:58 PM EDT

Colombian con man pleads guilty in Vt. border case

By JOHN CURRAN
Associated Press Writer

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) -- Handsome, suave and clever, Juan Carlos Guzman-Betancourt made a career out of cons, authorities said.

He showed up in Miami in 1993, pretending to be a 13-year-old orphan who'd survived a flight from Colombia in the wheel well of a plane.

As an adult, he's been accused of impersonating wealthy hotel guests, pretending to have lost his keys. When a staff member let him in, he'd make off with jewelry and cash, authorities said.

Once, while jailed in London, he persuaded authorities to let him go to a dental appointment without a guard. Then he disappeared. At various points, he's been wanted in Canada, Colombia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Thailand and Venezuela.

He's been convicted of larceny in Virginia and New York and of fraudulent use of credit cards in Florida.

His changing personas - he's had 10 aliases - and slippery nature once prompted British prosecutors to compare him to Frank Abagnale Jr., a famous real-life con artist played by actor Leonardo DiCaprio in the film "Catch Me If You Can."

Now, the 33-year-old Colombian may be headed back to prison, and for the most mundane of crimes.

Guzman-Betancourt, who's been deported from the United States three times, pleaded guilty Wednesday to entering the U.S. illegally. He faces up to 10 years in prison for it.

Wanted in Las Vegas for burglary, larceny and forgery, he turned up last September in Derby Line, Vt., at the U.S.-Canada border.

Confronted by a U.S. Border Patrol agent responding to a tip, Guzman-Betancourt said that his car had broken down in neighboring Quebec and that he'd unknowingly walked across the border into Vermont, according to an affidavit.

He was carrying a Spanish passport that identified him as Jordi Ejarque-Rodriguez, but after his detainment he was identified by biometric fingerprint analysis as Guzman-Betancourt.

His plea Wednesday was part of a deal with federal prosecutors, who dropped a count of impersonating an American citizen.

The plea came in a court proceeding where Guzman-Betancourt's reputation was on everyone's minds but no one's lips.

Held via video conference, the hearing was set up with U.S. District Judge J. Garvan Murtha presiding from his courtroom in Brattleboro. Public Defender Michael Desautels, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Doherty and two Border Patrol agents participated at the Burlington courthouse a 2 1/2 hour drive away.

No one in the room was sure where Guzman-Betancourt was.

When Doherty asked the court clerk in Brattleboro where he was, she said she understood he was going to appear in Burlington. Doherty thought he was to be in Brattleboro. Desautels thought Burlington.

For nearly 10 minutes, the principals nervously waited and wondered where the defendant was. Finally, a U.S. marshal got off the elevator with him and escorted the prisoner into the conference room.

Handcuffed and shackled at the feet, speaking softly and wearing eyeglasses, Guzman-Betancourt answered questions from Murtha haltingly, mostly in one or two words.

When he was asked his age, he said 25, then 31. According to court papers, he is 33.

He declined to comment afterward, as did his lawyer.

The prosecutor also had no comment about Guzman-Betancourt's past or the case. It was unclear whether he would be returned to Las Vegas, where he's accused of impersonating a hotel guest and stealing jewelry and cash in a 2003 incident.

"We are just dealing with the case we have in front of us, but we will be cooperating with law enforcement authorities," Doherty said.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/ ... SECTION=US

Notorious con man, thief facing hefty sentence in Vermont
Colombia native also subject of warrants in Nevada, Europe
By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer • Sunday, December 12, 2010

Comments(12)

Juan Carlos Guzman-Betancourt could see his days as one of the world's more notorious -- and elusive -- con men come to an end Monday when he is sentenced in Vermont for trying to enter the country illegally last year.

Federal prosecutors, in sentencing memorandum papers filed in U.S. District Court in Brattleboro, say Guzman-Betancourt's long history of deception, thievery and fraud is so egregious they want Judge J. Garvan Murtha to jail him for 10 years.

A 10-year sentence is a rarity for an immigration offense and is the absolute maximum for someone caught illegally re-entering the country, the charge Guzman-Betancourt pleaded guilty to in June. The 2009 incident was the fifth time he was charged with entering the country illegally; he's been deported three times.

"This court has the responsibility to incapacitate Betancourt for as long as possible in order to protect the public," Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Doherty Jr. wrote in the sentencing memorandum. "Every year he serves in prison is a year that Betancourt will be unable to commit crimes."

Guzman-Betancourt, through a court-appointed lawyer, has asked Murtha to sentence him to the 15 months he has been held in custody since his Sept. 21, 2009, arrest at Derby Line.

"He has no crimes that could be classified as a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime, and in that regard his criminal history is relatively tame," his lawyer, Steven Barth, wrote in his sentencing memorandum.

Even if Murtha agrees with Barth, the already-served, 15-month sentence would not allow Guzman-Betancourt to walk free. The Colombian-born Guzman-Betancourt faces a fourth deportation process and is the subject of arrest warrants in Nevada, Great Britain and Switzerland.

Guzman-Betancourt first came to the world's attention in 1993 when, as a teenager, he allegedly fell out of a compartment inside the wheel well of a cargo jet after it arrived in Miami from Bogota, Columbia.

Workers first thought he was dead, but he was revived and later told authorities he came to Miami in search of a better life. The New York Times profiled his saga with a lengthy story.

Police say that, in the 17 years since, Guzman-Betancourt employed at least 10 aliases and passed himself off as everything from a diplomat to a medical student to a German prince so he could gain access to the hotel rooms of wealthy hotel guests in order to steal their money and jewelry.

He has also managed to fool or elude police on several occasions, according to published news reports.

Once, he escaped from police by renting a chauffeur-driven Bentley coupe, paid for with a stolen American Express credit card. Another time, he got away from a British jail by telling guards he needed to go to a dentist appointment.

His exploits have caused him to be compared in some media reports to the fictional thief A.J. Raffles and his real-life equivalent, Frank Abagnale Jr., the subject of the film "Catch Me If You Can."

"Betancourt's criminal record demonstrates that he has chosen to earn his living as a professional thief," Doherty wrote in his court filing. "For him, convictions and prison sentences are nothing more than the price of doing business in his chosen field."

Barth cast his client's past in a different light. "It is fair to say ... that Mr. Guzman has lived an itinerant life," he wrote in his court filing.

Guzman-Betancourt was arrested in Derby Line after he walked into a gas station and reported his car parked on the Canadian side of the border had broken down. He was carrying a Spanish passport under the name Jordi Ejarque-Rodriguez.

His true identity was determined when border patrol agents ran his fingerprints through law enforcement databases, according to court papers.

Guzman-Betancourt's sentencing hearing is scheduled to get underway at 1 p.m. Monday at the federal courthouse in Brattleboro.

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