Feds: Smooth global swindler is nabbed at border

By LISA RATHKE
Associated Press
September 29, 2009

MONTPELIER, Vt. – A smooth-talking, globe-trotting serial swindler who is wanted in Nevada on a burglary charge has been arrested after crossing illegally from Canada to Vermont, federal authorities said.

Juan Carlos Guzman-Betancourt, 33, of Colombia, is wanted on a 2006 warrant on a Las Vegas burglary charge and was arrested Sept. 21 after trying to convince a border guard that he was only seeking help for a broken-down car, officials said.

He has at least 10 aliases and uses his good looks and gift of gab to get into rooms and locked safes, authorities say. He reportedly escaped from a prison outside London in 2005 after persuading authorities to let him go to a dental appointment without a guard.

He was nabbed this month at a gas station near the U.S.-Canadian border in Derby Line and is being held on charges of re-entering the U.S. after being deported, authorities said. His lawyer, Michael Desautels, didn't return a call Tuesday.

British prosecutors and police have compared him to legendary American con man Frank Abagnale Jr., the subject of the film "Catch Me If You Can," starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Guzman-Betancourt, then known under the name of Gonzalo Zapater Vives, was arrested in Britain after a series of hotel burglaries there in 1998 but skipped bail and repeatedly gave authorities the slip in the years that followed.

His criminal career was cut short in London when an off-duty police officer recognized him at a supermarket in the city's wealthy Mayfair neighborhood in December 2004. He was arrested and then sentenced the following year for burglaries at the Dorchester Hotel and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

At his trial, prosecutors described how Guzman-Betancourt wandered into high-class London establishments, impersonating wealthy guests and pretending to have lost his keys or forgotten his security code. Obliging staff systematically helped the sharply dressed charmer into strangers' safes, and he made off with cash and jewelry, prosecutors said.

The man who arrested him, Detective Sgt. Andy Swindells of Scotland Yard's burglary squad, described him at the time as "a highly accomplished liar."

Scotland Yard said Tuesday that Guzman-Betancourt's sentence was 3 1/2 years' imprisonment — but that he ended up spending only two months behind bars. Sent to a low-security prison off the coast of southeast England, Guzman-Betancourt absconded on June 6, 2005 — reportedly by persuading his jailers to let him out of prison for a dental appointment.

Police launched a major operation in an effort to recapture him, but Guzman-Betancourt — whom British media compared to Raffles, E.W. Hornung's fictional "gentleman thief" — was back on the run.

He was arrested later that month in Dublin. An Irish judge ordered his extradition to France in December 2006. His whereabouts since then have been unknown.

Britain's Home Office did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Guzman-Betancourt's arrest in Vermont.

He has also been wanted in Canada, Colombia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Thailand and Venezuela, according to a 2005 Associated Press report. In the U.S., he's been convicted of larceny in Virginia and New York and of fraudulent use of credit cards in Florida.

An incident involving Guzman-Betancourt took place at the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas in 2003, but hotel spokeswoman Erica Johnson-Macelroy wouldn't say what it was. Las Vegas police could not find a record for Guzman-Betancourt, but spokeswoman Barbara Morgan said she remembered the case.

In Vermont, Guzman-Betancourt told a U.S. Border Patrol agent, who was responding to a tip, that his car had broken down in Quebec and he had unknowingly walked across the border into Vermont, according to an affidavit.

He also carried a Spanish passport with the name Jordi Ejarque-Rodriguez containing stamps from Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman, the affidavit said.

Fingerprints identified him as Guzman-Betancourt, who records show has been removed from the United States three times: from Miami in 1994 and 1995 and from San Juan, Puerto Rico, said Border Patrol agent Peter Costas, who filed the affidavit.

He faces potential deportation to Colombia, prosecutors said. The Colombian Embassy in Washington did not return a phone call.

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