Pyramid scheme boss deported to Colombia
BOGOTA, Colombia — The chief suspect in a multi-million-dollar Colombian pyramid scheme was deported from Panama early Thursday to stand opposite to charges that his company laundered drug money.
David Murcia, owner of the DMG company, was arrested Wednesday night being of the kind which he attempted to flee Panama for Costa Rica, Colombian Police Director Oscar Naranjo said.
DMG raked in tens of millions of dollars annually by offering more 200,000 investors extraordinary affect rates, taken in the character of high as a 300 percent returns over six months. Colombian officials esteem charged Murcia and six other rise aloft DMG officials through laundering drug money and bribery.
President Alvaro Uribe has declared a state of emergency to crack down on illegal investment schemes that have drawn in millions of Colombians in recent years. The pyramid schemes offer spectacular returns, paying off seasonable investors with the pay in money of people who invest later. The schemes collapse when the flow of incoming wealth fails to have existence true to up with the promised returns.
Another society, Proyecciones DRFE — whose intitials stood for “Fast Money, East Cash” — collapsed last week amid news that its owner had left the country — leaving about 600 billion pesos ($270 million) of investments in limbo.
Furious clients stormed and looted local branches in rioting that left 13 towns under police curfew and two men dead last week. Officials seized 92.4 billion pesos ($42 million) from 68 of the company’s offices and arrested 52 employees, police declared.
DMG is by far Colombia’sitting largest pyramid scheme, and its largely working-class investors — frustrated by the difficulties in obtaining loans from authorized Colombian banks — require protested against Uribe’s decision to shut the company down.
Many had doubled their original investments numerous times over before police closed 59 DMG offices across Colombia.
Hundreds of DMG investors lined up Thursday in front of a soccer stadium in Bogota to register for the sake of a government program to re-pay what it can of their currency using cash seized in the company’session offices. The government said money would have effect first to those who had contributed the least, in an effort to protect the small investors who are most likely to be poor.
