Victor Stemberger He was unwilling to ignore emails inviting him to a multi-million dollar business opportunity, so he put himself forward as the perfect candidate for the job. And somehow it was, although for the wrong reasons. Narcos trick older adults into transporting drugs.
This 76-year-old Virginia man, who according to his family has cognitive problems, accepted the offer and boasted of his credentials as “an experienced businessman who does what he says he will do, and executes it without problems, according to the plan. “
Apparently he followed the plan, but the execution was not flawless.
Today, Stemberger He is in a Spanish prison a year after entering the country with 2.4 kilos of cocaine expertly sewn into jackets inside a suitcase. His family claims that he did not know anything about the drug. Although the Spanish authorities doubt it, the United States Department of Justice informed Spain that it believes that Stemberger He was tricked into acting as a drug courier for a West African criminal network, and requested evidence against him, according to correspondence obtained by The Associated Press.
Federal authorities have spent years warning about scams targeting older or mentally ill Americans –Stemberger suffered a major brain injury almost 15 years ago – to turn them into mules. They convince them that they will receive payments if they travel or take other actions. In 2016, the Department of Homeland Security He said that immigration and border authorities had intercepted more than 140 of those involuntary emails, some as young as 87, and that more than 30 are believed to remain in prison.
“One of the most common characteristics we find in these scams is that normally the older person lives alone, has lost his partner and is alone,” said Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, who chairs the Senate Committee for the Elderly and helped secure the release of a Maine man imprisoned in Spain under circumstances similar to those of Stemberger.
Stemberger, who on July 5 will be serving a year in detention in Spain, will be tried next month in Madrid. Her son claimed that the only explanation for his father’s behavior is that “those criminals really connected with our father under the veil of what he thought was a legitimate business opportunity.”
“With his impaired mental abilities, he became the perfect victim of a crime syndicate like this,” said Vic Stemberger.
According to a Madrid court spokesperson, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Stemberger He told authorities that he planned to deliver the jackets to United Nations officials in Asia and that he did not know they contained drugs. Authorities did not consider his account to be plausible and requested his entry into prison awaiting trial instead of allowing him to return to his country, the spokesman said.
The prosecution asks for a prison sentence for Stemberger, who according to his Spanish lawyer, Juan Ospina, plans to allege that there was no way that he had realized the extra weight of the drug in the jackets because it was intelligently distributed among the garments.
The Drug Control Administration (DEA) and the District Attorney for the Southern District of New York are investigating whether their contacts were part of a West African network dedicated to money laundering, fraud and drug trafficking, suspected of deceiving elderly and weak, according to a document from the Department of Justice sent to Spain last October in which permission is requested to interview Stemberger and copies of the documents of the investigation.
THE STEMBERGER CASE
It all started in March 2018 with an email from someone claiming to be a financial consultant to the Nigerian Foreign Ministry, inviting Stemberger, from Centerville, Virginia, to a business opportunity with the prospect of a lucrative salary. The job involved traveling abroad to deliver gifts and documents to the authorities in order to recover misallocated funds.
The chain of emails and phone calls continued for the next year and a half. Stemberger he withheld the details from his family. He even traveled to Argentina and Hong Kong while his wife thought he was in Chicago.
“He knew for sure that talking to these people internationally could be something our family questioned,” said Vic Stemberger. “We never had a chance to intervene.”
Emails reviewed by the AP show that sometimes Stemberger He sought assurances that the project was legitimate, but he also presented himself as willing, saying that he could travel as long as his expenses were covered and they had “a clear plan before leaving.”
A Justice Department lawyer told Spanish authorities that the emails show that Stemberger I was concerned about being scammed, traveling in poor condition, or having to pay for travel. But, as attorney Jason Carter wrote: “There are no communications reflecting that he believed or suspected that he would be involved in trafficking in controlled substances.”
Veteran of the Vietnam War and with two master’s degrees, Stemberger He specialized in executive training and boasted of being a smart businessman, his son said. But he has never been the same since a brain aneurysm in 2006 caused him deficits in judgment and critical thinking.
Last July, he traveled to Brazil on a trip that was to take him to Spain and Asia. His contacts told him that he would receive a visit from officials in his hotel room in Sao Paolo to help him transfer the gifts to his luggage.
Stemberger She assured her son via email that the job was legitimate: “The gifts referred to in the message are standard protocol for dealing with government officials in this part of the world. There is no contraband, you are sure of that. “
He was arrested the next day upon arrival in Madrid.
Narcos trick older adults into transporting drugs
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