Feds: Global swindler is nabbed at Canada border
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – 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 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 for a dental appointment.