The Peruvian government extradited four individuals to the United States where they are accused of running a large-scale extortion operation.
The alleged operation consisted of the accused calling from Peru Hispanic citizens, mostly elderly people, that supposedly owed money and threatening them to settle the debts, which were really nonexistent. They pretended to be lawyers and government representatives.
“Jesús Gerardo Gutiérrez Rojas, 37, María de Guadalupe Alexandra Podesta Bengoa, 38, Virgilio Ignacio Polo Davila, 43, and Omar Alfredo Portocarrero Cáceres, 39, face federal charges in a court in Miami, the Federal Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida said”, you can read in El Nuevo Herald.
The Peruvian authorities arrested the defendants at the end of 2017 and remained incarcerated in Peru until their extradition to the United States was approved on January 18, 2019.
The extortion scheme, which was carried out from 2012 to 2015, included threats to report victims to the credit agencies, denounce them to the Immigration authorities or request detention.
