Jan.05, 2010, 09:39

Former DMG director David Murcia, convicted of managing a Ponzi scheme that defrauded hundreds of thousands of Colombians, was surrendered to U.S. authorities in Bogota Tuesday to face charges of laundering drug money before a U.S. court.

Heavily armed policemen escorted the disgraced rags-to-riches businessman early Tuesday morning from the La Picota prison in Bogota to a special airbase where two U.S. airplanes were waiting to take him to New York.

Murcia received a 30-year prison sentence in December after a judge had found him guilty of money laundering and illicit enrichment.

His company, DMG, became one of Colombia's wealthiest enterprises as it convinced hundreds of thousands of mostly poor Colombians to invest their savings into prepaid cards that could later be exchanged for products worth many times more than the invested money.

The scheme collapsed in 2008 when the Government ordered the closure of the company and its activities, and arrested all the company's executives, resulting in great losses for clients of DMG. Most of the money that was "invested" in the company is still missing.