Jan.06, 2010

An alleged fraudster dubbed the "Colombian Madoff" because of his ties to a multi-million-dollar pyramid scheme was extradited to the United States to face money laundering charges, authorities said.

David Murcia, who is accused of swindling investors out of a staggering 920 million dollars, arrived here Tuesday from Bogota in an aircraft belonging to the US Drug Enforcement Administration, a spokesman for the agency said.

Murcia, 30, was scheduled to appear before a judge in Florida and then be transferred to New York where he has been charged with laundering 30 million dollars in drug money.

Murcia, the owner of a company called DMG, had been sought for money laundering in both Panama and the United States.

He was captured in Panama in November 2008 and deported to Colombia where he was sentenced to 30 years in jail for illegally raising funds through pyramid schemes and money laundering.

He drew huge interest in his fraudulent scheme by promising returns of up to 300 percent per investment. Thousands of Colombians gave it a go and lost all of their savings, sparking widespread outrage.

The biggest demonstrations against Murcia were street protests in southwestern Popayan, where many of its 200,000 inhabitants fell victim to DRFE company, a fictitious firm promoting the savings scheme that disappeared overnight along with all its clients' money.

The government suspected the pyramid schemes, in which people are enticed by initial profits and encouraged to enlist more participants to contribute to the savings fund, were really money-laundering operations set up by drug traffickers.

Wall Street conman Bernard Madoff was sentenced in June 2009 to 150 years in prison after pleading guilty to a multi-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme in which existing investors were paid returns stolen from new investors' capital.