A Swedish man known as “El Silencio” was accused of having directed a global scam in which he sold Pablo Escobar brand products – including mobile phones, flame launchers and money – but never delivered them because they did not exist, according to the authorities.
Olaf Kyros Gustafsson, 31, was extradited from Spain in Los Angeles, where he was arrested on Friday on a federal indictment of 115 counts alleging money laundering, thread fraud and mail fraud, according to the United States Ministry of Justice.
He pleaded not guilty.
Gustafsson is accused of having managed a company called Escobar Inc., a company registered on the Puerto Rico which held rights on the personality and inheritance of the late Colombian Lord of drugs Pablo Escobar.
Escobor was the head of the Medellín cartel, who has become one of the most powerful and violent drug trafficking organizations in the 1980s.
Gustafsson used these rights to market a wide range of ESCOBAR brand products from 2019 to 2023, often copies and undercoign the prices of other similar goods sold online, according to prosecutors.
He announced a Flamethrower Escobar, a Fold Escobar phone, an Escobar Gold 11 Pro phone and an ESCOBAR species which he presented as a “physical cryptocurrency”. None of these products really existed, according to the prosecutors.
To attract the interest of customers in non -existing products Escobar Inc., he would have sent folding phones from Samsung Galaxy wrapped in gold leaf to online technology examiners. The goal was to attract customers to order the product after reading an exam.
Gustafsson accepted payment using processors such as Paypal, Stripe and Coinbase. But instead of sending customers the product they bought, prosecutors allege that he would rather send a “property certificate”, a book or other promotional material from Escobar Inc.
He then returned the payment processors to this distribution history to postpone requests for reimbursement of upset customers worldwide, prosecutors said. Some of the people who said the prosecutors say that the scam resides in Los Angeles, Gardena and Commerce.
Gustafsson is accused of having used bank accounts in the United States, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates to hide and disguise its activities.
He was arrested in Marbella in December 2023 when the Spanish police and the internal services of the United States revenues made a descent into the Spanish house of the Costa del Sol, according to the report of the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. He then sought to escape extradition by looking for asylum in Spain, but this effort failed, the newspaper reported.
In an interview with the Swedish newspaper, he criticized his country of origin for having omitted to protect him from extradition.
Gustafsson was charged with 41 silver money laundering chiefs, 35 international money laundering chiefs, 25 monetary transactions accusation in goods from specified illegal activities, nine wire fraud chiefs, three chiefs of fraud by mail, a chief of conspiracy to commit a wired fraud and a postal fraud and a conspiracy chief to In money laundering, according to the justice service.
He remains in police custody and should be tried on May 20.
California Daily Newspapers
