Isha Sesay
SEX, alcohol, pool parties – that was the life of Colombian businessman Carlos Garcia Roldan before he was jailed for a huge property scam.
The ‘mastermind’ behind Mallorca’s biggest real estate swindle has finally been hauled back to the island after first being put behind bars in Madrid.
He had been at the Capital’s Soto del Real prison, but has now been transferred to Palma under armed guard.
The South American former fugitive, known as Charly, became notorious after allegedly scamming more than 200 victims out of between €4 million and €7 million.
Charly would reportedly sell his unsuspecting clients houses that didn’t exist, through his Promociones Lujo Casa company.
He would entice his victims with attractive real estate projects, asking for a down payment of 10% on homes that were never going to be built.
He would then make continuous excuses about construction delays to deceive his clients.
He now faces a series of charges, including aggravated fraud, document forgery, money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation.
When his first victim came forward to the police about the scam in 2018 Charly fled to Buga in Colombia, dramatically changing his appearance and allegedly undergoing cosmetic surgery in a bid to hide his identity.
However, he was finally arrested in February of last year through a joint operation launched by the Colombian Police and the Guardia Civil.
Holed up inside the home of his girlfriend’s grandmother, he was extradited back to Spain to stand trial.
On Tuesday afternoon he was transferred from Soto del Real in Madrid to a Palma jail under armed guard.
Through the course of the investigation, officers studied more than 350,000 bank movements in an effort to trace his victims’ money, finding that €62,000 was transferred to his friends in Ecuador and more than €30,000 to his girlfriend’s family.
Police believe he squandered a significant amount of the money on a haul of designer goods and casinos across Mallorca where he was nicknamed Donald Trump due to his resemblance to the US president.
