- How a prostitute did what global companies and international police couldn’t.
A globally wanted con artist getting arrested after prostitutes kick his butt sounds like something from Ocean’s Eleven or some other Hollywood heist comedy. But it turns out once again that reality is weirder than fiction.
Bernio Jordan Enzo Verhagen is a Suriname-born con man with a Dutch citizenship. He’s apparently very much into what he does – though only 27, Verhagen has amassed an impressive list of charges for fraud and scam.
However, it seems that he’ll finally be brought to justice. When trying to impersonate a famous European soccer player in Colombia, a group of prostitutes ended up calling his bluff.
When Verhagen couldn’t produce the kind of riches he claimed to have, the sex workers started pummeling him to the point that cops were called to save his life. And you can probably guess how the whole thing ends when the police get their hands on a famous scammer.
But let’s take a deeper look at how it all ended this way.
Playing People Like a Ball
Verhagen had made his name as a grifter in Europe and Africa before jumping over the pond to the Americas. His modus operandi was defrauding soccer teams by creating fake agents who would sell him as a professional footballer.
Maybe things got a bit too hot in the Old World, because in early June, Verhagen decided a change of scenery was in order. So, he hopped on a plane and zoomed across the Atlantic.
After he arrived in the city of Cartagena in northern Colombia, he fell back into his grifting ways. Pretending to be a soccer star had worked well for him in the past, so he decided to try the same thing with a new twist.
Posing as a famed European soccer player, Verhagen rented hotel rooms, hired yachts, and dined in high-class restaurants. When it came time to pay the bill, he would send the funds through a fake electronic wire transfer.
Verhagen would tell the companies that money was totally on its way, but since it was an international transfer, it might take a few days to clear. Not wanting the bad publicity from pissing off a soccer celebrity, his victims took his words at face value.
‘Where’s Our Money?’
Of course, the tourism companies would never get their money because it didn’t exist. After a while, the atmosphere in Cartagena started getting too hot for Verhagen and he skipped town again.
This time, he headed to tourist trap of Santa Marta, some 100 miles northeast from Cartagena. There, he continued the soccer star act.
Established businesses kept falling for the scam. But then Verhagen ran into the fateful group of prostitutes.
He had hired the prostitutes for one more night of fun and games before leaving Santa Marta for another location. But when it came time to pay the women for their… Services, Verhagen ran into an issue.
The prostitutes didn’t accept a wire transfer. They wanted to paid in cash, and they wanted to paid now.
If there’s any moral to this story, let it be this – don’t mess around with Colombian hookers. Enraged that Verhagen couldn’t produce the money he’d promised them, the prostitutes charged him.
As they beat Verhagen on Santa Marta’s Rodadero Beach, a crowd gathered around them. At the women’s coaxing, some of the onlookers joined them in opening a can of whoop-ass on the con man.
Others, however, felt the whole situation was getting out of hand. To prevent Verhagen from getting straight-up lynched, they called the cops.
The police arrived and dispersed the crowd. They then took Verhagen to custody.
Almost Got Away With It
So, now Verhagen – a foreigner – was in the hands of the police. And it just happened that the Colombian cops learned something interesting from the Interpol.
Verhagen had been convicted of fraud in Denmark and he’d been charged with kidnapping in Chile. Looking at his unpaid financial records, it was clear to the cops that he was a grifter.
Unfortunately for them, Verhagen didn’t have any active international arrest warrants. They had no choice but to let him go, although Santa Marta’s police commander invited any companies Verhagen had defrauded to contact him.
It seemed Verhagen had gotten off scot free. His luck wasn’t to last, though – just a couple days later, Dutch authorities issued an international warrant for his arrest.
The cops had been keeping an eye on Verhagen, so they knew just where he was. Colombia’s immigration authorities arrested him at a luxury apartment in Barranquilla, which he had also acquired through fraud.
This guy just doesn’t learn, does he? Verhagen is currently awaiting extradition to the Netherlands to get his just desserts.