A Swedish man known as “El Silencio” has been accused of directing a global scam in which he sold products of the Pablo Escobar brand, including cell phones, flames and cash, but never delivered them because they did not exist, the authorities say.
Olaf Kyros Gustafsson, 31, was extradited from Spain to Los Angeles, where he was prosecuted on Friday in a federal accusation of 115 positions that alleges money laundering, electronic fraud and postal fraud, according to the United States Department of Justice.
He declared himself innocent.
Gustafsson is accused of directing a business called Escobar Inc., a corporation registered by Puerto Rico that had rights over the person and the legacy of the late Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.
Escobor was the leader of the Medellín cartel, which became one of the most powerful and violent drug trafficking organizations in history during the 1980s.
Gustafsson used these rights to market a wide range of products with the Escobar brand from 2019 to 2023, often copying and undermining the prices of other similar goods sold online, prosecutors allege.
He announced a Runpoints Escobar, a telephone with Escobar folding, an Profobar Gold 11 Pro phone and Escobar Cash that promoted as a “physical cryptocurrency.” None of these products really existed, prosecutors allege.
To attract the customer's interest in the nonexistent products of Escobar Inc., supposedly sent Samsung Galaxy fold phones wrapped in gold paper to online technology reviewers. The objective was to attract customers to order the product after reading a review.
Gustafsson accepted the payment using processors such as PayPal, Stripe and Coinbase. But instead of sending customers the product they bought, prosecutors claim that they would send a “property certificate”, a book or other promotional materials of Escobar Inc.
Later he sent to the payment processors to this mail history to defend the requests for reimbursements of annoying clients worldwide, prosecutors said. Some of the people who say prosecutors were victims of the scam reside in Los Angeles, Gardena and Commerce.
Gustafsson is accused of using bank accounts in the United States, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates to hide and disguise their activities.
He was arrested in Marbella in December 2023 when the Spanish Police and the agents of the United States Internal Tax Service raided their home on the Spanish Costa of the Sun, according to reports from the Swedish newspaper AFONBLADET. Then he tried to evade extradition seeking asylum in Spain, but that effort was not successful, the document reported.
In an interview with the Swedish newspaper, he criticized his country of origin for not protecting him from extradition.
Gustafsson has been accused of 41 money laundering charges, 35 international money laundering charges, 25 positions to participate in monetary transactions in properties derived from a specified illegal activity, nine charges of wired fraud, three positions of postal fraud of the justice of the conspiracy to commit cable fraud and an email, and a conspiracy conspiracy conspiracy. The Department of Justice.
It remains in federal custody and is scheduled to go to trial on May 20.
