So, this little kid—he might be one of the best con artists I've ever seen. Let me show you. Now, his name is Juan Carlos, and he lives in Colombia.
So far, he's had a really hard life, but Juan Carlos is about to do whatever it takes to succeed. One day, he sets out to make that happen, and he heads to the local airport to catch a flight to Miami. But little Juan Carlos, he can't afford a plane ticket, so he sneaks onto the tarmac, climbs onto a cargo plane, and hides out in the wheel well.
He allegedly holds on real tight while the plane takes off and flies 3 and a half hours from Cali, Colombia, to Miami, Florida. Then the plane lands, and allegedly, Juan Carlos falls out of the wheel well and just lays there on the tarmac, unconscious. Airport staff eventually find him, and he's shivering, disoriented, and just a wreck.
But he tells them— not that his name is Juan Carlos, but that his name is Guo, and that he's 13, from Colombia, and that his parents had died and he doesn't have anyone else, so he fled to America. His story just blows people away because they feel sorry for him. So the local media starts covering it.
Then, a police officer in the area, this guy Lozano, hears the story on the radio about this 13-year-old kid who had been hiding in the wheel well of a plane. Lozano is so moved that he volunteers to be Juan Carlos's temporary guardian while the state figures out what to do with him. Juan Carlos goes to live with Lozano and his family, and this changes his life.
Suddenly, he's not living in poverty anymore, and this middle-class lifestyle feels like wealth to him. They've got all these nice things, and so he tells himself that soon he's going to have nice things too. Within a few weeks of living with Lozano's family, Juan Carlos starts stealing, and things around the house go missing.
Plus, he's been disappearing for days at a time, and Lozano and his wife start thinking that something isn't adding up about this kid. Then one day, they get a call from the Colombian consulate, who has just received some important information. It turns out Juan Carlos isn't actually named Guo; he's named Juan Carlos, and he isn't some innocent kid.
He's actually got a criminal record, and he isn't 13; he's actually 17. His parents aren't dead—they're actually alive and well back in Colombia. He probably didn't ride in the wheel well of that plane; it's more likely that he rode inside the plane with the cargo, and he just lied about it all because it made a better story.
So Juan Carlos is just a little con artist trying to con his way into the United States so that he can have a better life. Bam! They immediately detain him and deport him back to Colombia.
Oh, but this isn't over for Juan Carlos because for a moment, he got a taste of a much better life, and he'll do anything to get that back. Over the years, Juan Carlos tries his best to scam his way out of Colombia and get back into the U. S.
and other countries using different aliases and fake IDs, but he ends up getting deported a bunch of different times. While all this is going on, Juan Carlos is developing the perfect con. Here's his perfect con: Juan Carlos dresses up real nice, pretending to be a rich man, and he goes into a five-star hotel, trying to make it look like he's a guest there.
He hangs out in the lobby and at the hotel bar, chatting with the staff a little bit just to make sure that they notice him. As he's doing this, he also takes note of other guests; he'll memorize their names and their room numbers. Then he'll go to reception, pretending to be that guest, and he'll say that he lost his room key.
Reception will recognize him like, "Oh, this guy? He's been hanging out in the lobby for a few days; of course, he's a guest here. " So the hotel will let him into the room, and while he's there, he'll steal money, credit cards, jewelry, and whatever he can get out of the guest's luggage.
To make it worse, he'll then call the hotel security desk and tell them he's locked out of his safe. Security will come up to the room and open the safe for him, not questioning anything because he's already in the room. Of course, they think it's his room.
Then Juan Carlos takes everything from the safe and leaves the hotel a slightly richer man. This con works—in fact, it works really well for him. So Juan Carlos does it repeatedly, hotel after hotel after hotel, just raking it in until one day in London, boom!
He gets arrested for using a credit card he had stolen. But Juan Carlos, he's ready for this. He's been thinking about it for a while, and he gives the police a fake name and skips bail, leaving town.
Then a year later, he's back in London, pulling off his same con. And then bam! He gets arrested again for using another stolen credit card.
This time, he gives them a different fake name and a fake ID, and he ends up getting off with a small fine because they don't realize he's the same guy they arrested the year before. So Juan Carlos. .
. continues with this pattern: he travels the world using fake names, fake IDs, and robbing hotels. But a few years later, he makes his way back to London again, and there he hits four more hotels and leaves with over $100,000 worth of cash and jewelry.
Now, at this point, a couple of London detectives have started to take notice: Detective Swindells and this other detective, Plowman. So, Swindells and Plowman have started to piece a lot of this together, and they end up connecting a bunch of these robberies back to the thief, Juan Carlos. Meanwhile, old Juan Carlos is already fled; he's living a good life—he's got money, he's got clothes, and he finally has nice things like he's always wanted.
But it's just not enough, so Juan Carlos keeps going. Within a couple of years, he ends up in Las Vegas, where he pulls off his infamous scam and ends up stealing $350,000 worth of cash and jewelry. One of the hotel rooms he robs is allegedly Celine Dion's room, so that's fun.
About a year later, Juan Carlos is back in London again, and he hits up even more hotels. Then, one night, Swindells is out, walking back from a bar he was just at, and he happens to stop outside of a supermarket. He sees a man leaving that supermarket—a man wearing a long leather jacket.
Swindells recognizes him because, by sheer coincidence, he just crossed paths with Juan Carlos. Now, Swindells has never seen Juan Carlos in person, only in mug shots, but he's been working on this case a long time and he knows it's him. So then, pow!
Swindells arrests him, he goes to trial, and he is sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Oh, but this story isn't over because Juan Carlos really likes his nice things. So, three months later, he's in prison and he happens to have a dentist appointment.
He ends up charming the prison guards to let him go out to his dentist appointment alone. I guess this is some kind of open prison where they're not as strict, and so they just let him go to the dentist alone. Of course, he flees!
From there, somehow he makes his way to Dublin, where he steals a credit card and pulls his infamous scam in yet another hotel. That is where he screws up because that puts this Irish detective on the case—this guy, Mlin. Now, Mlin goes and looks at CCTV footage from some of the stores that Juan Carlos had used the stolen credit card at, and pretty quickly he identifies the thief in the footage.
He knows it's Juan Carlos, the same guy who had walked out of prison not too long before. So, Mlin investigates further and concludes that Juan Carlos must have just gotten to Dublin, so he's likely staying in a cheap hostel in the city where he can keep a low profile. Mlin spends two days searching all these hostels in Dublin, and then he finally finds Juan Carlos hiding out in a hostel with tons of items he had already stolen.
So, kapow! He gets arrested again! Here's one of his mug shots, and he gets sentenced to two years in prison.
But then, an Irish judge rules that he can be extradited to France to face even more charges there because he robbed a bunch of hotels there too. While he's there in France, he's released temporarily, and then just like that, Juan Carlos disappears again. A few years later, he's busted by a customs agent at a gas station in Vermont after he had entered the U.
S. illegally, and he's sentenced to two and a half years in prison. After that, he gets out and he's arrested again in a hotel in Hong Kong, then he's arrested in France again for robbing another hotel—over $200,000 worth of cash and jewelry.
From there, he's sentenced to prison again for 15 months. This dude is allergic to freedom! But now he's out, and his current whereabouts are actually unknown.
But I'm just going to take a wild guess and say he's probably still out there robbing more hotel rooms. So, shout out to Colombia, London, Miami, Dublin, Las Vegas, France, Hong Kong, and Vermont!
