Framed in Colombia
The email scam that landed a pensioner in prison
It's a story worthy of a movie: a sixty-year-old German woman under house arrest in Bogota after falling for a scam. Arrested in 2021 at the capital's airport with more than 3kg of cocaine in her luggage, she has just been convicted by the Colombian courts.
In September 2021, Peter Baumgartner received an email promising him a mysterious inheritance of several million francs, with a trip to Colombia. "In the email, it was announced: you have won a free trip to Bogota, all expenses paid. It was our thirty years of marriage, and so I said to myself: great, we will be able to go to Bogota", he explains. After a week there, an 'agent' asked them to carry a package home for a friend. It turned out to contain over 3 kilos of cocaine. Peter's wife Elisabeth was arrested and put in a women's prison in Bogota, while Peter flew home. In March Elisabeth stood trial. Convinced by a lawyer to plead guilty for a reduced sentence, she has received a sentence of five years and four months in prison and a fine of 140,000 dollars. Peter remains free in Switzerland.
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