The “Catch Me if You Can” con man has been caught.
Juan Carlos Guzman-Betancourt — whose scams targeting sophisticates and socialites have been making international headlines for over a decade — has been nabbed near the Canadian border in Vermont, officials said yesterday.
The smooth-talking Colombian, 33, who is wanted in Canada, Japan, Mexico, Russia and Thailand and has a warrant out for his arrest in Nevada, was arrested after a US border guard didn’t buy his story about having accidentally crossed the border.
His silver tongue is normally all he needs to get out of — and into — trouble. He has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of clothing, jewelry and cash from ritzy hotels worldwide, and once literally talked himself out of prison.
“He is a highly accomplished liar — plausible, believable and very professional,” Andy Swindells, a British detective who once arrested Guzman-Betancourt, testified in 2005.
Reportedly inspired by New York’s own Frank Abagnale, whose cons inspired the movie “Catch Me if You Can,” Guzman-Betancourt first gained notoriety at 16.
He was found wandering around a Miami airport, and told authorities he was a 13-year-old Colombian orphan who’d made it into the United States by stowing away on the undercarriage of a cargo plane.
When his story turned out to be a lie, he was kicked out of the United States.
By 1998, he was pulling what has become his trademark scam.
He would con his way into rooms at exclusive hotels by claiming he’d lost his room key — and then when inside, he’d call the front desk and say he’d forgotten the code to the safe in his room. In 1998, he was arrested after ripping off four London hotels, but gave a fake name and skipped bail.
The feds say that in 2000, he was busted on a larceny charge in New York and sentenced to nine months behind bars.
He was finally caught after scamming three more London hotels in 2004, and sentenced to 3½ years in prison. He had done three months by the time he convinced staff to let him out to see a dentist.
He was busted last week after a border guard spotted him at a gas station near the Canadian border. He said his car had broken down in Quebec and he had crossed the border by mistake. A run of his fingerprints showed who he was.