Human Predators Stalk Haiti's Vulnerable Kids

[i.b.nora]

From the New York Times article earlier today:

'Mr. Puello said in the interview that he had been representing the Americans free of charge because he was a religious man who commiserated with their situation. “I’m president of the Sephardic Jewish community in the Dominican Republic,” he said. “I help people in this kind of situation. We’re not going to charge these people a dime.”

But other lawyers for the detainees said that the families had wired Mr. Puello $12,000 to pay for the Americans’ transportation out of Haiti if they were released, and that they had been told by Mr. Puello in a conference call late Tuesday that he needed an additional $36,000. Mr. Puello said that he had not participated in a conference call."

Hmmmmmm.

 

[Missizzy]

To me, this is sounding sadly like the old adage, "What goes around comes around".

 

[pinkpuddytat]

Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and daughter are among those detained, said Puello provided his services for free. "He's really shown himself to be completely trustworthy, and I truly believe he has done everything to help our people and to help us," he said in a telephone interview from Idaho. Lankford said Puello contacted relatives of the Americans to volunteer his services.

I really hope Mr. Lankford said this before hearing the information that's in the rest of the article. And that he was not among the relatives who coughed up $12,000 and wired it to Puello. Because otherwise, he's seriously mentally incompetent -- as in to a degree where a court should adjudicate him as "person in need of supervision" and appoint a legal guardian to supervise him and control his financial affairs. I mean if even after it's become horribly obvious that your wife and daughter were duped by a scam artist into going on a phony mission trip which has landed them in a third world jail facing serious criminal charges, you *still* don't recognize that you're being scammed when you learn of the lack of law license and possible human trafficking charges for a lawyer you'd never heard of before, who contacted you (or other similarly situated relatives) and offered to help for "free" and then insisted that $12,000 be wired to him, and then asked for another $36,000 . . .

 

[i.b.nora]

Is there anyone in this pitiful saga telling the truth, other than than the parents of the kidnapped orphans?

Advisor to 10 investigated

BY GERARDO REYES AND PATRICIA MAZZEI
[email protected]

snip

"Though he claims to have a law license, the Santo Domingo address listed on Puello Consulting's website turned out to be the office of Alejandro Puello, Torres Puello's cousin.

Alejandro Puello showed a Miami Herald reporter on Friday around the bare, one-room office in a working-class neighborhood and said Torres Puello has never worked with him, and that his cousin is not a lawyer.

"Jorge Puello has nothing to do with this office,'' he said.

Alejandro Puello, 27, said he was unaware of any ties that his cousin may have with human trafficking in El Salvador.

He said he thought his cousin was born in New York and lived in Canada until recently.

Alejandro Puello -- who said he is licensed to practice law in the Dominican Republic -- said he challenged his cousin when he learned Torres Puello was lending legal advice to the American church group.

"I said, 'Jorge, how, if you're not a lawyer?' '' he said. "He told me, 'I hired a lawyer for them in Haiti.' ''

During the press conference Friday in El Salvador, police said they will seek Torres Puello's extradition if evidence shows he is indeed the fugitive and accused child trafficker Torres Orellana."

The lies just keep on coming. These guys think that if they dismantle their web site that all evidence of it goes away. It doesn't.

 

[i.b.nora]

From a February 2, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, "Haiti Allows Adoptions, Queries Missionaries":

"Alejandro Puello, a Dominican lawyer who is representing the detained Americans, said, "These people belong to charitable organizations who were hoping to help alleviate the situation of those children." He added, "It's possible that because of a lack of information they forgot about some requisites, and this situation has happened as a result. We are trying to show that their intentions were always to help.""

So, was this actually Jorge identifying himself as his cousin Alejandro because Alejandro is a lawyer and Jorge isn't? Or, was it his cousin Alejandro, who hardly knows anything about his cousin Jorge even though they have a Real Estate business and a Consulting business together?

 

[i.b.nora]

Jorge Puello

 

[i.b.nora]

Puello Real Estate Group website with both Jorge Puello and Alejandro Puello

 

[pinkpuddytat]

From a February 2, 2010 Wall Street Journal article, "Haiti Allows Adoptions, Queries Missionaries":

"Alejandro Puello, a Dominican lawyer who is representing the detained Americans, said, "These people belong to charitable organizations who were hoping to help alleviate the situation of those children." He added, "It's possible that because of a lack of information they forgot about some requisites, and this situation has happened as a result. We are trying to show that their intentions were always to help.""

So, was this actually Jorge identifying himself as his cousin Alejandro because Alejandro is a lawyer and Jorge isn't? Or, was it his cousin Alejandro, who hardly knows anything about his cousin Jorge even though they have a Real Estate business and a Consulting business together?

My guess is that it may have been a fact-checker's error, i.e., when checking on the correct spelling of Jorge Puello's name, found the only DR lawyer associated with the firm in question was Alejandro, and thought the naming of Jorge in the raw report must have been an error.

You really should e-mail the WSJ to alert them to that. It's still showing as "Alejandro" on their website, and either it's an error, or some journalist actually did talk to Alejandro about this back on or before February 2, in which case that would be a big story. Other than that WSJ article, I can't find any other mention of "Alejandro Puello" in connection with this case, prior to the story (which broke late last night) about Jorge's lack of law license and possible involvement in human trafficking. There are a boatload of other mainstream articles dated February 2 that quote "Jorge Puello" as the attorney for the missionaries, so I'm leaning toward the fact-checker error explanation, but if that's the case, surely the WSJ would want to correct it, before any media outlet with a higher profile than Websleuths starts trying to base a story on this error.

 

[pinkpuddytat]

With all the talk about possibly arresting and extraditing Jorge, I haven't seen a word about his current location. Will law enforcement officials even be able to find him, should they confirm that he's the same person that's wanted in El Salvador?

 

[truckbomb]

The group shoud ask for the long term rate in their present accomodations.

 

[truckbomb]

Truck is travelling in Mexico and can only follow or comment here by IPhone when was Puello hired and by whom? If Silsby some time ago before the quake she is looking at serious jail time unless her "dumb as a box of rocks" defense holds.

 

[jeriwho]

.
When will churches figure out what a con artist looks like, and stop placing them in charge of ministries? This gets old after a while. As a Christian myself, I find it highly offensive. The SBC needs to do more to protect rank and file Baptists from predatory leadership.

The SBC runs on volunteers, and this enables it to spend a lot of money on buildings and administrative costs, including grand conferences and lobbying efforts. If they were to start running back ground checks on Sunday School Teachers and missionaries and any who have contact with children, they know full well they would lose a lot of their volunteers, and their money would be diverted to security purposes. Creating a security/accountability/auditing system in the SBC is morally essential, but it costs money and saps power. And the SBC, at least at the top, is all about money and power: it's own money and power.

 

[pinkpuddytat]

Originally Posted by pinkpuddytat >

When will churches figure out what a con artist looks like, and stop placing them in charge of ministries? This gets old after a while. As a Christian myself, I find it highly offensive. The SBC needs to do more to protect rank and file Baptists from predatory leadership.

Note: The quote above that shows up in jeriwho's recent post as having been written by me, was not written by me. Perhaps I had quoted Annie Mouse in a post I made, and it somehow ended up showing as posted by me when jeriwho quoted it in her post.

 

[pinkpuddytat]

If Silsby some time ago before the quake she is looking at serious jail time unless her "dumb as a box of rocks" defense holds.

Relatives of "the group" have told the media that Puello contacted them, offering to represent the group for free (though he subsequently demanded $12,000 for their "travel expenses" after announcing to the media that he expected they'd be getting out right after their first hearing). I haven't seen anything about a prior business relationship between Silsby and Puello, but I'll be really surprised if it turns out there wasn't one. Since he's in the real estate business, she may have originallly connected with him when she was looking to buy real estate in the DR (and was probably looking for a crooked agent who'd produce papers showing she'd paid more than she really had, so she could "show" her idiot donors back in Idaho where a huge wad of their money went, while actually keeping abig chunk of it for herself).

If he is indeed in the human trafficking business, he'd have jumped at the chance to hook up with this crooked businesswoman who was talking about setting up an orphanage backed a clean-sounding American church. If that's how it went down, it wouldn't be surprising that he'd waste no time offering to represent her and her group after they got arrested in Haiti, since he'd have a vested interest in controlling what information (that could possibly incriminate him) got out during the course of the legal proceedings. Plus by that time, he'd certainly have figured out that there were a lot of clueless suckers involved in this, and that's always a great money-making opportunity.

 

[pinkpuddytat]

Excellent blog post here: http://bastardette.blogspot.com/2010/02/jorge-puello-not-lawyer-after-all.html

Lots of info on both Puello and the legitimate lawyers who are representing Jim Allen. Too much good stuff to bother quoting little snippets. Better to go read the whole thing. This blog also has several previous posts on this story worth reading.

 

[i.b.nora]

Part of the Puello Consulting website where Jorge Puello and Alejandro Puello are selling legal services in their "Legal Club".
I guess its kind of like Sam's Club, or Costco? Notice the email address, and notice the street address.

This is cached version, in Spanish

 

[Missizzy]

So, Sean Lankford says that the man has "really shown himself to be completely trustworthy". I understand that Mr. Lankford must be scared for his family members and desperately grasping at straws but how can he possibly "know" this man to be anything?

From everything I've read, no one (except possibly Silsby, and that's a stretch) has ever met or done business with this man before. I'm always very skeptical of anyone approaching a messy situation and offering to help for free. Isn't that very much what Silsby did concerning the Pickett children? Private agendas are slippery slopes IMO.

 

[Missizzy]

Jumping off the link above from Pink, here's another page from that blog which translates Puello's page--scroll down the the 5th paragraph:

http://bastardette.blogspot.com/2010/02/who-is-jorge-puello.html

It's dated February 12th. I'll delete if this has already been posted but I didn't see it.

 

[Missizzy]

From the link I posted above (via the NY Times):

“I was skeptical of him [Puello] because he arrived with four bodyguards, and I have never seen that from a lawyer,” the judge said in an interview. “I plan to get to the bottom of this right away.”

 

[i.b.nora]

This is a cached version of a website where Jorge Puello is selling some kind of VOIP device for telephone calls.
The buyer initially pays for the device and installation and then pays Jorge a monthly fee. Prices are in Dominican currency, I have no idea how that relates to US currency. And, I am not sure how anything about this could be interpreted as free.

This is the bottom part of the page: