Scarface in Stilettos ...

Scarface in Stilettos - Maxim

By Mark Ebner

On December 13, 2009, Maria Noel Lopez Iglesias made her way through Ezeiza Inter­national Airport in Buenos Aires, beneath the gaze of the soccer stars and super­models that loom on giant billboards hanging from a vast steel-RIBBED vault above. It was the height of the travel season, and Maria was headed for Mexico City and then on to Cancun. By all appearances there was nothing suspicious about the beautiful 21-year-old weaving her way through the terminal. She’d passed through security without incident, made it through customs, and now sat at Gate 7, waiting to board Flight 1692.

What could go wrong?

The plan was simple, and in fact, she’d made a practice run just 10 days before. Her boyfriend had given her a lift to the airport that morning, and a friend helped her with the two large suitcases wrapped in plastic (a common security measure taken by passengers after a scandal two years before revealed that operators allegedly stole everything from laptops to jewelry out of baggage before loading it onto outgoing flights). Besides, Maria had been assured that both here in Argentina and in Mexico, all the potential obstacles had been taken care of.

In Cancún she’d meet her Mexican contact at the airport, hand off the bags, and then head to a luxury hotel, where she could relax before dinner and a night of clubbing. In the morning it was back to Buenos Aires, several thousand dollars richer for a few days’ work. Easy money.

Then came an announcement over the loudspeaker calling her to baggage claim. Maria could have just walked away, gone back home, and tried for the easy money another day. But she didn’t; instead, as directed, Maria Noel Lopez Iglesias reported to baggage claim, where she was ordered to open her luggage. Inside were 50 bricks of cocaine tightly wrapped in clingy green plastic, covered in a blanket and a beach towel. The total haul was worth upwards of $3 million on the street. After being taken into custody, Maria told authorities everything she knew and was released without charges being filed.

This routine drug bust, once the plot behind it began to unravel, revealed a tale that would capture the imaginations of the gossip-hungry public throughout the world. It would take five months before all the main players had been rounded up, but long before then the story of Angela Sanclemente Valencia, the “Narco Queen,” was splashed across newspapers from Argentina to Australia.

Model-Slash-Actress-Slash-Drug Lord?

According to authorities, Angie Sanclemente, a Colombian beauty queen and actress, was the ringleader behind an international drug-trafficking ring that used models like Maria as drug mules. It’s a story that could have been penned by Quentin Tarantino, replete with characters dubbed the Monster, the Dwarf, the Nose, the Fat Man, and the Diamond. There was Maria, the naïve looker busted at the airport; her boyfriend, Ariel Letizia, a beefy, drug-addled model-wrangler and party boy charged with hiring the smugglers; his old acquaintance Nicolas Gualco, a lean male model and international striver whose uncle was allegedly the cocaine source; and finally, there was Angie, Nicolas’ fiancée, a petite exotic beauty and the alleged mastermind of the whole operation.

The basic outline was this: While working as a model and actress, Angie allegedly marries a drug-trafficking kingpin known as the Monster and stays with him just long enough to learn the tricks of the trade. After leaving him, and in concert with her new boyfriend, she launches her own operation, using her fellow models as mules. She successfully runs several tons of product out of South America, through Mexico, and on to Europe and the United States, until one of her models gets busted and the whole thing falls apart.

Angie’s technique was simplicity itself. Instead of having couriers swallow condoms full of coke or disguising it as Virgin Mary statuettes or frozen mango purée, she had professional beauties pack 100 pounds of the stuff in their luggage and wear a skimpy dress through customs, where minimum-wage officials would fall all over themselves trying to expedite their clearance. It’s a great story—so great that it has already inspired a Spanish-language TV series. But Angie’s brazenness may have been her undoing. Even on the run with an international warrant from Interpol hanging over her head, the model-actress couldn’t resist the limelight, sending Facebook messages to the media and even granting interviews. Beautiful but reckless, Angie was like Tony Montana in stilettos.

“She’s a big player in the South American drug trade,” according to a senior Argentine investigator, “and that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars—perhaps billions.”

But the truth is as twisted as the Colombian slums in which the “Narco Queen” was raised, a story of glamour and drugs, models and crime lords, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Out of the Cauldron and Into the Fire

Angela Sanclemente Valencia was born on May 25, 1979 in Bogotá, Colombia, and raised in Barran­quilla, a city of 1.7 million on the Caribbean, famous as the birthplace of such bombshells as Sofia Vergara and Shakira and where the North Coast drug cartel wreaked havoc in the ’90s. In a place where sex and crime blended seam­lessly and beauty was prized above all else, an ambitious girl blessed with exotic looks—a girl like Angie San­clemente—could raise herself up and find her way in the world.

“Angie was always such a sweet girl,” says her mother, Jeanneth Valencia. “She never spoke much and was always very conservative. The other girls at her school, who wore their skirts up high, would make fun of the way she dressed.”

The story Jeanneth tells is of a poor but determined girl who longed to escape her station in life. Sitting in a Buenos Aires pensione, the unassuming 51-year-old is both dignified and weary, with just a trace of the beauty queen she almost was, an ambition she transferred to her only child. From early childhood Angie competed in beauty pageants, and while at 5'3" she was too short for a career as a runway model, she studied ballet, modern dance, voice, and acting. In 2000 she was crowned Colombia’s “Queens of Coffee,” an important step before Miss Colombia and then Miss Universe, only to be stripped of her title when it was revealed that she’d been briefly married to a businessman a decade her senior.

“She didn’t know the rules,” says Jeanneth. “But it was a big scandal, all over the newspapers.” For girls growing up in Colombia, beauty pageants are a common childhood dream, but the criminal element was always lurking in the shadows. It was not uncommon for drug lords to sponsor contestants; according to Jeanneth, it was to avoid such entanglements that Angie decamped to Mexico.

“At the beginning it was very hard for Angie,” she says. “She would work trade shows and do catalogs and beach photos for magazines. She was hungry.” But before long Angie was making appearances on Mexican TV and began to indulge in Mexico City’s nightlife, where models, moguls, athletes, and crime lords mixed, and where—at a club in the fall of 2008—Angie met Nicolas Gualco.

The Model and the Monster

A tall, dark Argentine bearing more than a slight resemblance to Madonna’s current boy toy, Jesus Luz, Nicolas had come to Mexico three years earlier. Six-foot-two, with bright blue deep-set eyes, strong, angular features, and the long unruly hair of a South American soccer star, Nicolas was the archetypal Latin lover. In addition to his work on the catwalk and in advertising campaigns, Nicolas had a sideline connecting wealthy businessmen with the willing young women in his circle. It wasn’t prostitution, exactly, but it wasn’t far off. He describes the Mexico City nightlife as rife with danger, where “tramps, footballers, and narcos” all mingled, and where talking to the wrong woman could get you shot.

According to Nicolas, however, everything changed the night he met Angie. “It’s very funny,” he recalled 18 months later. “We looked at each other from across the club for two hours before I finally spoke to her. Two weeks later we were looking for an apartment together.”

“Nicolas was a lonely guy, with no family [in Mexico]—nothing,” says Jeanneth. “But the guy was like gold. Last Christmas Angie came to Buenos Aires to meet his family and to get married.”

Court documents claim that, according to those who knew her, Angie’s time in Mexico may not have been quite so innocent—that she allegedly became involved in the city’s vibrant drug scene and had a second short-lived marriage, this time to the mysterious crime lord known as the Monster. A shadowy figure, variously described as Mexican or Colombian, the Monster is believed to be Victor Girao Alatrista. According to Claudio Izaguirre of the Anti-Drug Association of Argentina, Alatrista built a network smuggling cocaine base paste from Peru to Argentina, where it was refined to 98 percent pure cocaine. The Monster “organized an army of recruiters and mules, of which Angie was a key player, first in Mexico, and then in Argentina,” said Izaguirre. According to authorities, Angie and her new boyfriend teamed up to run the operation out of Buenos Aires, and their trip to Argentina was for more than just planning a wedding.

A Conspiracy of Dunces

In late November, Nicolas returned to Buenos Aires for the first time in three years, and on one of his first nights back he ran into an old acquaintance from his hometown. Ariel Letizia, 25, dabbled in modeling in addition to working as a personal trainer and petty drug dealer. Nicknamed “Kid Ephedrine,” he lived in a trendy neighborhood and helped support himself by supplying well-to-do jet-setters with weed, cocaine, and speed.

According to Ariel’s court testimony, Nicolas claimed to be involved in the drug trade and was anxious to find some girls to use as couriers. Since Ariel had a gig booking models for events in and around Buenos Aires, he was the perfect guy for the job. According to Nicolas, the girls needed to be beautiful enough to charm the customs officials but not so glamorous as to arouse suspicion. The product would allegedly come from his uncle, Daniel Monroy, but to get the drugs into Mexico and then Europe, they needed help, which was where Ariel and his girls came in. Nicolas wanted to make a shipment every 24 hours, for which he would pay $7,000 ($5,000 to the courier and a $2,000 finder’s fee for Ariel). It was a good deal and, Nicolas assured him, virtually risk-free. The Mexican connection, Nicolas explained, was his fiancée, a Colombian model named Angie, who was due to arrive in Buenos Aires on December 7, 2009 to coordinate the plan.

On Saturday, November 29, Ariel arrived at the Hotel Embassy to meet with Nicolas and his uncle. The pair were eager to get going, and they asked Ariel if he’d found a girl to make a practice run. He had just the person: his girlfriend, Maria Noel Lopez Iglesias.

Just over a week later, Angie arrived in Buenos Aires on a first-class ticket with her two cats and pet Pomeranian Stuart in tow. According to Ariel, he first met the alleged queen pin at a luxury hotel five days later. Angie was sitting on the bed watching TV while Nicolas and his partner packed bricks of cocaine into two suitcases, rubbing them with soap (to throw off drug-sniffing dogs) and covering them with plastic wrap. Ariel’s instructions were clear: drive his girlfriend to the appointed rendezvous and wait to cash in.

The next day, on the evening of December 13, Ariel was anxiously awaiting word from Maria. That morning he had driven her to the designated meeting place, the first step on her trip to Mexico as a drug mule. But when Maria called to report that something had gone wrong, paranoia set in. Angie ordered everyone to abandon their hotels and stand by for further instructions. So now Ariel found himself sitting at his kitchen table nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop. Suddenly there was a loud crack, and Ariel looked up to see a swarm of policemen in riot gear pouring through his front door. Leaping to his feet, Ariel bolted for the second-floor balcony and jumped, injuring his leg and rendering himself incapacitated as the police bore down. Inside Ariel’s apartment, the police discovered marijuana and cocaine, and he was quickly hustled off in handcuffs and taken into custody. Then he started talking.

The story he spilled was outrageous, but just plausible enough for the authorities to believe it. Meanwhile, as news of the failed operation made its way back to Angie and the rest of the crew, they went into crisis mode. The Mexicans were demanding to know what had gone wrong, Daniel was trying to hire a lawyer, Nicolas was in a full-blown panic, and Angie was trying to manage the whole thing. In the end, they fled.

Angie On the Run

By late May, Angie had been on the run for five months, her legend growing by the day. But despite her status as a celebrity fugitive, the Narco Queen wasn’t completely cut off. In March she’d sent CNN a Facebook message proclaiming her innocence. “I don’t want to go to jail, and don’t deserve it,” she wrote. “I am innocent.”

Two weeks later Angie checked into the $16-a-night K-Lodges hostel on the outskirts of Buenos Aires’ trendy Palermo district. According to court records, she used a fake Colombian passport in the name of Ana Lucia Ballent and took a single room. Swaddled in baggy hooded sweatshirts and with her hair shorter and blonder than in her pinup photos, Angie was virtually unrecognizable. On May 20 Angie surfaced in the form of an interview with the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, ready to tell her side of the story, which was a far cry from Ariel Letizia’s tale of coke-smuggling models and Mexican drug lords.

Angie claimed that on the day she arrived in Buenos Aires to meet Nicolas’ family and plan her wedding, she and her fiancé traveled to Mar del Plata to visit his uncle Daniel. A hulking mixed-martial artist with a buzz cut, prominent nose, and tribal tattoos snaking around his torso, Daniel was a formidable presence. Nicolas had warned Angie that his family was involved in some shady business, and after coming face-to-face with Daniel, she told Nicolas she was uncom­fortable and asked to leave. Angie later discovered that her passport and return plane ticket to Mexico were missing. She reported her lost passport to the Colombian embassy but failed to mention the ticket. Part of Angie’s story holds up; her plane ticket was later discovered in Daniel’s possession.

Her claims of innocence notwithstanding, behind-the-scenes evidence against Angie was steadily mounting. In March, Interpol had issued a warrant for her arrest. So it wasn’t just the Argentine authorities on her tail, but the world’s biggest international police force. “There are some very determined and very strong women who have got more balls than the men,’’ an Interpol investigator said at the time. “Angie kicks up dust wherever she goes. That’s her nature. So we’ll get her eventually.’’

On May 26, the day after her 31st birthday, Angie stepped into the shower at the K-Lodges hostel, the only place she felt safe from the prying eyes of an extremely hostile world. Three weeks before, Interpol had added Angie’s name to their “Infra-Red” list—a compendium of 450 international fugitives for whom they actively sought public help through the Internet and social networking sites—and had received a tip about Angie from a fellow guest at the hostel. As the shower’s scalding water was washing her troubles away, the authorities pounced. They allowed Angie to finish her shower and get dressed, then led her off in handcuffs. At the time of her arrest, the alleged drug lord had a grand total of $36 in her pocket.

A Model, Idiot

Sitting in the Villa Devoto Detention Institute—described as “the darkest penal hellhole in all of Argentina”—Nicolas Gualco looks like a broken man. A day after Angie’s arrest, he remains adamant about both his own innocence and his fiancée’s. Both, he claims, are patsies who got caught up in a world beyond their comprehension. “I like luxury, to have a good life, you know. But I work for that,” says Nicolas. “The real people involved in this—who were caught at the airport, who delivered drugs, who hired the girls—well, they are all free and out on the street, and the only one left in jail is me. And I’m not related to any of these guys! Everybody knows I’m not in the drug trade. I’m just a male model.”

According to Nicolas, he returned to Buenos Aires from Mexico in order to plan his wedding. He admits that soon after he arrived, he met up with Ariel, his old acquaintance. “If you are in town and want drugs,” says Nicolas, “Ariel is your guy.” Nicolas also con­firms that he drove Maria to the airport on the morning of her practice run, but claims he was in the dark as to its purpose. “Ariel asked me to take her to the airport because he was paranoid. He was whacked out on cocaine. I was hanging around, so I accompanied her.”

Nicolas calls Angie a good Christian girl who helped him get off drugs, and who is not cut out for prison. They were to be married in March, then move to England. “When I came back to Argentina in November, it was to get married in the church where my parents were married,” he says. “I was about to marry the woman I love, like a cheesy soap opera. Who could tell what was about to happen?”

Unhappily Ever After

The Ezeiza Women’s Prison is located on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, just a few miles from the airport where Angie’s world began to crumble. The sad, nervous woman sitting alone in the large enclosed prison yard seems almost sexless, emaciated, mostly skin and bones. It’s a far cry from either the pinup queen of her posters or the Narco Queen of her legend. She is dressed in dark blue jeans, a beige sweater, and basketball sneakers.

“They don’t let anybody wear black clothes in here,” she says, shrugging. “And all my clothes are black.”

Angie’s hair is a dusky blonde and hangs loosely around her bony shoulders. The only indications of her former glamour are her eyes and hands, which are immaculately groomed, and her sparkling white teeth. The rest of her seems to vanish into thin air. “I was two months pregnant, but I lost the baby,” she says. “I can’t take this anymore.”

While Angie steadfastly maintains her innocence, the government’s case against her rests on a series of wiretaps and text messages between her alleged co-conspirators and a woman called “the Diamond” immediately after the December bust. Outside of Ariel’s testimony, there is no other direct evidence linking her to the case. In a text soon after the bust, Nicolas beseeched Angie to “speak with my uncle,” and promised, “I will disentangle you from everything.” Later Daniel placed a call to an unidentified woman with a Colombian accent who answered to the name the Diamond, asking her to smooth things over with the Mexicans. On January 6, Daniel and Nicolas were both arrested. Based on certain terms of endearment used in the texts and a voice analysis of the wiretap, the authorities claim that the Diamond is in fact Angie. By establishing an intermediary link between Daniel and Nicolas on the one hand and the Mexican connection on the other, the government infers that Angie—the Diamond—was supervising the entire operation.

According to an Interpol investigator, “Several female drug mules we’ve arrested in recent times have direct links to San­clemente. A few have negotiated reduced sentences for information that they’ve been recruited to carry cocaine on flights out of Argentina to other markets.

“We’ve been looking at her activities for a considerable time, and, based on those who’ve squealed, she’s running a big operation.”

While hardly an airtight case, it may not matter. Angie says she is broke, without a lawyer, and powerless to fight the charges against her. Facing up to 16 years behind bars, today she spends most of her time scrubbing toilets or cooking for the 13 other women in her cell block. She is openly frightened of the rest of the prison population; it’s widely assumed that she has a lot of money stashed away, and her fellow prisoners want a piece.

“They blame everything on me because I am from Colombia—that’s the reason I’m here. The judge, too! He thinks, Well, she’s Colombian and lived in Mexico, and that’s it!” she says. “I have nothing against Argentina. It’s a beautiful country, and my boyfriend is Argentine, but I’m having the most horrible moment in my life.”

As the reality of her predicament sinks in, Angie starts to cry.

“I’ve lived my life without any trouble,” she says, sobbing. “If you could investigate my life a little bit more, it’s not like this, I swear to you. I can’t comprehend this! I have never stolen, never acted the wrong way. Meanwhile the real criminals are back on the streets committing felonies. Why?”

And with that the beauty queen turned alleged Narco Queen composes herself. The crying stops, she says her goodbyes, and as a plane leaving Ezeiza International Airport flies overhead, Angie Sanclemente Valencia is led back into the prison.

http://www.maxim.com/girls/scarface-stilettos