Santa Cruz – CNN Interviews Orthodox Brooklyn Jew Jailed In Bolvia

    21

    Santa Cruz, Bolovia – From his cell in the notorious Palmasola prison in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, New Yorker Jacob Ostreicher counts down the days to Rosh Hashanah.

    Join our WhatsApp group

    Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email


    Maybe his nightmare will end by then, he thinks.

    An Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, Ostreicher can’t imagine spending the Jewish New Year anywhere else but with his family in the United States. But he knows he is caught up in a stranger-than-fiction drama whose ending remains uncertain.

    Ostreicher, 52, is charged with money laundering. Bolivian prosecutors accuse him of being in cahoots with a ruthless drug trafficker.

    Ostreicher says he is simply an innocent businessman whose investment in Bolivian agriculture reaped more than he bargained for. He is a victim of a shakedown by prosecutors who would like to seize money and goods, he says.

    The story begins in 2008, when a group of investors found what they saw as a lucrative opportunity in growing rice in eastern Bolivia. Land was cheap, labor was cheap and returns looked favorable.

    “On paper it was an incredible deal,” Ostreicher told CNN.

    Ostreicher, a flooring contractor in New York, was an acquaintance of one of the principal investors, a Swiss man named Andre Zolty. More than $20 million were put into the project, but he personally didn’t put in a lot of money, Ostreicher’s wife, Miriam Ungar, told CNN.

    But he immersed himself in everything there was to know about rice and Bolivia and began traveling there to check on his investment.
    “He’s like that by nature. He didn’t just want to go in blind,” Ungar said.

    He was also concerned about actions of the woman who Zolty hired to manage the operations in Bolivia. Claudia Liliana Rodriguez Espitia was being secretive when it came to showing records for the work being carried out. When pressed for accountability, she would become defensive and threaten to quit, Ostreicher said.

    What he found in Bolivia was worse than he imagined.

    “When I got here, I discovered a total nightmare,” Ostreicher said.

    Rodriguez was hired to buy land, deforest land and plant rice. According to Ungar, this is what her husband found: Only one-third of the land had been deforested, machinery had been bought on credit while she allegedly pocketed the cash, and she persuaded investors to buy another tract of land that she began making improvements on but did not pay for. This last tract of land would become the most troubling to everyone involved.

    According to Ungar, the land belonged to the brother of Rodriguez’s boyfriend, Maximiliano Dorado, a Brazilian drug trafficker who escaped from a Brazilian prison in 2001 and fled to Bolivia. Because of their relationship, Dorado’s brother allowed Rodriguez to work the land and to pay later.

    Ostreicher wasted no time. He filed criminal and civil cases against Rodriguez, had her removed as the company’s manager and was appointed new manager.

    Other things moved quickly, too, Ungar said. The landowner demanded the money from Rodriguez. She split from her drug trafficker boyfriend. She turned him in to authorities. She fled.

    The prosecutor in the case, Roberto Acha, told CNN how they came to suspect Ostreicher.

    After Dorado’s arrest, police began investigating his assets, and his brother’s property — the one with the rice operation — became an object of interest.

    “There is no evidence of where the money invested (in the project) came from, money that was used to buy property from people involved in criminal activities,” Acha said.

    Investigators were perplexed that after Rodriguez’s alleged fraud was discovered, Ostreicher continued to negotiate with the property owner and continued work in the rice fields.

    Prosecutors were also suspicious that the investors were spending lots of money to recoup their losses, even to the point of taking out an advertisement with Rodriguez’s photo offering a $25,000 reward for her whereabouts. To investigators, it hinted more of revenge than justice they were seeking.

    Eventually, Rodriguez reappeared and was arrested.

    After several interviews with Ostreicher, police arrested him in June.

    “After they found out about the amount of land and money, this thing became about extortion,” he said.

    He is at Palmasola prison, known as a place where prisoners run the show and charge inmates rent for their cells. Before that, he spent four days in a urine- and feces-infested cell where no one checked on him, Ungar said.

    “I try to do the best I can to survive,” Ostreicher said.

    Acha called these claims untrue.

    “At no time have his rights been violated,” he said.

    American diplomats have tried to intervene, Ungar said, but have been rebuffed by Bolivian authorities. Relations between the two countries have been at a low point during the current presidency of Evo Morales. Morales booted the U.S. ambassador from Bolivia in 2008 in a diplomatic row.
    Ostreicher’s family says he was nothing but honest with the prosecutors about how he was the victim of an apparent scam artist and whose only ties to Bolivia were an investment in rice. They call the prosecutors corrupt and accuse them of wanting a piece of the pie.

    “There is enough evidence to establish that he is a participant in this case,” Acha said. “They have offered no proof of anything to the contrary.”
    Ostreicher has had his next hearing postponed. He is slated to go before a judge next Friday, and Ungar has worked tirelessly to make sure that they are prepared.

    She has had nearly 1,100 documents translated and notarized, documents she says prove her husbands origins, the source of the money and his dealings in Bolivia.

    “I’m hopeful, but I’m in Bolivia,” she said, adding that she does not have a problem with the country, but with the prosecutors.

    In the meantime, authorities have seized some 20,000 tons of rice and have made the machinery off-limits to workers.

    Ostreicher says he won’t count on his freedom until he has it. Until then, he is thinking of his children and grandchildren and Brooklyn. Rosh Hashanah is right around the corner.


    Listen to the VINnews podcast on:

    iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Podbean | Amazon

    Follow VINnews for Breaking News Updates


    Connect with VINnews

    Join our WhatsApp group


    21 Comments
    Most Voted
    Newest Oldest
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    shredready
    shredready
    12 years ago

    why no outcry, no concerts, no call tehillim pidyom shvium

    or are those calls only for real criminals and convicted fraudsters

    12 years ago

    I hope this Yid is able to extricate himself from this mess. That being said Yidden should not be going to states or countries where they don’t belong getting involved in dubious business ventures.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    12 years ago

    I hope he is released soon and gets home for the yamim noraim although many parts fo his story make little if any sense. There are so many legitimate investment opportunities in EY and here in the U.S. that its difficult to understand why yidden would throw their money into these scams, assuming for the moment, he wasn’t aware of what was going on here.

    shtill
    shtill
    12 years ago

    Before you start condemning President Obama’s foreign policy and blaming the inability help Ostreicher on a govermental level, please realise the fallout between the Bolivian goverment and the US started when President Bush was in office.

    VINNEWSJOE
    VINNEWSJOE
    12 years ago

    It might be a good idea the askunim should post the contact
    act information of the Bolivian government officials involved in this case, their phone numbers and email addresses, and institute a campaign to start calling and emailing them, maybe if they will get thousands of calls and emails from around the world they will see that this attracts international interest and is being watched around the world and they will realize that its not in their best interest to continue, if they still want anyone to do business there.

    yidmonsey1
    yidmonsey1
    12 years ago

    because the US – Bolivian relations are bad, may I suggest that calls be made to the Bolivian Embassy in Canada. Their phone number is 613-236-5730 or 613-236-1312. The Amassadors name is Ambassador Edgar Torrez.
    You can also email them at [email protected]

    I donlt understand why the jewish world is so quiet about this. It is a shanda.

    12 years ago

    Below is the contact info of the US embassy in La Paz ,Bolivia. Please take the time to call as a concerned citizen.

    Phone: 011-591-2216-8297
    Email: [email protected]

    12 years ago

    Contact information for the UN Human Rights Organization in Bolivia is 011-591-(2)243-4360, ask to speak to Dennis Racicot.

    Email is: [email protected]

    kw123
    kw123
    12 years ago

    We got 3 different phone numbers and email addresses posted. Does anyone know which one is right?

    12 years ago

    The same time it takes to write a comment here, you can send an email to the various addresses below, you never know what it can accomplish but at least you tried. If we do nothing, can we honestly ask Hashem to give us a good sweet year, while someone out there and his family is suffering?
    Can we honestly say Yodeinu Lo Shofchu Es Hadam Hazeh…

    [email protected]

    [email protected]

    [email protected]

    12 years ago

    What are you doing yo organize help for this poor man.
    Other than criticizing some nameless mass of ‘others’, what have YOU done.

    Let’s see YOU do something constructive, something helpful to a fellow Jew, instead of throwing accusations and clearly hateful innuendo at the rest of us.
    I see your comments here often, and sometimes can agree with your specific criticisms, but your unbridled hatefulness and contempt for frum Jews is truly the thing you should be studying and criticizing.

    Yideleh
    Yideleh
    12 years ago

    I just emailed all 3.

    Lets all do the same and spread the word!!

    There’s no estimating the power of public pressure….

    12 years ago

    What are you doing yo organize help for this poor man.
    Other than criticizing some nameless mass of ‘others’, what have YOU done.

    Let’s see YOU do something constructive, something helpful to a fellow Jew, instead of throwing accusations and clearly hateful innuendo at the rest of us.
    I see your comments here often, and sometimes can agree with your specific criticisms, but your unbridled hatefulness and contempt for frum Jews is truly the thing you should be studying and criticizing.

    12 years ago

    Below is the contact info of the US embassy in La Paz ,Bolivia. Please take the time to call as a concerned citizen.

    Phone: 011-591-2216-8297
    Email: [email protected]

    12 years ago

    Below is the contact info of the US embassy in La Paz ,Bolivia. Please take the time to call as a concerned citizen.

    Phone: 011-591-2216-8297
    Email: [email protected]