QCOSTARICA – A 35-year-old model, identified only by her last names Cabrera Palma, must wear an ankle bracelet for three months and ten days, after being arrested last Tuesday on suspicion of pimping (proxenetismo) and money laundering (legitimación de capitales).
She fell into the hands of the Police when she was traveling aboard a luxurious vehicle through Escazú.
Cabrera Palma, who also worked for a state bank, was the leader of an organization that apparently contacted women through social networks, to provide sexual services in homes that the group set up as dating houses, in Heredia. The network got the largest share of the take.
The organization had been under investigation since 2018. For a time, the model moved to live in Spain, but during her absence, the illicit activity was directed by her brother, 22-year-old Bolandi Cabrera.
After several raids in San Pablo and San Francisco de Heredia, as well as in La Guácima de Alajuela and an intervention in Escazú, the two siblings were arrested, while in Taras de Cartago, a 31-year-old woman was arrested, identified as Valverde Solano, who served as a trusted person for the group.
In San Francisco de Heredia, the brother and sister rented a house as a front to be a massage room, but in reality, it was used for women to provide sexual services. At the time of the raid, at least seven women were found at the scene.
According to the OIJ, the profits were high, enabling them to purchase properties and even luxury vehicles.
In the raids, the agents obtained evidence of interest that included lingerie used to advertise the women, cell phones, luxury cars, cash (colones, dollars and euros), as well as documentation related to the promotion of the business by electronic means. There is also evidence that allows the detainees to be identified as suspects of money laundering.
Although the Deputy Prosecutor’s Office of Heredia requested preventive detention against the three, the Criminal Court rejected the request and instead of sending them to jail, ordered house arrest with electronic monitoring against the model and her brother. For the other suspect, named Valverde Solano, the Court imposed the precautionary measure of appearing to sign periodically and she was prohibited from leaving the country, for which she had to hand over her passport.
The Prosecutor’s Office appealed the court’s decision, so it is waiting for the Criminal Court to schedule a new hearing, in which it will reiterate the request that preventive detention be ordered against the three detainees.
In Spain, the model gave birth to a girl who turned two this Friday. Her father was Cristhian Jiménez Vargas, who was shot and killed in an apartment in Guachipelín de Escazú on May 29.
Jiménez, 47, who had been sentenced to 35 years in prison for the assassination of Carl Stephen Baugh, a Jamaican national, was free since 2016 following an appeal.
At trial, the court learned that Jiménez and an associate who was never arrested kidnapped the victim, tortured and stabbed him at least 43 times, his body appearing in the Pará river in Santa Elena de San Isidro, Heredia, in October 2014.
Five months after the conviction against Jiménez, his lawyer appealed the ruling and the Court of Appeal, based in San Ramón, accepted it and ordered “the remission of the case for new substantiation”, as stated in the court resolution of August 23, 2016.
