A man nicknamed Harry Potter has been extradited to the US to stand trial for drugging, kidnapping and robbing two US soldiers in Colombia.
Jeffersson Arango Castellanos, 35, made his first appearance in a Miami court on Friday for kidnapping and assaulting US Army soldiers stationed in Bogota in March 2020.
An affidavit submitted to a federal court by an FBI agent suggests that in a December 2020 interview, Arango confessed to drugging and robbing the men, identified only as EL and LG.
The two soldiers were outside in a bar when they were drugged with benzodiazepines, a class of psychoactive drugs commonly used as sedatives, and later robbed of money, credit and debit cards, ID cards, four telephones, a watch, a gold chain , belts and their coats.
A man named Harry Potter has been extradited to the US to stand trial for drugging, kidnapping and robbing two US soldiers in Colombia
Jeffersson Arango Castellanos (pictured), 35, appeared in a court in Miami on Friday and is charged with drugging two US Army soldiers in March 2020
Surveillance video shows the moment one of the two soldiers was dragged limp and apparently drunk from the passenger seat of a car by Arango and left by the side of the road in the early hours of the morning.
Castellanos and two others are charged with plotting to repeatedly abuse drug victims in Bogota bars by spiked their drinks. Colombian news site NotiCentro1 reported that the gang went by the name of ‘Los Tomaseros’ and that Arango often posed as ‘Harry Potter’.
Their eventual arrest came not long after a woman, Alexandra Anaya, 33, died of an overdose of a drug believed to have been administered by the group. Anaya was the sister of a former Colombian prosecutor.
Arango and the other two could face up to life in prison if convicted, although it is not clear whether the other two have also been extradited to the US.
A federal defense attorney for Arango, Eric Cohen, filed a document with the court on Monday indicating that his client would invoke his right to remain silent “with respect to any questioning or interrogation.”
On March 5, 2020, the two soldiers were seen on surveillance cameras just after 11 p.m. entering the Colombian pub in Bogota’s Zone T – a popular spot for bars and clubs.
According to the FBI agent’s affidavit, Arango and a female accomplice named in court documents as Kenny Julieth Uribe, 33, were both seen entering the bar around the same time.
At around 1am, one of the two soldiers was seen dancing with a woman in the bar, but half an hour later, as he approached that same woman, Arango put his arm around him and directed him to the back of the pub.
Shortly after 2am, the soldier was seen stumbling out of the pub, whereupon Arango, wearing a red polo shirt with a white collar, blue ripped jeans and bright white trainers, followed him into the street.
A few minutes later, Arango returned to the bar alone, this time wearing a brown leather jacket, according to court documents.
The soldiers were then seen walking down the street at 2:35 am with both Arango and Uribe. Uribe had her arm around one of the soldiers’ waist and he had his arm on her shoulder as he struggled to keep his balance, the affidavit says.
About ten minutes later, Uribe and the two soldiers were seen getting into a Renault car through the back door on the driver’s side. Arango, meanwhile, approached a street vendor before returning to the car and getting into the front passenger door before it drove away.
On March 5, 2020, the two soldiers were seen on surveillance cameras just after 11 p.m. entering the Colombian pub in Bogota’s Zone T, a popular spot for bars and clubs.
Arango (pictured) was seen on surveillance footage putting his arm around one of the soldiers in the bar before walking down the street with both of them in the early hours of March 6, 2020
Kenny Julieth Uribe, 33, was an accomplice to Arango the night the soldiers were drugged, according to an affidavit filed by an FBI agent
Then, in the early hours of March 6, surveillance revealed that Arango and Uribe went to several ATMs and used credit and debit cards to withdraw money.
He and Uribe were later seen around 7:30 a.m. using one of the soldier’s American Express credit cards to pay for a drink and another item at a cafe in a mall.
After identifying Arango using surveillance cameras trained on a particular ATM, Colombian police began tapping his phone.
By listening to a series of phone calls between Arango, Uribe and a third alleged conspirator, Pedro Jose Silva Ochoa, police concluded that the group had been planning to routinely stun and rob people who frequented bars in Bogota.
In one phone call, Arango was heard saying he was “living on the bare minimum” because COVID-19 had meant many bars had closed and he had no one left to steal from.
According to the affidavit, during another conversation, Arango and Silva discussed how concerned they were because the bars were still closed. That’s why they planned to look for bars that might be operating behind closed doors.
In another conversation, Arango told a woman that he performs “tomaseas” — according to court documents, the term is Colombian slang for drugging people’s drinks.
After a months-long investigation in which Colombian police tracked down the Renault used on the night the soldiers were kidnapped, Arango and Uribe were arrested in December 2020.
Yuddith Alexandra Anaya Pacheco (pictured), 33, died after being drugged in November 2020. She was the sister of a former Colombian prosecutor
An FBI agent who filed an affidavit with the court said he interviewed Arango in Bogota (pictured) in December 2020 and admitted to robbing the soldiers
An FBI agent interviewed Arango in Bogota in Spanish. During the interview, he admitted to drugging and robbing the two soldiers.
He told the officer that Silva had been driving the Renault that night and that Arango and Uribe had gone to the pub to look for victims. He told the officer they would select victims based on how they dressed and acted.
Arango said that on the night in question, March 6, 2020, he met one of the soldiers in the bathroom sniffing cocaine and the soldier asked if he could have some.
Arango told the FBI agent that the pair sniffed cocaine together in the bathroom, but no cocaine was found in that soldier’s system the next day, according to court documents.
He said later that night that he put the drug Zolpidem in both soldiers’ drinks and would top up the amounts depending on how they seemed to react.
Arango said that after the soldiers were sufficiently intoxicated, they were taken back to a hotel, EI Encanto in the Santa Fe area of Bogota, where he says both soldiers used cocaine.
The FBI agent submitted to court in 2021 that he believed the claims that the soldiers used cocaine were false and intended only to incriminate them.
Arango then said he could get one of the soldier card PINs by telling them to pay for something. He then handed him a cell phone, as if it were a credit card machine, and encouraged him to enter his PIN.
He then said that in the early hours of March 6, he dropped off the two soldiers at different locations along the side of the road.
Surveillance video shared by Colombia’s attorney general’s office shows a man stopping a car and pulling out one of the soldiers and dumping his body in the street.
Court documents do not indicate that Uribe or Silva were extradited.