Jorge Puello Admits He Is The Man Wanted In El Salvador On Human Trafficking Charges

Puello's wife has been jailed on those charges since last year.

Legal adviser for Americans in Haiti facing his own charges
From Karl Penhaul • CNN

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (CNN) -- A Dominican man who is acting as a legal adviser to 10 Americans arrested on child kidnapping charges in Haiti is himself facing allegations of human trafficking in El Salvador and human smuggling charges in the United States.

An international arrest warrant was issued Saturday for the legal adviser on sex-trafficking charges.

Salvadoran police raided a home in May that turned up passports and an ID card in the names of both Jorge Torres Puello and his alias, Jorge Torres Orellana. Each of the documents bore photos of the same man. His wife was arrested in that raid and charged with sex trafficking, and her trial is pending. [The Miami Herald reported yesterday that she had already been convicted.]

In a phone interview with CNN on Sunday, Jorge Torres Puello acknowledged he is the same man wanted by Salvadoran authorities. He denied the charges against him.

According to the warrant, Torres Puello is accused of running an international sex trafficking ring that lured women and girls from the Caribbean and Central America into prostitution with offers of modeling jobs.

"I never did anything," Torres Puello said Sunday. "I started helping a Dominican pastor helping a lot of people who were stranded to get back to their home countries. We once gave some Nicaraguan and Costa Rican women some money to return home and instead they went to the authorities and put in a complaint against us. I never had anybody against their will."

Torres Puello also denied Salvadoran allegations that he ran a brothel out of his home with wife Ana Josefa Ramirez Orellana, who remains jailed pending trial, according to Salvadoran police.

"I want to clear the Salvador matter up, and I am hiring a lawyer to do that," he said. "I know I am innocent, and I want to clear my past."

His mother, Soledad Puello, told CNN Sunday that she first heard of the Salvadoran accusations when her son called to tell her of his wife's arrest. She said her son told her he had known about the sex ring but wasn't involved in it.

Soledad Puello led CNN to believe that her son remained in the Dominican Republic, but she would not say where.

Torres Puello, who said he was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1977 to a Dominican mother and a Puerto Rican father, also said he is wanted in the United States on charges of smuggling people between Canada and the United States, which he also denied.

He said he spent 18 months in a Canadian jail pending what he called an unsuccessful extradition request by U.S. authorities.

He has served jail time in the United States before, he said -- one year in 1998 for handling funds related to a drug-trafficking operation, and he was jailed again briefly between late 2001 and January 2002 for violating parole. He denied the drug charge.

Both his mother and Torres Puello say he served briefly in the U.S. Army in a military intelligence unit, and Torres Puello said he also worked undercover with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

A family photo shows Torres Puello in a military uniform alongside a truck with the words "U.S. Military" printed across the bumper.
CNN was unable to reach government officials to confirm his claims of working with the military, the DEA and Homeland Security.

Torres Puello's statements regarding the charges against him could not be immediately verified. But on Sunday, four men showed up at his mother's home while CNN reporters were present. The men said they were from the U.S. Embassy and looking for Torres Puello.

One of the men told Soledad Puello that her son has three outstanding arrest warrants -- two in the United States and one in El Salvador. He did not specify the charges. One of the men was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "U.S. Marshals Service, Fugitive Task Force."

Torres Puello offered to provide legal assistance to the American missionaries shortly after they were jailed in January after trying to cross the Dominican border carrying 33 children without proper documentation. At the start of last week, he was seen at court in Haiti organizing a new defense team for the group after their previous lawyer, Edwin Coq, resigned.

Torres Puello said he read about the case and decided to offer his services for free. However, Torres Puello's stepfather, Franco Ceminara, said the arrested Americans' families had already wired more than $40,000 to his stepson. A receipt provided by Torres Puello's family to CNN showed the Haitian lawyers are charging $40,000 to represent the Americans. The receipt, for an advance payment of $10,000, was signed by Aviol Fleurant, one of the Americans' three-person defense team.

Family and church representatives in Idaho, where most of the 10 Americans are from, told CNN earlier in the week that they had not paid money to the man they know as Jorge Puello.

Regarding the American missionaries Torres Puello said: "Prior to this earthquake I never knew those people (the Americans). When I read about their case, I just decided to help them. I'm in the real estate business and was working with a team of lawyers."

Previous Posts: 1, 2, 3.

Comments

[Critical minyan]

Like the satmar of Williamsburg, and Hasidic factions such as Tilsit aaron, I doubt this guy is really Jewish. The difference is merely how long the ruse and deception is going on.

[Critical minyan]

Toldot Aaron

[Critical minyan]

Toldot Aaron

[Critical minyan]

Toldot Aaron

[Bill]

Are the people who got caught trying to traffic the children out of Haiti "real" Baptists?

Would a "real" Baptist traffic in poor children?

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

Bill,
It shouldn't be surprising if they were.

Baptists have a tradition of each church being independent, so they each make their own halacha as it were. Moreover, most would be eager to "save souls" by removing them from the more prevalant Haitian practices of Catholicism and/or Santeria.

On the other hand, the American Baptist Church has a strong liberal traditon, and may indeed just be out to alleviate suffering and save lives.

[who knows?]

Ok, one question about Puello has been answered - he is a carrier criminal.

The second question remains open - Is he a Jewish haredi criminal? or is he a non-Jewish criminal masquerading as a religious Jew?

[Dr. Bruce]

For all of you who commented that his pictures did not match, are you now satisfied this is the real guy?

[Bill]

Cheif Rabbi, a rabbi who knows a thing or two about Baptists.

I like that!

[george]

Isn't it pretty damn clear he is not Jewish at all, and clearly not Haredi as claimed by Shama - so Shama, since you're so big on requesting appoligies, isn't it time you be a man and offer up a big one (and merely failing to label him Haredi in your headline is not that appology, it's merely a sneaky way of backtracking from your inept Nancy Drew investigation of his religious background).

[forty eighter]

The 10 missionaries were about to be released. Now, because they involved themselves with this piece of scum, their case has become complicated. I bet you this matter will drag on for a long time yet.

Guess who all the baptists across the world will blame.

Like we really needed this now.

[maven]

George, this was of course disgracefully handled by Agent Shmarya from the start, whose "investigative reporting" consisted of selected quotes from the media ("heard on MSNBC") and continued haredi bashing even though early on it could be seen that the guy was not chareidi and not even Jewish.
But it doesn't matter, Chareidim are, in this blog's world view, child prostitution traffickers anyway.

[markstevens]

Read the Idaho Statesman article, he is NOT A RELIGIOUS JEW. He's simply a nutcase.

[Old Man]

It is obvious that this man is part of the Chareidim community, lets face it Chareidim are NOT exclusively Jewish they are people who would dress alike and espouse a certain belief in total contradiction to reality, self-serving, and self dealing without any regards to others feeling, understanding, acting as the holy person who would not compromise God’s will but in reality the Yamaha the black coat and the beard is just a façade, to trick you in believing there piousness, Jewish or not is irrelevant, they practices some seventeenth century false Judaism and they want us to believe in them but lately its ugly head keeps raising we need to just stumped back into the ground.

[Brooklyndreaming]

Alas it seems this guy is far from Chabad. Buried deep in the bunker under the snow Shmaya finds all kind of nefarious connections in far away Dominican Republic.

Now it seems this guy has nothing to do with Chabad. Shamaya should issue an apology to the Chabad rabbi in Santa Domingo for claiming he knows that there is a connection and Rabbi Pelman must be lying.

At the least maybe a positive post of the rabbis heroic activities sending in truckloads of food to poor Haitians and kosher MRE's to the Israeli army.

[Shmarya]

Please.

And Pelman originally only sent food to Jews. He got outed and changed.

[maven]

Apparently according to Agent Shmarya, Puello, a veteran scammer, creating a cover story of being a Jew, registering a phony organization as part of the cover, perhaps appearing at a synagogue once or twice, and leaving Jewish calendars or the like around is enough to condemn the actual Jewish community, even when the world press has made it very clear that he's not even Jewish.

[Shmarya]

Maven again lies.

The world press did not "make it very clear" Puello isn't Jewish.

Puello claims to be a convert, and that's all the "world press" has so far reported.

Similarly, the Sefardic Jewish Community you say is a phony organization has not in any way been proven so.

All we have is Pelman saying he doesn't know the guy, and my source saying Pelman isn't telling the truth.

maven, you're a jerk. You were wrong about Interpol (and much else) and you won't apologize for what you said about me.

Grow some balls, be a man, and admit you were wrong – the same thing you want me to do, even though you have provided no proof that I am wrong. But there is much proof you, maven, were wrong. Apologize.

[george]

Shama, WHY WON'T YOU APPOLIGIZE FOR CLAIMING THE GUY WAS HEREDI? NO CAJONES?

[Shmarya]

Shama, WHY WON'T YOU APPOLIGIZE FOR CLAIMING THE GUY WAS HEREDI? NO CAJONES?

No, moron. As I made clear several times (and as you ignore) I was told by a source that he davened at Chabad and was haredi.

The only information to counter this comes from Rabbi Pelman, the Chabad rabbi – but he is already suspect over his initial response to Haiti relief and isn't really trustworthy.

[george]

"You were told by a source"? So on the basis of one anonymous person who may or may not have had any personal knowledge of the situation, and based on no other evidence whatsoever that this man was Heridi, and with the newspaper reports indicating his parents had very traditional South American Christian names, you were willing to label this man Heredi. And you still won't appoligize for tarring an entire group of Jews based on your flimsy evidence?

Shama, you're not a man.

[Shmarya]

Idiot.

He affiliated with haredim.

Is his conversion legit? Did he even have a conversion?

We don't know.

But we do know that until questions about his El Salvador crimes became public, no one in small DR Jewish community said anything to any reporter indicating Puello wasn't Jewish, wasn't Orthodox and wasn't haredi.

That would give a smart person pause.

It doesn't give you pause, for obvious reasons.

[george]

Shama, I'm about to give you some really good advice, so stop being a jerk and listen: you have a choice of being the National Enquirer of the Haredi world, or its Globe. Why you would want to be either is beyond me, but you do, so at least do it right if you want to be taken seriously. The questions you've now asked about the scammer (did he convert, by whom, at what level) are all good ones - that if you are to label him Haredi need to be answered - but in the absence of such evidence you don't have near enough to label him Haredi. The absence of proof doesn't make a statement true - that I can't prove the moon isn't made of blue cheese doesn't prove that it is made of blue cheese. So chill, hold back the bile, and act in a more responsible fashion.

[Shmarya]

Learn how to spell my name. Lean how to be polite. And learn how to process fact.

When you pass those hurdles come back and lecture me on my reaction to your stupidity.

[Jorge Torres Puello]

Hanna Has not been convicted as a matter of facts 3 of the charges have been dissmissed by the Judge on Thuesday march 9, 2010.