I only met a true Mafioso once in my life.

In the early 1990´s, I responded to an advertisement in the Nicaraguan newspaper ‘La Prensa’.  An international student exchange organization was being set up in the country:  interested parties were to apply in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Managua.  Jobs were scarce in the country, and the lobby was filled with hopeful applicants.  An older German man, fluent in Spanish, was holding the interviews.  I was hired on the spot as the manager of one aspect of the soon-to-be-founded company: a Cross-Cultural “PenPal” scheme, wherein students from Nicaraguan high schools would write letters to students in high schools from around the world, establishing friendships and getting a glimpse into diverse cultures.  It sounded great and fit right into my university education in cross-cultural communication. In the economy of the day,  I was happy to have a job.

There were two other things going on with the overall parent company:  one was a program of investment in the Nicaraguan artisan community:  local arts and crafts (wooden carvings, wallets, key chains, etc.) would be promoted for sale in the U.S. and Europe, garnering a higher price than available locally.  Artisans simply had to forward their goods and later receive the benefits of a much higher sale price than that they could receive locally.   The other aspect of the company, somewhat removed from the exchange program and arts and craft initiatives, was an investment scheme in high return businesses.

I dove energetically into the cross-cultural “Pen Pal” program, visiting schools and working with teachers and students to write letters to a future pen pal in another country, with the guarantee they would receive a response and soon be on the road to a long-term relationship with a boy or girl in another country.  There was a lot of enthusiasm, and I would then take the letters back to the office to be processed and mailed.  It was not long before I began to suspect that all might not be as it was promoted.

I soon discovered the way the Nicaraguan children’s letters were being processed.  We were provided with computerized sheets of the generic addresses of small schools in towns and villages throughout the U.S. and Europe, along with the names of the head of the school.  After being translated, the letters from a particular Nicaraguan school would be bundled in a large envelope and addressed to “Dear Mr. or Mrs. XXX, Director of XXXX school, Village XXX in France…”  A cover letter would describe the benevolent program of promoting exchange between school children of Nicaragua with the students of his or her school.  Could they not see it in their hearts to work with their students to write back, thus promoting a truly international connection that would, hopefully, change the world?

And then I found out about the connection of the student exchange program with the arts and crafts international sales scheme being set up “separately”.

Inside the envelopes being sent with the children’s letters was an additional envelope, containing a small piece of Nicaraguan craftwork.  The Directors of the targeted schools from the computerized mailing list were asked “Could you also see in it your hearts to support this program of working with the children of local artisans to provide a donation for this simple piece of craftwork?  Please feel free to keep it by any means.”  A school director in a village in France, Germany, England or the U.S. would often not hesitate to provide a generous donation to such a program, sending by return mail a contribution of ten or twenty dollars, often more – for a piece of craftwork that cost one dollar to produce and for which a local Nicaraguan artisan was happy to receive two or three dollars.

I of course began to question the obvious scam nature of the program I found myself being employed by.  I began to discuss the situation with a co-worker who had also noticed the irregularities.  We discovered that the entire enterprise was being promoted by an El Salvador consortium of “investors”.  As we began to delve deeper into the way the business was being run and discussed ways in which we should react, the German manager who had hired everyone announced that we were to receive a visit from the El Salvadoran “Boss Man”. 

The day of the meeting, we all sat around a table in the offices of the Exchange Program.  The German sat to the side of the most stereotype gangster I had ever seen.  He had on a silk shirt, opened to the waist with manly hair covering his chest and sleeves rolled up to mid-forearm.  Around his neck he had a heavy gold-link chain.  His wrist held an oversized gold Rolex watch.  He wore a pair of dark aviator glasses.  As the German made the introductions and spoke of the progress of the business, the Salvadoran remained silent, glancing from employee to employee.  When the German finished his spiel and turned to the Salvadoran boss to ask him if he had any words for the group, he very slowly took off his sunglasses, turned his head first to the co-worker that I had discussed the anomalies with and then to me and said, pointedly “I don´t say a lot.  But I HEAR everything.”  I have seldom felt more threatened by a single glance.

The following day, the suspicious co-worker and I were fired.

The cross-cultural and arts and craft businesses shortly after disappeared, fading away as quickly as they had appeared, leaving hundreds of Nicaraguan school children awaiting their international pen pals.  I found out later that the third element – the gathering of investments for high return businesses, was the real money making scam of the three.  It was the classic pyramid scheme:  Give us, say, $2,000 of your savings and we will invest in high return business development.  For your investment, we will pay you 90% interest over a six month period!  By investing your money wisely, we will pay you the interest AND, so that you don´t feel any risk, will make repayment plus interest, in equal quotas every month after you provide us your cash.  The El Salvador “investment company” eventually disappeared from Nicaragua with over US$500,000 in hard earned cash from small and medium investors who fell for the “get rich quick” scheme.