American Man Married To Granddaughter Of The Late Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin Charged With Producing $2 million In Counterfeit Notes...

Ryan Gustafson, 28, (pictured), an American married to the granddaughter of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and counterfeiting charges

BY LEAH MCDONALD

Ryan Gustafson, 28 pleaded guilty to conspiracy and counterfeiting charges
He is married to the granddaughter of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin
His parents are missionaries from Montana but he has lived in Africa for years
He was arrested in Uganda in 2014 when police found fake money and other evidence linking him to a counterfeiting ring at his residence
His operation was uncovered when an associate used a fake bill to buy a latte at Peet’s Coffee Shop in Oakland in 2013

A son of missionaries who later married into the family of an African dictator has admitted to his role in an international counterfeiting operation.

Ryan Gustafson, 28, an American married to the granddaughter of the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and counterfeiting counts on Thursday in Pittsburgh.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that prosecutors said Gustafson's operation was uncovered after one of his confederates bought coffee in Pittsburgh with a fake $100 bill.

The U.S. Secret Service said Gustafson had originally been arrested in Uganda in 2014 when police there raided his residence and found fake money and other evidence linking him to a counterfeiting ring.

Gustafson, who is the son of missionaries and is originally from Montana, was extradited from Africa to Pittsburgh in December 2015 to face trial here.

Asked by U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak how he pleaded, he answered 'guilty' to three counts and acknowledged responsibility for others which can be considered at sentencing.

He faces charges including conspiracy to manufacture and sell counterfeit currency, conspiracy to launder money and committing counterfeiting acts outside the U.S.

Gustafson is married to Sherry Amin Gustafson, granddaughter of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and his father-in-law is Taban Amin, is a high-ranking Ugandan official, according to TribLive.com.

Gustafson is accused of leading an international counterfeit U.S. currency operation headquartered in Uganda, which flooded the country and the U.S. with more than $2 million in counterfeit Federal Reserve Notes.

Although counterfeit notes were manufactured in Uganda, by December 2013, the bills were being passed in Pittsburgh-area retail stores and businesses.

His plea deal calls for a sentence of 74 months, which takes into account time he already served in a Ugandan prison for counterfeiting.

When he was arrested, police raided his residence and found fake money, computers, printers and life-like rubber gloves called 'Anon Hands' designed to conceal fingerprints.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Shardul Desai claimed that in 2013 he set up a site on the dark web called Community-X, which was dedicated to buying and selling counterfeit bills.

He used the pseudonym 'Willy Clock' or 'Jack Farrel' for his operation, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

He later split the site into two sites, using one to sell and ship counterfeit money to U.S. customers who would wire him real money as payment.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one customer was Joe Graziano, a former Bank of New York Mellon employee in Pittsburgh who used a fake bill to buy a latte at Peet’s Coffee Shop in Oakland in 2013.

That transaction launched the investigation that led to Gustafson.

Graziano was sentenced to to 7 and a half years in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $4 million in restitution to various corporate victims he defrauded through various financial scams.

Gustafson is due to be sentenced on July 23 although that date could change. If convicted of the charges, he faces for a prison sentence of 45 years, a fine of $1,000,000, or both.

Sherdal Desai said Gustafson is a flight risk as his wife and child are in Uganda and he has insisted that he wants to be with them there.

'He fought aggressively to prevent his deportation back to the United States, including refusing a medical examination,' Desai said in court papers.

He also claimed that Gustafson’s passport is missing and he can make a fake one with his computer skills.

His missionary parents are living in Rwanda, and he’s spent most of his life in Africa despite his ties to the U.S., Desai said.

Idi Amin ruled the East African country of Uganda from 1971 until he was deposed by a combined Ugandan rebel and Tanzanian force in 1979.

It is estimated that more than 200,000 Ugandans were tortured and murdered during Amin’s regime, while human rights groups put the figure closer to 500,000 people. He died from kidney failure in 2003 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

SOURCE OF ORIGINAL ARTICLE

I was raised by monkeys after being kidnapped and abandoned in jungle as a child, says Marina Chapman

FEW housewives could boast of a compelling and exotic life story to rival that of Marina Chapman.

BY HELEN WEATHERS/DAILY MAIL/ADELAIDE NOW

Marina Chapman claims she was raised by a troop of capuchin monkeys in the jungles of Colombia Source: Herald Sun

Born in Colombia, it is said she was kidnapped aged four and abandoned in the jungle, where for five extraordinary years she was raised by a colony of capuchin monkeys.

As their adopted daughter, she claims she learned to scale trees and catch birds and rabbits with her bare hands, her Tarzan-like existence coming to an end only when she was discovered by hunters.

Her story is the subject of a book called The Girl With No Name, due to be published in Britain next year. There are also plans for a TV documentary.

The PR blurb for the book, the rights to which have already been sold in seven countries, says breathlessly of her capuchin "family": "By following them and copying what they ate and drank, their social activities, their language, Marina gradually became part of the family for five extraordinary years.

"They fought, played and shared tender and terrifying experiences. Marina developed extraordinary super-human abilities such as tree-climbing, stealth and animal communication."

Compelling indeed, especially when set against the backdrop of her adopted home of Bradford, where she trained as a cook, worked at the National Media Museum, then switched careers to help troubled young children, after marrying a local bacteriologist in the 1970s.

Yesterday Marina — who believes herself to be in her 50s but cannot be certain of her birthdate — declined to elaborate further when she answered the door at her three-bedroomed semi in the middle-class suburb of Allerton. She politely explained that a publishing deal prevented her from speaking about her past.

An avid church-goer, she is popular with her neighbours, who speak of her caring nature - rather than her unusual childhood. In fact, the neighbours we spoke to had no idea of her time running with monkeys, for in Bradford she is better known for once cooking a quiche for the Duke of Kent, who apparently declared it "the best I’ve ever had".

Her 64-year-old husband John, a former church organist, spoke only to insist, good-humouredly, that they had not raised their children like monkeys. This was in response to their 28-year-old daughter Vanessa’s comment in one report at the weekend that: "When we wanted food, we’d have to make noises for it."

Certainly, Marina is not the only feral child believed to have been reared by animals, and experts say monkeys are known to accept young humans into their fold.

In 1991 a six-year-old Ugandan boy, John Ssebunya, was found hiding in a tree having spent three years in the wild, cared for to some extent by vervet monkeys. Now aged 27, he learned to speak and sing, touring with a choir.

In another famous case, in 1996, two-year-old Bello was found living with chimpanzees in northern Nigeria. He was believed to have been abandoned at six months old and when first discovered he walked like a chimp, dragging his arms on the ground. He died in 2005.

Other feral children have been raised by wolves, goats and dogs - but capuchin monkeys? This is the one aspect of Marina’s story which has left some primate experts well and truly baffled. Especially as the average height of a capuchin is between 30cm and 50cm.

One expert told us: "Chimpanzees, yes, I could imagine that. And possibly orangutans. But capuchins? That would be truly extraordinary.

"Capuchins are very sociable and intelligent animals, but they can also be highly aggressive, territorial and vicious. They have been known to kill each other in territorial disputes.

"An adult male capuchin monkey weighs around 6 or 7kg, about half the size of a three-year-old child. It wouldn’t be able to pick up a baby, let alone a small girl of four.

"They live in colonies of around 30 or 40 and roam the jungle, covering around 12-18km a day, so how a human would be able to follow them and become part of the colony I do not know.

"I could imagine a young child learning certain skills from capuchins, especially from those primates which have grown up in areas populated by humans, but it stretches the imagination to think of a child becoming a part of a capuchin family."

This, one can only suppose, makes Marina’s survival in the jungle all the more remarkable.

Indeed, the book publicity adds: "Surrounded by terrifying noises and trapped by its sheer suffocating deafness, half-drugged and starving, Marina tried to find her way home. She searched for food and water along the way, competing with big cats, poisonous spiders, giant pythons, extraordinary insects and huge bats."

How Marina integrated back into society after five years isolated from human company is not explained.

However, her account does detail how the hunters who found her in the jungle sold her into prostitution in exchange for a parrot, and how she managed to escape before having to see her first client - only to end up on the streets of Cucuta, reputedly one of Colombia’s most lawless cities, picking pockets to survive.

Eventually she led her own gang of thieves made up of orphans and homeless children.

In her mid-teens she found employment with a Colombian family as a maid. She lived with the family, but worked mainly for the neighbours, who were in the textile business.

When they went on a six-month trip to Bradford in the mid-Seventies, they took her along. It was here, in 1977, that Marina Luz - the name she gave herself - married John, whom she had met at a church meeting. They had two daughters, brought up, so this remarkable tale goes, in part as if they were monkeys.

As for who took her into the jungle in the first place, one of Marina’s daughters, composer and model Vanessa James, said her mother’s abduction was by unknown kidnappers, presumably seeking a ransom.

"It’s assumed that the kidnap went wrong," she said in an interview. "All she can remember is being chloroformed with a hand over her mouth. And all she can remember of her life before that is having a black doll as a toddler.

"Obviously she learned to fend for herself and only once got very ill when she ate something poisonous."

Vanessa said of her childhood, which involved creepy-crawlies and mammals being brought into the house: "All my school friends loved Mum because she was so unusual. She was childlike, too, in many ways.

"I got bedtime stories about the jungle, as did my sister. We didn’t think it odd — it was just Mum telling her life."

Mother and daughter returned to Colombia five years ago in a failed attempt to trace Marina’s parents, and decided to write her story - until now unknown outside her close family - to highlight the problems of child abduction and trafficking.

A share of the profits from the book will be donated to charities fighting human trafficking and child slavery in Colombia.

Marina was signed up by literary agent Andrew Lownie, who yesterday explained he too is unable to talk about her book until it is published.

However, a biography of Marina on his website describes her as ‘an exceptionally rare, arguably unique example of an abused, uneducated feral child who has somehow survived and conquered her misfortune.

"Part of the wild child is still very much in her; she has spent much of her time in England embarrassing her children by scaling trees in seconds, catching wild birds and rabbits with her bare hands, as well as milking the odd passing cow."

One thing’s for sure, this Bradford housewife’s story gets more and more curious with every detail.

Nigerian Recycling Worker 'Smuggled Into Britain Before Brainwashing Them With African Withcraft To Turn Them Into Prostitutes'

Osezua Osolase, 42, 'cast spells over three victims using juju magic rituals to stop them running away'

He allegedly sexually assaulted teenage girls

Recycling worker believed to have more victims

BY LARISA BROWN, DAILY MAIL

A Nigerian recycling worker smuggled young children into Britain before brainwashing them with African witchcraft to try and force them into prostitution.

Osezua Elvis Osolase, 42, is accused of 13 offences of trafficking, rape, false imprisonment and sexual activity with a child.

He allegedly cast spells over his three victims, all originally from Nigeria, using juju magic rituals in order to stop them from running away, a court has heard.

He is also alleged to have sexually assaulted the girls - who are now aged 15, 17 and 18 - and it is believed he has many more victims.

Juju refers to traditional West African religions involving objects of superstition and witchcraft.

In one case, the court heard, Osolase took the 17-year-old-girl to a place of 'witchcraft' in April last year and forced her to bathe using a red cloth and blood.

The girl then had her armpit hair cut, toe and finger nails cut and blood was taken from her right hand before she was told the spell would kill her if she tried to run away.

During the opening of the eight week trial today, Canterbury Crown Court heard the three girls were shipped to the UK from Nigeria in preparation for being sold as prostitutes in Italy.

Sara Ellis, prosecuting, said: 'This case involves allegations in respect of three young Nigerian girls who were trafficked from Nigeria into the UK in order to traffic them out of the UK and to Europe for the purposes of prostitution.

In this case the complainants were subjected to juju rituals in an effort to ensure that they would do as they were told, that they would not run away, that they would repay the defendant and that they would never reveal the truth about what really happened to them and the ordeals to which they were subjected for fear of death or serious harm.

'You will hear something about juju ceremonies during the trial and the very powerful effect that they can have on people like the complainants in this case.'

The court heard Osolase, who lives with a German woman in Gravesend, Kent, had found his alleged 17-year-old victim begging on the streets of Nigeria.

The former security guard told her would take her to Britain to help her get an education.

Ms Ellis said: 'He called himself ‘Victor’ and took her to a large house - a place she described as a "place of witchcraft".

'There she was given what she described as "native port", a mixture which looked like blood and a red cloth.

'She was told to use this liquid to bathe and to tie a cloth around herself after doing so.

'A man came and cut hair under her armpits and finger and toenails and blood from her right hand.

'She was told this was to ensure she did not run away and would repay Victor.

'She said it was an "oath" and if she ran away the charm would find her.

'She was told that if she ran away or didn’t pay that she would die. She believed it.'

Ms Ellis told the court the 17-year-old was then given a passport - which had been lost by its genuine owner some years earlier - and flown to the UK then Italy.

However, when she reached the airport she refused to go through customs and begged Italian officials for help, the court heard.

The prosecutor said the teenager was returned to Stansted Airport, Essex, where she eventually admitted to being Nigerian.

The same month the 15-year-old was alleged to have been brought to the UK and taken to Osolase’s home where she claimed she was sexually abused.

Ms Ellis said that she was also taken along with the 17-year-old and sent to Italy again with a stolen passport.

In July the 18-year-old arrived in Britain and was locked inside a flat and told she was going to Italy to meet “her madam” and to work as a prostitute, the court heard.

The prosecution claimed that an investigation of Osolase’s travelling in Europe revealed that the three were not his only victims.

The trial at Canterbury Crown Court is expected to last eight weeks and among the prosecution witnesses will be an expert in juju.