Career confidence man arrested at US border

Juan Carlos Guzman-Betancourt, 33, of Colombia, who is facing a burglary charge in Las Vegas, was arrested last month at a gas station near the US-Canadian border in Vermont. He waived his right to appear in court and entered his plea through his lawyer.

Authorities said he has at least 10 aliases and has talked his way into other people’s hotel rooms and locked safes.

In Las Vegas, he is accused of impersonating a hotel guest and making off with a large amount of jewelry and cash in 2003 in what is reported to be his biggest heist, said Barbara Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas police.

Guzman is facing charges of burglary, larceny, and forgery in that case, she said.

He first showed up in the United States in 1993 at a Miami airport pretending to be a 13-year-old orphan named Guillermo Rosales, who had survived a flight from Colombia in the wheel well of a plane, although specialists have questioned how he survived the trip.

He has been deported from the United States three times, authorities said.

Guzman reportedly was last in custody in Dublin, after authorities said he escaped from a prison outside London in 2005 by persuading authorities to let him go to a dental appointment without a guard.

British prosecutors and police have compared him to legendary American con man Frank Abagnale Jr., the subject of the film “Catch Me If You Can,’’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

At his London trial, prosecutors described how he wandered into high-class London establishments, impersonating wealthy guests and pretending to have lost his keys or forgotten his security code. Obliging staff systematically helped the sharply dressed charmer into strangers’ safes, and he made off with cash and jewelry, prosecutors said.

He has also been wanted in Canada, Colombia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Thailand, and Venezuela, according to a 2005 Associated Press report.

He was born in Roldanillo, a town in Colombia’s sugar cane-growing Cauca Valley, to Oscar Guzman and Maria Yolanda Betancur, according to the civil registry of Roldanillo.

They could not be reached for comment.

In the United States, he has been convicted of larceny in Virginia and New York and of fraudulent use of credit cards in Florida.

In Vermont, he was arrested using another name and passport after telling a Border Patrol agent that his car had broken down in Quebec and he had unknowingly walked across the border, said Border Patrol agent Peter Costas, who filed the affidavit.

Fingerprints identified him as Guzman, who records show has been removed from the United States three times: from Miami in 1994 and 1995 and from San Juan, Puerto Rico, the affidavit said.

He potentially faces deportation to Colombia, prosecutors said.