Scandal in Ecuador: A former soldier who set up a pyramid scam with Armed Forces customers appeared dead

The body of Miguel Nazareno, known as “Don Naza”, the former Ecuadorian military man who starred in a scandal when it was discovered that he was collecting money and offering interest rates of 90%, was found south of Quito. The murder occurred a week after Nazareno visited the Ministry of Defense with other suspects. Nazareno entered the military complex, which has high security filters, in a van full of wads of banknotes and then escaped from the military and police authorities carrying out an operation, according to the official version.

Don Naza was found dead on a plot of land in Amaguaña, south of the capital city. His hands were tied with a blue rope and his torso was naked. The first police report indicates that the former soldier had stab wounds. However, the commander general of the police, General Carlos Cabrera, indicated that Nazareno died from a hemorrhage caused by a gunshot wound to his thigh. According to the police, the days before his murder, Nazareno was in the central highlands of Ecuador. The general said they expect Don Naza's relatives to remove his body.

When Nazareno appeared and escaped from the Ministry of Defense on April 7, Defense Minister Luis Hernandez said the institution would not accept any acts of corruption. That same weekend, the minister announced the start of an investigation against six members of the Armed Forces: one officer and five military personnel. Don Naza would have visited at least three times the compound where the Ministry of Defense and the commands of the Ecuadorian Army, Air Force and Navy are located. Just four days later, Nazarene was found dead.

The former soldier was the leader of a money-raising system called “Big Money”, in which Don Naza offered to pay 90% interest to customers in 8 days. When he learned about this pyramid, Nazareno told the media that he started his “company” in 2017, receiving money from 40 partners including military, doctors and “other professionals who risked investing” and indicated that at least 6,000 had trusted him with their money.

The police report on the Nazareno murder indicates that the alert of the discovery of the body occurred when a man entered his livestock into the land where the body was. The man called 911 and the police came to the scene. There they found “an Afro-Ecuadorian citizen, who was in the position of his dorsal ulna lying on the track, tied with a blue rope and apparently has stab wounds”.

The Minister of the Interior, Patricio Carrillo, ordered the National Police to act with “transparency, and that with all its investigative and technological capacity it be placed at the service of the Public Prosecutor's Office”. For its part, the Ecuadorian Public Prosecutor's Office still classifies murder as “suspected”.

Don Naza's death occurred on the same day that it would be defined whether he was called to trial. The Prosecutor's Office was investigating him for the crime of illegally collecting money.

Miguel Nazareno operated in Quevedo, a coastal city in Ecuador. After learning about his death, people who left their money with Nazareno do not know if they will recover their capital. According to experts, with Don Naza dead there is no one responsible for that money invested, moreover, state institutions cannot intervene because the recruitment was carried out illegally.

The assassination of Nazarene stretches a veil of suspicion and mistrust around the Armed Forces. In public opinion, it is questioned whether the soldiers investigated, or those that Don Naza said were his clients, are the perpetrators of the crime. Even the journalist, Andersson Boscan, who has issued harsh questions to the Armed Forces and said that “the worst mafia in this country wears camouflage uniform”, denounced that, after his statements, he has launched a smear campaign against them.

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