María Teresa, considered by the Police to be an intermediary for drug trafficking on the Costa del Sol, in a shopping center.
crossfit
lover ,
expensive clothes and the most exclusive restaurants, María Teresa - her last name has not been revealed -, nicknamed La Modelo by the police officers who investigated her, passed for a lady from high society in Marbella (Málaga).
She was a client of the luxury stores in Puerto Banús, she changed cars frequently and had an encrypted phone.
She lived in a huge and luxurious house where she was found by the agents who, on September 20, broke into the house at six in the morning to arrest her.
The operation put an end to the long career of this 49-year-old Colombian who arrived on the Costa del Sol at the hands of Michel Courtet, a French drug trafficker with whom she has three children.
Since then, she accumulated power in the shadows, until that early morning she calmly came down from her room to meet the policemen,
that they only found a kilo of cocaine decorated with the Rolls Royce logo in the closet.
Awaiting trial, he is behind bars in the Alhaurín de la Torre prison, also in Malaga.
Police believe that María Teresa came to Marbella in the early 2000s after meeting Courtet in Colombia.
Since then they have resided in Villa Elaumar, owned by a company based in a tax haven.
It was the house where years before an explosive device had exploded —in which a chocolate bar and a 20 pence coin had been attached— as part of a French mafia war.
Her husband, investigated in the case of money laundering
White Whale
,
fell in Portugal in 2005 with 6,100 kilos of cocaine.
Later she also became her brother-in-law, but she emerged unscathed from that mess.
The situation was repeated over the years: her second husband was also arrested with 200 kilos of cocaine and many other people around her were arrested in Spain or Europe.
She was always left out.
She came to believe that she was an informer of the North American DEA.
Until in 2020, confidential information placed her as an intermediary in a shipment of cocaine to Spain from Colombia by air.
Cocaine package with the Roll Royce logo seized from María Teresa.
An investigation led by the Special Response Group for Organized Crime (Greco) of the Costa del Sol began, which focused on gathering evidence of his alleged activity related to drug trafficking.
The agents began to know everything about his life.
Who did he move with, where did he travel, what was his family like?
They discovered that he had a personal trainer and cook at home.
That she practiced
crossfit
frequently and liked to go "to the nines", which is why those who have investigated her gave her the alias
La Modelo
.
They also found out that he communicated with an encrypted phone and changed rental cars frequently as a security measure.
And that his job was, presumably, to put the sellers in Colombia and the buyers settled in Spain in contact with each other.
She passed for a businesswoman or member of Marbella's high society.
One more.
She has very good contacts in Marbella, but also in Madrid or Barcelona, where she held meetings on occasion.
When she traveled, "the appointment took place in the best restaurant, she went to a party in the best discotheque with the best reservation and slept in the best hotel," the researchers say.
She never paid, they always invited her.
She "used her image very well," say the same sources, who explain that she was able to sit down and negotiate with those who others did not have access to.
“There are few women with so much power.
This is usually a world of men”, says a policeman, who hardly remembers similar profiles, except for specific cases such as that of Ana María Carmeno, sentenced a few weeks ago to 16 years in prison for trafficking cocaine.
'Jacuzzi' by María Teresa in her house in Marbella.
Born in 1973, she is the mother of four children and the grandmother of a granddaughter.
She was the head of her family clan and a good part of her members —who depended on her financially— lived in the same house as hers in Marbella, Villa Elaumar.
Located in the Valdeolletas area, the Colombian's room had a
jacuzzi
and a huge mirror on the ceiling.
According to the
Idealista
real estate portal , it is a 1,790-square-meter chalet built in 1975 on a 3,425-square-meter plot, with a tennis court and swimming pool.
The portal indicates that its value ranges between 1.6 and 2.3 million euros.
Curtet, now free, has been seen going in and out of the house several times.
The police investigation was progressing as he waited for the perfect moment for the arrest.
The first information spoke of a shipment of cocaine that would fly from Colombia and they waited for it to arrive to intervene and arrest it.
The problem is that the sale operation broke down after a middleman suffered the theft of a large amount of money in the Netherlands.
Commercial relations were severed, but the agents continued with their work because they had another point to hold on to: a gang of Polish drug traffickers with whom this Colombian woman was related.
They are considered "violent and dangerous" and only four of its members accumulated 20 arrests in their country for robbery, drug trafficking, fraud, document forgery or kidnapping.
In a previous performance of Operation Dryada, they had already arrested several of its members with 200 kilos of marijuana.
Finally, September 20 was the date set to finish the work.
At six in the morning that Tuesday, they made arrests at the same time in Barcelona, Murcia, Alicante and various points in the province of Malaga, as well as Marbella.
A total of 16 people, including María Teresa, who did not expect police action.
In her closet, a one-kilo package of cocaine was found adorned with a Rolls Royce logo — an ornament presumably placed by the drug supplier — and a small opening in one of its corners.
It was the sample that she offered to her clients to try.
And one of the tests that has allowed this historic drug trafficker to end up in prison.