A convicted Portuguese conman and former lavish-lifestyle Playboy broke out of jail in France with the help of his gun-toting wife recently in a bid to escape extradition to Portugal.
Jorge Queiroz, 55, known as the “Portuguese Madoff” for pyramid schemes that fleeced people out of as much as €300 million, ended up back in custody within hours, writes Correio da Manhã, as his ‘carefully prepared’ escape plan collapsed under a hail of bullets.
According to the paper, he only managed to hide in a building metres from where he escaped, and gave himself up without resistance within a couple of hours.
He has been in prison on Montpelier since June 2015, and is believed to have decided to break out when he learnt that he had lost his latest appeal against extradition to Portugal where he is wanted for a string of alleged fraudulent schemes and activities.
The ‘escape plan’ involved pretending he had slipped and hurt himself, and then being transferred to hospital.
It was when he was being released from hospital in the company of three guards that his wife, also Portuguese, appeared, wielding a gun and spraying the guards with pepper spray.
But the guards were more resilient than the couple expected. Still managing to fire on them, despite being semi-blinded by pepper spray.
Queiroz went one way, the wife another. She was later picked up by French authorities, from a house where she was found in possession of €20,000 “kept for the escape”.
With Queiroz and his spouse behind bars, it is just a matter of time now before the Portuguese Madoff returns home to face various charges that purportedly go back to the mid-90s.
