Charged Cuban Santería Santería contexts Ibagué, Tolima, Colombia · 2024

Ibagué: santería practitioners charged with extorting clients using disclosures from spiritist sessions

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Charged

Authority role

practitioners offering santería and esoteric ritual services

Organization

No organization assigned

Spiritual nexus

The ritual consultation itself was the extraction mechanism: the spiritist session was staged specifically to elicit confidential and intimate disclosures that were later weaponized for extortion, rather than being an incidental setting.

Prosperity, divination, or curse-removal claim
Threatened spiritual consequence

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2024-05-29 · charges — extortion

Fiscalía General de la Nación (GAULA-Tolima), Colombia. Three people who recruited clients via social media offering santería and esoteric services were charged with extortion after using private information disclosed during 'sesiones espiritistas' to blackmail clients for 5–13 million pesos under threat of public exposure. The charges are allegations pending adjudication.

Documented coercion mechanisms

spiritist consultation staged to elicit intimate disclosures
blackmail under threat of public exposure

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting charging report 'Judicializados supuestos "brujos" que extorsionaban a sus clientes', Infobae Colombia (citing the Fiscalía / GAULA-Tolima), 29 May 2024.: Infobae, citing the prosecutor, reports the extortion charges and the use of staged spiritist sessions to obtain the material used to blackmail clients.

Contextual record

Background & context

Institutional and pattern-level sources on Cuban Santería, not specific to this one case.

United States v. Diaz, 248 F.3d 1065 (11th Cir. 2001). Available at: courtlistener.com (Accessed: 14 July 2026).: Ritual authority can also be a criminal asset. A federal appeals court upheld the convictions of a Miami kidnapping-and-extortion crew in which two members exploited their standing as Santería priests to scout wealthy victims among their own religious followers: 'Although not physically involved in the robberies and extortions, Lopez and Diaz served as 'tipsters.' They were Santeria priests and used their positions to gain confidential information regarding the financial status of their followers, called 'godchildren.' This information was then passed on to Orestes Hernandez who in turn... targeted the individuals.'

Related record

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