Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller begins by referencing John McAfee's recent news coverage and critiques the lack of depth in media and expat blog coverage. He then introduces the episode's focus on living in Latin America, specifically highlighting his current location in Guatemala and McAfee's recent attempt to seek asylum in Belize. Mueller discusses the economic and social context of Belize, emphasizing that it is one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere with a small population and a unique safety dynamic. He contrasts the safety of small towns with the dangers of larger cities, noting that Belize City, despite its size, defies typical safety patterns due to its history of attracting individuals who have been expelled from smaller towns. Mueller also touches on the economic status of McAfee, suggesting he is still relatively wealthy despite recent financial losses, and highlights the allure of the Belize Islands for expats seeking a beach lifestyle.
Johnny further discusses the social dynamics and safety issues in Belize, particularly in Belize City and Orange Walk. He explains how individuals, like John McAfee, who are wealthy or have a high profile, are often outcasts in small towns and end up moving to bigger cities where they become targets or subjects of attention. He highlights the low cost of living and the ease with which people can be harmed in Belize, noting that even small amounts of money can be used to hire someone to do dangerous things. Johnny also touches on the cultural aspects of Belize, such, as the prevalence of English and Spanish, and how expats often attract unwanted attention from locals who may offer their services for a price.
The segment also discusses the ease with which expats, particularly gringos, can navigate immigration in Latin America, highlighting the porous borders and the use of DPI cards. Johnny also touches on the cultural phenomenon of expats engaging with local communities, including young women, and the potential dangers of such interactions, as exemplified by John McAfee's situation. The segment also includes a personal anecdote about an expat's experience crossing borders with a car, illustrating the complexities of legal documentation and the risks of car theft in the region.
In another segment, Johnny discusses a situation where Eddie and his girlfriend are stuck at a border between Honduras and El Salvador due to a lack of proper car registration documents. Eddie's girlfriend had only a certified copy of the registration, not the original, which the Honduran immigration officer required. This led to a dilemma, as they would have to return to El Salvador to retrieve the original. Johnny explains that in Latin American countries, it's common to carry a certified copy instead of the original, as the original is more vulnerable to theft and misuse. He highlights the importance of the 'gringo advantage' and the power of female presence in navigating bureaucratic challenges. The immigration officer, influenced by the girlfriend's appearance, eventually allowed them to proceed with a temporary document, emphasizing the flexibility and informal rules in the region.
Finally, Johnny discusses John McAfee's escape to Guatemala after being wanted by the Belizean government. He explains the ease of crossing borders by boat, the lax immigration procedures, and the potential for McAfee to disappear without being noticed. Johnny also highlights the political connections and corruption in Guatemala, noting how McAfee used a high-profile lawyer to avoid extradition. He concludes that McAfee could have stayed in Guatemala indefinitely without facing extradition to Belize, and criticizes expat bloggers who lack firsthand experience with the region.
Topics
John McAfee's recent news coverage and his asylum attempt in Belize, The economic and social context of Belize, Safety dynamics in small towns versus larger cities in Latin America, The allure and challenges of living in the Belize Islands, Safety in Belize, Social dynamics in small towns, Expatriate experiences, Cultural context in Belize, Crime and violence in Belize, Expatriate experiences in Latin America, Immigration in Latin America, Cultural interactions between expats and locals
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:32 Introduction to John McAfee's Recent News Coverage 00:02:10 Economic and Social Context of Belize 00:04:25 Safety Dynamics in Small Towns vs. Larger Cities 00:04:54 The Allure and Challenges of the Belize Islands 00:05:59 The Cycle of Exile in Small Towns 00:06:13 The Migration to Big Cities 00:06:39 Population Comparison and McAfee's Situation 00:09:42 The Low Cost of Crime in Belize 00:10:08 Expats and the Risk of Being Targeted 00:11:40 The Ease of Illegal Activities for Expats in Latin America 00:11:43 John McAfee's Involvement with Local Communities 00:11:50 The Cultural Norm of Expats Engaging with Local Women 00:12:01 The Common Experience of Expats in Finding Local Partners 00:12:20 The Gringo Advantage and Its Risks 00:12:48 John McAfee's Legal Troubles and the Gringo Advantage 00:13:10 The Porous Borders of Latin America and Illegal Immigration 00:13:48 An Expat's Experience with Border Crossing and Legal Documentation 00:17:28 The Problem with the Registration Documents 00:18:42 Understanding the Legal Requirements for Car Registration 00:20:34 The Gringo Advantage and the Power of Female Presence 00:23:07 McAfee's Escape to Guatemala 00:23:50 McAfee's Desire for Publicity 00:25:09 McAfee's Legal Strategy 00:26:12 McAfee's Return to the U.S. 00:26:54 Extradition Agreement Absence
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder My thoughts ever straight Hi everybody I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files Living in Latin America the show that tells you what it's really like to live work play and or retire in Latin America I tell it just like it is so let's get started Now I would be remiss if I didn't say a few words about John McAfee Whose recent exploits over the past month or so have been all over the news now initially I wasn't gonna say anything about this because so much press has been out there
[00:46] You didn't need me to tell you anything not to mention all that internet babble from so-called expert expat bloggers Talking about McAfee and a lot of other expat issues blogging from places like upstate New York Pretending to be expert expats just because they have a return address in Latin America somewhere, which is also phony But when it's free on the internet, it's buyer beware, right? Anyway, I know some tidbits that the press doesn't even know about and certainly not those phony expert expat bloggers Who are really blogging from up in the States? Anyway today I'm broadcasting from deep in the coffee fields of Guatemala the place where just this week McAfee tried to get asylum From the police authorities who want him for questioning on a murder charge, but you know all that, right?
[01:33] Well, first, let me say that everyone who's been writing stuff about him has never obviously been to beliefs or Guatemala for that matter and McAfee himself or McAfee Obviously has not been listening to the expat files because the guy just cannot stop from being high-profile expert sources that I have in Guatemala and Belize who are close to the situation say he does walk around like a big shot in A press hound they say he was born with a massive ego and always has had a chip on his shoulder Which have caused the guy a lot of personal problems throughout his life. Not just in the last few months since he's been down here Now first of all, let me tell you something about beliefs It's one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere right behind Haiti And by the way, they don't have any big cities at all down there not on any scale that we're used to in fact
[02:22] Belize City only has about 75,000 people. That's the biggest city in the whole country That's no bigger than any small nameless Midwestern town in the states. Think of it 75,000 people the biggest city in Belize So when a guy like McAfee comes down and a guy who at one time was worth over a hundred million bucks He's a super huge fish in the tiniest of ponds In fact, he could actually buy every property and business in Belize City and have some millions to spare and even though He's not worth near that anymore He's definitely not broke like he claims he is and I'll tell you why I know that in a minute Some claim in the last few years during this big economic slowdown He lost between 50 and 75 million dollars of his personal fortune
[03:07] But that still leaves him they say on the near edge of 50 million bucks So basically this huge fish comes down who is a high-profile guy and Likes to see himself getting written about in the press and now guess what? He's the richest guy in his adopted city if not the entire country and he goes to Belize City Sets up camp there for a while quickly gathering notoriety and an entourage of young girls and hangers on which for a while Was just how he liked it. Now. Let me talk about the capital Belize City for a second Like I said a ton of about 75,000 But it's one of the rare towns that defies my laws of small-town safety You remember like I always say the small towns in Latin America under a hundred thousand are pretty safe Even more so the ones under 50,000 because they're basically self policing in those really small towns
[03:59] The bad boys the repeat offenders they get run out of town on a rail quite often by the locals And they're told never to come back Sometimes they even get stoned beaten lynched right in a town square by their own citizens and that's because the police are basically worthless and That's what I mean by self policing organized bands of delinquents don't last long in small towns like that Anyway, it's those big Latin American cities you read about being so dangerous not the small ones But you already know that if you've been listening to the expat files for any length of time But Belize City is one particular Latin town that defies my small town safety hypothesis I mean there's exceptions to every rule and Belize City is one of them
[04:47] And I really don't recommend it for expats except for a jumping-off point to those beautiful Belize Islands the Belize K's You've probably heard about them. They're a world-class scuba diving destination with world-class prices, too And totally gringo ice and therefore a nice place to visit But you wouldn't want to live there unless you're interested in living the beach life and spending first-world dough But let's get back to Belize City on the mainland You stay in any hotel in Belize City and the front desk guy is gonna give you some strong advice about not to go wandering Too far away from the hotel by yourself, and that's during the daytime and at night you never want to do that Now I'm not saying that the really small towns out in the boonies aren't safe in Belize They are but Belize City being the biggest town seems to be a magnet for all the bad boys that have been chewed out of those
[05:38] small towns by the Self-policing that goes on in those little places what I mean to say is that if there's a small town of let's say 2,000 people and there's a bad boy or two that occasionally steal chickens Do a few break-ins or high stuff from the local convenience store The locals will eventually wise up tar feather and stone the guy give him a swift kick in the ass and send him on His way and tell him never to come back and where is he gonna go to Belize City? Where he's gonna hook up with all the rest of the bad boys who've been kicked out of their small towns And that's pretty much how it happens all throughout Latin America in Honduras For example the small towns they run a guy out on a rail and where does he go? To Tagus Igaopa or San Pedro Sula the two biggest cities That's why certain sections of every big Latin City have their very dangerous zones or districts
[06:28] But by no means does that apply to all sections of big cities There are some very safe spots in every big Latin City You just have to know beforehand where they are by the way I should tell you that the whole country of Belize only has about 300,000 people Think of it this way Cleveland has a third more people than the whole country of Belize now imagine for a second a guy like McAfee Worth over a hundred million bucks when he was really on a roll Picking up his life lock stock and barrel and move into Cleveland well for one thing He's probably be the richest guy in Cleveland and secondly in a couple of weeks Everyone in Cleveland would know about it. They'd know where he lived There'd be a steady flow of gapers in front of his house trying to get a peek and every bar and restaurant
[07:14] He showed up in he'd be a celebrity So if he was the biggest fish in town if he lived in Cleveland imagine What he'd be like in a tiny town like Belize City with only 75,000 people He'd be a whale in a fishbowl, and that's just what he was But Belize City was even too big for him because he ended up moving to a place called Orange Walk Which is the second biggest city in Belize about an hour or so out of Belize City, but it's only got about 15,000 people man think about it a guy with his money and international profile living in a dirt poor town of 15,000 people who knows what he was thinking But it's not like a millionaire moving to a small town of other millionaires like moving to Beverly Hills or Bel Air or a monoco
[08:00] Then you just blend right in and in Orange Walk Belize He's like the only multi-millionaire there by a super long shot too and remember the population is about 80% black and about 18% Moreno Ladino which means dark-skinned Latins with about one or two percent Caucasians in the whole place now because Belize itself is so poor and the average per capita income is only 1200 bucks a year which means a family of four would live on about 4800 bucks annually the average family of four in the US makes 10 times that amount 48,000 bucks a year so that means my comparison of a guy like McAfee moving to Cleveland would basically be more like 10 McAfee's moving to Cleveland at one time if you get the analogy
[08:48] Anyway, so you've got this huge huge fish in the small pond Everybody's talking about him people are gaping at him and his entourage in his house and his cars Whole families making side trips just to see where he lives I mean, it's better than the circus right and it's free and McAfee has a history of being a very paranoid person the guy's known to be heavily into psychotropic drugs In fact, he hired a US chemist to come down to his compound to actually develop certain psychotropic drugs for him and to create a worldwide marketing plan for them Figuring Belize would be a very good place to do that since it's so far off the radar So anyway, the story is that the guy does so many drugs that he's quite unstable Now, let me tell you something about Belize, especially Belize City
[09:35] I've personally talked to the cops down there and they say that for a hundred bucks even 50 bucks You could have somebody bumped off. You know, it's all about the low cost of living, right? And I don't mean a cop's gonna do that Well, maybe they will anyway All I'm saying is that if you're down there long enough low Profiling it and hanging around at the bars and meeting people the bars for the common people I mean not the expat or the tourist bars. Well, if you have certain enemies Eventually, if you want something like that done You're gonna find someone who will offer his services to you and you know expat Eddie can back me up on this 100% both of us have been approached at one time or another by unscrupulous characters in CD bars
[10:21] Guys that want to be friends with you because you're the lone gringo for better or for worse It's that gringo advantage working for you again, which means even the bad guys want to be your friend And by the way, it's almost always expat Eddie who drags his friends into these CD bars I guess we all have a buddy or two like that and though these bad boys have the desire to impress you and to be your friend Very very few of them will ever walk up to you and speak because off the tourist track. They just don't know enough English Except of course in Belize where everyone speaks English and Spanish, too So if you happen to be hanging around in a town like Belize City if you're sitting around having an expresso at a coffee bar Often a local will come up and talk to you and like I said in Belize There's a lot of bad boys hanging out now
[11:08] one reason I don't like hanging around at the local Latin bars is because Gringos often attract guys that end up sticking to him like glue and you just can't get rid of them suddenly You've got a new best friend whether you like it or not You know Anyway, I've had guys like this local guys say to me Johnny You know if you ever need anything done a favor, whatever you name it Just give me a call and I can make it happen now, you know when you hear a proposition like that It's certainly not all on the up-and-up. Anyway, what I'm saying is in Belize City You could get anyone bumped off for fifty or a hundred bucks And I don't doubt for a minute then John McAfee didn't find that out really quick since he's hanging around and Hiring those kinds of people as bodyguards. And yes, you've heard all the stories about him hanging around with young prostitutes and underage girls and stuff
[11:58] But you know, there's really nothing unusual about that I personally know a lot of middle-aged expat Gringos who when they first came down went through exactly the same phase It's just so easy for lovelorn Gringos who don't know anyone when they first get down here and don't know any Spanish to fall Into that trap even first world guys without a bankroll could accumulate a harem in no time It's that gringo advantage thing again. That's why if you go native, you got to be really careful about doing things like that Now I'm not making any moral judgments here All I'm saying is if you hang around with people like that You're gonna get instantly sucked into their sphere of influence the low low class Influence the bad boys and girls that inhabit that world and that's what happened to McAfee and from all accounts
[12:43] It seems he enjoyed every minute of it. So don't feel sorry for the guy you know now you probably have heard on the news that his next-door neighbor or near next-door neighbor a gringo to Got killed shot in the head due to a dispute about barking dogs and stuff Whatever the case may be tempers flared. Somebody got killed and McAfee does have his alibi However, here's what you don't know and nobody in the news is reporting now You see the funny thing about Latin American countries is they're not too strict at all when it comes to immigration I mean, how do you think a million or so illegal aliens migrate up from Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua? Honduras Guatemala Salvador Mexico every year on up through the United States the borders are just
[13:31] Terrifically porous and even when you go through a legitimate border crossing many times if you're a gringo or a first-worlders And your papers aren't quite in order. They'll still let you through talk about the gringo advantage And let me give you a little example of that a few weeks ago I was with expat Eddie and his girlfriend driving from El Salvador on through Honduras and we're in his girlfriend's car Which is a brand new little Kia now when we hit the border We had to park the car and walk over to the immigration stall and show our passports and stuff Eddie and I that is but she has what they call a DPI. It's a personal identification card in Central America You do not need a passport if you're a resident of one of those countries You get a little card looks like a driver's license and you can use that to go through borders
[14:20] You don't have to carry your passport with you mighty convenient, huh? Now that works in every country except Mexico and Costa Rica and why that is is another peculiar story, which I'll save for another show But it all boils down to the fact that Mexico and Costa Rica do not want easy Passage of citizens from other Central American countries into their countries. Not at all But like I said, I'll talk about that in another show Just know that these little DPI's these personal identity cards are good for Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala Nicaragua and Panama those are countries that have an agreement of free passage if you hold that card So anyway Eddie's girlfriend has to go over to another window to show the immigration guy the papers for her car
[15:05] So she can leave the country. That's Salvador and enter Honduras with her car now on the Salvador side of the border It's quite easy for her to drive right through since she's got Salvador plates and a Salvador driver's license In fact, they just waved us through on that side But when we got to the Honduras side of the border about three blocks ahead The three of us again got out of the car and went to the Honduras Immigration authorities had our passport stamped and all that and in her case her DPI her little personal identification card and then when she showed him her paperwork for her car the immigration official Bucked and by the way when you bring a car through that's when they plug the car's data into their computer So they have a record of when you entered because they don't want you to keep your car there more than 30 days
[15:51] And if you go over that 30 days, your car is considered in the country illegally and if you get stopped by the cops They'll impound your car until you pay the import taxes on the blue book value and pay what they call the yearly Registration fee which is called the circulation fee Then you'll get two new license plates put on your car and you'll be permanently legal to drive it there forever Until it dies But you see we didn't have to deal with any of that nor did Eddie's girlfriend because we were only going into Honduras for under 30 days or so we thought but like I said the immigration guy balked when Eddie's girlfriend handed over the car's Registration papers what he wanted her to produce was the cars registration card Called a circulation card down here and it's a little plastic laminated card a little bigger than a driver's license
[16:43] That you get when you originally pay the taxes on the car when you first buy it and if you buy that car used The license bureau will issue you a new one with your name and the cars details like the VIN number and stuff So anyway, the Honduran immigration guy asked Eddie's girlfriend for the little plastic circulation card, which is the registration He wanted to see that her name was on that card and therefore it's not stolen and believe me There's a lot of that going on down here when a car gets stolen The first thing the thieves try to do is to slip it into an adjacent country through one of those Unmanned porous borders I've been talking about and then they either tear it down for parts And if it's a nice new desirable model They'll take it to a chop shop and change the VIN numbers and stuff and either try to match it to an existing
[17:28] Wreck of the same model in year or pay off someone in the license bureau to create all new paperwork for the car anyway, Eddie's girlfriend digs in her purse and she pulls out a photocopy of her circulation registration card a Certified copy with stamps and signatures on the back. It's basically a notarized copy now when Eddie's girlfriend handed that notarized piece of paper To the Honduran immigration guy. He shook his head and said where's the original? You need the original or the original title for the car with your name on it Or else you can't drive your car legally in Honduras now Here's when Eddie starts to freak out a little bit because here we are on a nice long trip part business part pleasure But if we have to go back to the capital El Salvador
[18:13] Which is like an hour's drive or so away back to her house to get that original plastic laminated registration card We stood to lose about three hours in some very bad traffic and surely Eddie and his girlfriend would be at each other's throats All the way there and back. So Eddie says to her. Where's the original? She says it's back at my house in my jewelry drawer with all my other paperwork She said Eddie you're the one who told me to keep it there You told me to just carry a certified copy with me not the original Now let me stop for a second and explain something If you have a car registered in any Latin American country You don't have to carry nor is it necessary to have the original Circulation slash registration card on you in the car All you need to carry around when you drive is one of those certified copies that you get from a lawyer for ten bucks
[19:04] And then if you get pulled over by the cops for any reason or get into an accident You pull that out to prove that you're the owner of the car But that only works in the country that you've registered your car the country whose name you have on your license plates So the fact is Eddie's girlfriend was correct when driving her car in Salvador She'd never taken it out of San Salvador before so she didn't need to have anything else but that certified copy of the original in her glove box and the same thing happens if you're in Guatemala or In Nicaragua or Costa Rica. You just need that certified copy not the original and now I'm sure you're wondering why why wouldn't you carry The original in the car. Well, that's because if your car ever gets stolen if the thief has that original
[19:51] He can use that to create a false ID for himself with whatever name is on that registration card and with that It's much easier to have all new false paperwork made to re-register that car in another name Let's just say if someone steals that card and the original registration is in the glove compartment He's 90% of the way there to having that car completely re-registered in someone else's name So that's why you carry around a certified copy only it's good enough for the cops when you get pulled over or you're in an accident But only within the country that your car is registered in So there we were stuck at the border of Honduras and Salvador and we can't get the car through and it wasn't Eddie's girlfriend's fault She didn't know any better. But then you see we didn't consider the gringo advantage
[20:39] So Eddie said to the guy Is there anything we can do to fix this and of course? He wasn't about to pull out any money and thrive the guy right in front of six or seven other people anyway the immigration office is not exactly a place to try that kind of thing to whip out your money because They have cameras there whether they work or not. I don't know They probably don't but obviously someone's thought to mount a few there So no one's gonna pull any funny business Now another thing that works almost as good and sometimes even better than the gringo advantage is pure Unadulterated female sex appeal after all Latin America is macho by nature now It just so happens that Eddie's girlfriend is a runway model who always wears tight slinky things that Models wear and always dresses to the hilt everywhere She goes and you could just tell that these low-class immigration guys stuck 24-7 out in the boonies a hundred kilometers from anywhere
[21:32] Well, they're just bowled over when they see a woman like that walk in then the next thing that happened was the border guy Asked Eddie's girlfriend where they were going. She says well We're going over to Roatan to plan our honeymoon there now that broke the ice The immigration guy loosened up quite a bit and started talking about Roatan saying he'd like to visit there someday and believe it or not Not two minutes later. He logged her car into the computer Filled out some paperwork Turned over one of the copies wrote down his name and his phone number and he said to Eddie and his girlfriend It's not a hundred percent legal for you to drive in Honduras with just a certified copy of your registration But with this paper you'll get through and if you get pulled over by any policeman or any stops along the way
[22:21] Just call me at this number and then he said but make sure when you come back through to El Salvador when you're coming home Come through my border station because that's where we have your car logged in and with that we were on our way And we never did get stopped in Honduras But as you might imagine it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway because we had a beautiful girl in the car Plus the gringo advantage working for us the whole way. So the point is Everything is flexible in Latin America and for gringos and beautiful women They'll bend the rules to the breaking point and in the last 20 or so years I've seen it happen hundreds of times and if you notice this time we didn't even have to pay a bribe But I can tell you one thing if we would have gotten pulled over I bet you we would have had to fork out 50 or a hundred bucks since our paperwork
[23:07] Definitely was not in order but back to our old friend John McAfee now when the police government put out an order to pick him Up for questioning and he escaped to Guatemala He took a small boat about a half-hour ride from the southernmost point of Belize to a rough-and-ready port town in Guatemala An ugly place called Porto Barrios. I know both places quite Well, the fact is I've gone back and forth myself the same way No one even bothered to look at my passport much less stamp it I had to find my way to little immigration office a tiny little cubicle myself if I wanted to I just could have walked right into Guatemala skip the whole thing and just gotten lost that's how lax it is when you're coming in out by boat And that's why I know for a fact that McAfee
[23:53] Loves publicity and he wants his face spread all over the news because he could have done Exactly the same thing come into Guatemala completely under the radar and gotten lost for years People do it all the time in every country in Latin America In fact, you can do it the same way going into Belize You could take a little boat a launch from Porto Barrios to Belize in the reverse direction And they don't check your passport either. You got to find the little immigration cubicle yourself Although like I said before in a country like Belize It's not so easy to get lost if you're a gringo cuz it's so damn small smaller than Cleveland But Guatemala, you know has got about 15 million people and it's a very big country And I've met over the years lots and lots of first-world people who simply came down and disappeared
[24:42] So what does McAfee do he comes into Porto Barrios with a couple of reporters in tow? And the first thing he does is he calls the embassy goes to the police station and demands political asylum Which brings everyone down the cops the media immigration and it turns into a regular media fest Just how he likes it and get this when he goes to Guatemala City where the international airport is He's got to go in front of a judge because now Belize wants to extradite him, right? And somehow by hook-and-crook he's managed to hook up with the most expensive sleazebag First-world style lawyer in Guatemala the very same lawyer that was hired by the ex-president of Guatemala Alfonso Portillo a guy who stole over 20 million dollars and was caught laundering it through European banks
[25:27] Deposited in the names of his relatives and presently both France and the United States have successfully petitioned for his Extradition though these things do take time and right now in Guatemala He's kind of a local hero all these political thieves who get caught are That's because when they've stolen that much money They've spread a lot of it around and by the way when he was president He appointed a ton of judges including some Supreme Court judges and who do you think they have allegiance to? That's why the wheels of justice move so very slowly down here for the rich and famous political thieves that is anyway So McAfee goes to court in Guatemala with the most expensive lawyer in the country and it's a huge media fest and the next thing You know he's on a plane back to the states, but here's the thing in actuality
[26:12] He never did have to leave Guatemala even though he entered supposedly illegally It could technically have stayed in Guatemala forever since all he would have had to have done to straighten things out with Guatemalan immigration was pay a little fine maybe a hundred bucks But instead he makes this huge show out of it And now he's back in the states doing interviews and having photo ops and even selling the TV rights to NBC For his story well good riddance. I say we don't need guys like that in Latin America screwing up our paradise You know but just remember this no matter what you read about him Or what you think the courts in Belize or Guatemala are saying about him if he had stayed in Guatemala Which he could have they would never have extradited him to Belize because Guatemala and Belize do not have an
[27:01] Extradition agreement in fact a local lawyer told me if you ever get in trouble in Guatemala Just pop over to Belize because you'll never get extradited and vice versa It's never happened before and it never will so folks That's what you didn't know about the case and all these so-called expert expat bloggers who are actually Sitting typing out their blogs from places like upstate, New York my advice is don't even bother with them How can you believe a story about Maccabee from people who have never stepped foot in Belize? You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America Coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America
[27:48] the expat files at gmail.com See you next time