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Report: Accused Con Man Is Dead

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The Associated Press

Published: May 6, 2008

HAVANA - Robert Vesco, the American fugitive who cooked up moneymaking schemes that allegedly involved everyone from Colombian drug lords to the families of U.S. presidents, died in Cuba and was buried almost six months ago, according to an official document.

A burial record at Havana's Colon Cemetery shows that a man with the same name and birth date - Dec. 4, 1935 - died on Nov. 23 from lung cancer and was buried the next day in a private plot. He was 71, less than two weeks shy of his 72nd birthday.

In his lifetime, Vesco was accused of looting millions from a Swiss mutual fund, attempting to find U.S. planes for Libya and inventing a drug that he claimed could cure AIDS.

He was linked to Latin American presidents, Soviet spies, smugglers of high-technology equipment - even the CIA.

And he was good at hiding.

Writer Arthur Herzog, who once interviewed Vesco in Cuba for a biography, called him "a master of disguises," noting the infamous con man had long employed elaborate schemes to escape justice.

"I don't know for sure, but I'm not certain he's dead," Herzog said from his home in New York. He said he recently spoke with a contact in Havana who indicated he had talked with Vesco in recent weeks.

Vesco was so crafty, a DNA test on the buried corpse would be necessary to know for certain it was him, Herzog said.

U.S. officials in Cuba said Monday they were unaware of Vesco's death.

Vesco evaded American justice during a quarter-century odyssey through the Caribbean and Central America after fleeing the United States in 1972.

It was Cuban courts that finally put him in prison in 1996, convicting him of marketing a drug, which he claimed could cure cancer and AIDS, without government permission. His business partner Donald A. Nixon Jr., the nephew of former President Nixon, was detained along with Vesco, but was later released.

Vesco ended up serving most of his 13-year sentence, though it was not clear when he was released.

Vesco is still wanted in the United States on charges of looting $224 million from investors in a Swiss-based mutual stock fund.

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