BUENOS AIRES — A Colombian model accused of leading a drug-trafficking gang that persuaded pretty young women to smuggle cocaine to Mexico was arrested yesterday after evading police for five months.
Angie Sanclemente Valencia had been hiding out in Buenos Aires since December, when airport police caught a 21-year-old Argentine woman with 121 pounds of coke in her baggage boarding a flight to Cancun. That led to arrests of six other alleged gang members who fingered Colombia’s former “coffee queen” as a ringleader.
Sanclemente was quickly dubbed the “Narco Queen.”
“When they organized the trafficking of cocaine to Mexico, she participated in the meetings,” said one source.
The 30-year-old was captured in a hostel for foreigners in the fashionable Palermo neighborhood, airport police spokesman Maximiliano Lencina said.
Lencina declined to discuss the evidence, but said Sanclemente “was an important figure in the organization” that allegedly recruited female drug mules.