The former head coach of Peru’s national women’s volleyball team and his wife are under investigation for allegedly smuggling four minors into the United States by posing as their parents with fake passports and falsified birth certificates to obtain visas.
“The four minors left the country in an irregular manner,” said Police Col. Pedro Baylón in comments to the TV show Semana Semanal, or Weekly Report. “Their visas were obtained by a person we have identified as Carlos Efraín Aparicio Saldaña, the volleyball coach.”
According to the TV news show, Aparicio was reported to police four months ago for allegedly traveling with a minor and smuggling her into the U.S. by having her pose as his daughter, using a falsified birth certificate that showed him and his wife as the girls’ parents.
Three more trafficking cases were discovered after an investigation determined that the birth certificates issued for Madeleine, Amelia, Karina and Diana Aparicio Mori — the names given to the yet to be identified girls — were not registered in the municipal records of Chiclayo, Rimac and San Isidro, where the four girls were supposedly born.
But the former head coach denied the allegations and says he has nothing to do with the falsified birth certificates or the missing girls.
“This is not my signature, it looks like it, but it’s not,” Aparicio told the TV news program. “Elisa is my wife, but I don’t know any of the minors they have mentioned. Maybe someone usurped by identity, using a passport that I lost.”
All four girls, whose identities and exact location are unknown, were illegally smuggled into the U.S. between 1997 and 2006, daily La Republica reported.Aparicio, who now works and lives in Medellín, Colombia, and his wife, could face up to eight years in jail if found guilty of trafficking the four minors.
