Category: Strange News

Brazilian Woman Becomes Drug Cartel Boss After Sold Into Sex Slavery

Raquel Oliveira headed a violent drug organization in the Brazilian slum of Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro during the late 1980s. Via Facebook

Child prostitute. Brutal drug cartel leader. Cocaine addict. Popular author.

That’s the unlikely path taken by Brazilian woman Raquel Oliveira, a former cocaine boss in the Brazilian slum of Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro.

“If you ask anyone here if I was a bandida [drug dealer], they will say yes,” Oliveira, in her 50s, told Vice. “People still respect me.”

It wasn’t always that way: when Oliveira was just a child, her grandmother sold her to a gang member who forced her to work in a brothel, The Daily Mail reported.

Oliveira, who details these events in the new semi-autobiographical novel A Número Um, wouldn’t see freedom from that life until she turned 11.

That’s when the gang member gave her a gun, setting her down a violent path.

Oliveira told the Mail that she made her first kill when she was 15 when a man tried to rape her.

“To kill a man aged 15 meant nothing,” she told the Mail. “The guy wanted to rape me.”

According to Vice, Oliveira led the organization after the 1988 death of Ednaldo de Souza, the organization’s leader and her lover, during a shootout with police.

The news outlet reported that Oliveira soon became a cocaine addict, but became disenchanted with her murderous and addictive lifestyle — leading her to quit in the early 1990s and seek therapy.

This year, Oliveira published A Número Um, the first in a planned trilogy based on her experiences.

A Facebook page associated with Oliveira appears to show significant crowds showing up to book signings and readings.

“I don’t think I could have done anything better. There were no alternatives. I had nothing, I knew nothing,” Oliveira, a mother of three, told the Mail. “I’m even impressed with things I’m learning today that are things I should have known a long time ago.”

62 Yr Old Georgia Woman Arrested For Bank Robbery Wearing Halloween Costume 

  
Via Fox 5 Atlanta– Athens-Clarke County police arrested a 62-year-old woman in connection to an attempted bank robbery.

Charlotte Regina Hill, 62, entered the Athens First Bank & Trust on Gaines School Road just before noon wearing a costume mask of glasses with a plastic nose.

Hill handed the teller a Halloween bag with a written message: “Hand me all your money,” according to police.

The teller laughed in disbelief at Hill and handed the bag back to her. She even took video of her as she left the bank.

Hill was located by officers inside the Goodwill store on Gaines School Road.

She was arrested and charged with criminal attempt to commit robbery by intimidation.

Mexican Man Denied U.S. Visa Because Of Tattoos 

  
Via Bossip– Ruben Zamora, a Mexican man who lived in the U.S. since he was 8 years-old, left the country last summer and has yet to return because of a tattoo he got in his teens. 

The American Consulate said he has gang tattoos — and, therefore, was part of a criminal enterprise according to The NY Daily News. 

Zamora, who has an American wife and 2 children thought he was doing the right thing by going to Mexico and applying for a visa but his plan backfired.
Here is what Zamora’s wife, Vanessa Ruiz had to say to The NY Daily News:

Ruiz said her husband was being condemned because of a youthful mistake.

Zamora got the tattoos when he was a teen living in Queens — and the symbols weren’t gang-related back then.

“He and his friends . . . thought that tattoo looked cool and they got it,” said Carr.

The group later got involved in gang activity, but Zamora was no longer hanging with them, the lawyer said.

“The fact is there’s no flexibility to actually look at his record and say, ‘Look, there’s been no arrests in the United States for him being in gangs,” she said. “There’s no flexibility in the law.”

For Ruiz, the thought of life without her husband is devastating — financially and emotionally.

“He was very responsible. He used to pay all the bills . . . I (am) so frustrated because I had to pay all these bills. I was going to lose my apartment. I had to go to welfare to see if they could help in some way,” said Ruiz, who works part-time in the call center at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx.