A corporate officer from Banco Popular, one of the major banks that enjoy fiscal support and backing from the government of Costa Rica, has been accused of defrauding an elderly expat with a convoluted scheme to slip away with about $200,000.

The officer has been identified as a woman who goes by the last name of Barahona, and her father has also been implicated in this alleged swindle. According to a news report recently filed by Manuel Estrada of daily tabloid Diario Extra, Ms. Barahona’s father played the role of a dandy to trick an elderly expat into funding a certificate of deposit that served as collateral for mysterious loans.

The expat victim in this case is Ms. Gonzalez, who is originally from Chile. According to testimony given to Diario Extra by Ms. Gonzalez, she married Ms. Barahona’s Tico father in 1998, and he pretty much did not bring anything to the marriage other than his mooching presence. Ms. Gonzalez took her new husband on leisure trips to Chile, where he learned that his South American mother-in-law was loaded.

In 2006, Ms. Gonzalez returned from a trip to Chile after learning that her mother’s bequeathal had cleared probate. When her husband learned that his mother-in-law’s estate was valued at $200K in checks, he quickly introduced his daughter to Ms. Gonzalez.

Ms. Gonzalez apparently trusted her cadge of a husband and accepted his proposal of taking her mother’s estate to Banco Popular, where she was allegedly subject to a flimflam. Ms. Gonzales thought she was purchasing a straight certificate of deposit (CD) debt instrument, but when she returned three months later to pick up her earned interest, she realized she had been hustled by her scoundrel spouse and his banker daughter.

According to Ms. Gonzalez, she was surprised to learn that her daughter-in-law walked around with bodyguards, which the banker assured was standard practice for executives of financial institutions in Costa Rica. She was also surprised to find that the CD was structured in a convoluted trust, whereupon she would never be entitled to the inheritance left by her late mother.

It is not clear whether Ms. Gonzalez and her husband are still together; what is clear, however, is that Ms. Barahona’s lawyers are working feverishly to steer the case away from becoming a criminal complaint. At this time, arbitration has been scheduled to take place over the next few weeks, and there are a dozen witnesses lining up to testify against the banking executive.