In a decrepit house in Sรฃo Paulo lives a woman who many people call a bruxa (the witch). As a blockbuster Brazilian podcast recently revealed, Margarida Maria Vicente de Azevedo Bonetti is wanted by U.S. authorities for her treatment of a maid named Hilda Rosa dos Santos, whom Margarida and her husband more or less enslaved in the Washington, D.C. area:
In early 1998โ19 years after moving to the United Statesโdos Santos left the Bonettis, aided by a neighbor sheโd befriended, Vicki Schneider. Schneider and others helped arrange for dos Santos to stay in a secret location, according to testimony Schneider later gave in court. (Schneider declined to be interviewed for this story.) The FBI and the Montgomery County adult services agency began a months-long investigation.
When social worker Annette Kerr arrived at the Bonetti home in April 1998โshortly after dos Santos had movedโshe was stunned. Sheโd handled tough cases before, but this was different. Dos Santos lived in a chilly basement with a large hole in the floor covered by plywood. There was no toilet, Kerr, now retired, said in a recent interview, pausing often to regain her composure, tears welling in her eyes. (Renรช Bonetti later acknowledged in court testimony that dos Santos lived in the basement, as well as confirmed that it had no toilet or shower and had a hole in the floor covered with plywood. He told jurors that dos Santos could have used an upstairs shower but chose not to do so.)
Dos Santos bathed using a metal tub that she would fill with water she hauled downstairs in a bucket from an upper floor, Kerr said, flipping through personal notes that she has kept all these years. Dos Santos slept on a cot with a thin mattress she supplemented with a discarded mat sheโd scavenged in the woods. An upstairs refrigerator was locked so she could not open it.
โI couldnโt believe that would take place in the United States,โ Kerr said.
During Kerrโs investigation, dos Santos recounted regular beatings sheโd received from Margarida Bonetti, including being punched and slapped and having clumps of her hair pulled out and fingernails dug into her skin. She talked about hot soup being thrown in her face. Kerr learned that dos Santos had suffered a cut on her leg while cleaning up broken glass that was left untreated so long it festered and emitted a putrid smell.
Sheโd also lived for years with a tumor so large that doctors would later describe it variously as the size of a cantaloupe or a basketball. It turned out to be noncancerous.
Sheโd had โno voiceโ her whole life, Kerr concluded, โno rights.โ Traumatized by her circumstances, dos Santos was โextremely passiveโ and โfearful,โ Kerr said. Kerr had no doubt she was telling the truth. She was too timid to lie.ย
Last September, a longtime Las Vegas journalist named Jeff German was shot and killed. The person charged in his death is a public official German investigated. There were other investigations German hadnโt completed when he was murdered, including one about a Ponzi scheme. Reporter Lizzie Johnson picked up where he left off, reporting a story about a scam that, as scams so often do, enriched a few at the expense of many:
Jager had told Mabeus about the opportunity to make money in August 2019, during a couples trip to Mexico, she said. She felt flattered to be included.
โWe were a little nervous, but we trusted him,โ Mabeus said. โBecause we were friends and belonged to the same church, the red flags were heart-shaped. I was like, โWow. We are really lucky to be involved in this investment.โโ
The next month, she and her husband wired over $140,000. Ninety days later, the first interest payment of $18,000 arrived, right on time. The couple continued adding money, until they reached a total of $680,000, she said.
โThere was never a hiccup,โ Mabeus said. โMy bishop was involved and invested, and so were my closest friends. A lot of people were told to keep it quiet.โ
When she and her husband, a former Major League Baseball pitcher who worked for a medical device company, divorced in June 2021, Mabeus agreed to take the investment as alimony. She planned to rely on the dividends, along with child support payments, to remain at home with her daughter and three sons. A former elementary school teacher, she hadnโt worked for 13 years.
Now, Mabeus hung up the phone, horrified.
She tried to call Jager. No answer.
โWord is spreading like wildfire,โ Mabeus remembered. โPeople are texting left and right. No one is getting responses.โ
Maybe it was all a big misunderstanding, she thought. She told herself that sheโd know for sure the next day, when the quarterly interest payment was scheduled to hit her bank account.
But when Friday arrived, the money didnโt. All her savings, Mabeus realized, were gone.