Getting access to financial services in La Hormiga, Putumayo, in 2003 was virtually impossible. During the early 2000s, banks from Bogota viewed this area of Colombia as a financial black hole, where the rural working class had no access to any kind of financial services. This apartheid created a socio-economic vacuum, where in 2003, David Eduardo Helmut Murcia Guzman, a former camera operator with no formal financial training, founded DMG in Colombia. The conglomerate would go on to become Colombia’s largest ever Ponzi scheme.
The “genius” behind DMG lay in its dual nature. It was both a public-facing consumer hook that exploited legal loopholes and a hidden laundering machine that serviced Colombia’s criminal underworld. The public mechanism was deceptively simple. Clients didn’t technically invest money; they bought a prepaid debit card, often loaded with a minimum of roughly US$700.
The hook was the condition attached to the card. If the client refrained from spending the balance for a set period, typically six months, and successfully referred new clients to the “DMG Family,” they became eligible for what the company termed “advertising rewards” or “points.” This is why DMG is a textbook Ponzi scheme.
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud where the organization generates returns for older investors not through legitimate business activities, but by using money contributed by new investors. The scheme creates an illusion of profitability, relying on a constant flow of recruits to keep the “returns” flowing. When recruitment slows or too many people try to cash out, the entire structure collapses, leaving most investors with nothing.
The returns of the scheme were staggering. The points obtained by investors effectively translated to profits of 75% to 150% in under a year. To protect this model, Murcia Guzman began classifying these payouts as payments for “publicity” rather than interest on deposits.
DMG was then able to successfully argue it wasn’t a bank before regulators in Colombia. This semantic gymnastics allowed the company to sidestep the rigorous audits of the Financial Superintendence, the banking watchdog, and instead report to the Superintendence of Societies, a corporate regulator with far less visibility into cash flows.
How Colombia’s narcos infiltrated DMG
While farmers and taxi drivers chased points, a sophisticated financial infrastructure brewed beneath the surface of the conglomerate. Drug traffickers, holding large amounts of physical cash, used DMG’s high-volume retail operations as a façade for laundering money. The chaotic intake of cash at DMG branches allowed them to inject dirty money into the system without triggering the alarms that a traditional bank would sound.
The operation relied on a complex web of obfuscation orchestrated by key lieutenants such as legal adviser Margarita Pabon Castro and PR head Daniel Angel Rueda. Together, they established hundreds of shell companies across Colombia and Panama. These entities simulated legitimate trade and services, moving funds in a dizzying circle to scrub away their origins.
Finally, the “cleaned” money was extracted by the traffickers, who posed as lucky investors cashing out their astronomical returns. In the end, the legitimate savings of the working class provided the liquidity that allowed the cartels to wash their billions.
In 2008, DMG moved more than US$4.8 billion in Colombia
By early 2008, DMG had become a phenomenon in Colombia. The statistics from its peak are remarkable. In a country of 45 million people, the scheme had captivated an estimated 4 million investors. It was a fiscal giant that, in 2008 alone, moved approximately US$4.8 billion, a sum that, at the time, rivaled the annual budgets of Colombia’s largest municipalities.
Murcia Guzman’s empire spilled over borders, establishing footholds in Ecuador, Venezuela, and specifically Panama, where banking secrecy laws allowed sheltering assets from the eyes of Bogota’s regulators.
But DMG’s true power wasn’t financial; it was psychological. Murcia Guzman had successfully positioned himself as a modern-day “Robin Hood.” In his narrative, the villain was the centralized “banking oligarchy” of the country that denied credit to the working class, and he was the savior who democratized wealth. This fostered a cult-like loyalty among his base. To the “DMG Family,” Murcia was not a CEO but a messiah, and any attack on him was perceived not as a regulatory enforcement but as a conspiracy by the elite to keep workers in poverty.
The collapse
The collapse, when it came, was triggered not by DMG itself, but by the failure of a smaller, cruder copycat scheme in the southwest of Colombia known as “Proyecciones DRFE” (Fast Money, Easy Return). When DRFE defaulted in late 2008, it shattered the collective suspension of disbelief. Panic spread like a contagion, causing a run on all informal investment houses.
Recognizing the potential for total social collapse, President Alvaro Uribe declared a “State of Social and Economic Emergency” on Nov. 17, 2008, granting the government extraordinary decree powers to seize assets. Two days later, on Nov. 19, the police moved in.
The occupation of DMG offices triggered a paradox that remains one of the most surreal chapters in Colombian history. As riot police raided the branches, they were not cheered by the victims; they were attacked by them.
Thousands of investors flooded the streets, clashing with authorities and looting commercial sectors. In the eyes of DMG’s all over Colombia, the state was not saving them from fraud; it was destroying their only lifeline.
While the streets burned, Murcia fled. He made it as far as Panama, but his escape was short-lived. He was arrested on Nov. 19, 2008, and swiftly deported back to a country that was effectively on fire.
DMG-Politica
The collapse of DMG was no longer a financial crime; it was a political crisis in Colombia. At the center of the media storm was 2026 Presidential Candidate Abelardo de la Espriella, who served as Murcia’s lead counsel in 2008. De la Espriella had aggressively defended the company on television, framing it as a legitimate innovation persecuted by a jealous monopoly.
However, days before the government intervention, he abruptly resigned. He claimed the DMG board had misled him regarding the company’s accounting and funding sources, stating famously, “I cannot defend what I do not know.”
Despite his exit, De La Espriella could not entirely escape the blast radius of the scandal. Audio recordings later surfaced in which DMG executives discussed handing large sums of cash to the legal team for “lobbying.”
While suspicion persisted that this money was intended for bribes, De La Espriella said it was for legal fees and lobbying efforts to regularize the business. He was never charged with a crime, and Murcia has remained ambiguous, refusing to directly incriminate his former lawyer in court.
The investigations revealed a “Lobby Strategy” where DMG operatives allegedly earmarked massive cash sums to buy legislative legitimacy. No political sector in Colombia was safe. The administration of Bogota’s left-wing Mayor Samuel Moreno was tainted when his political ally, Francisco Rojas Birry, was convicted of receiving DMG money to fund his campaign.
The sons of President Uribe, Jeronimo and Tomas Uribe, faced intense scrutiny for their social and business links to DMG figures such as Daniel Angel. While no criminal participation was ever proven, the optics were damaging.
From his prison cell, Murcia dropped a bombshell, claiming he had contributed funds to the campaign for a referendum that would have allowed Uribe a third presidential term, an accusation Uribe’s camp dismissed as the vengeance of a jailed criminal.
A second victimization
In the aftermath of the DMG scandal, Colombia’s government appointed Maria Mercedes Perry to lead the liquidation process, tasked with seizing assets and repaying victims. The result, however, was a second victimization.
By 2024, less than 15% of the claimed capital had been recovered. Victims’ organizations have long accused the liquidation process of being a “black box,” where administrative fees and lawyer salaries depleted the remaining assets.
Real estate properties owned by DMG were allegedly sold at below-market rates, leaving pennies on the dollar for the families who lost their life savings.
The social scar is deep. In the southern towns of Putumayo and Nariño, the collapse wiped out the savings of an entire generation. Local health authorities reported a spike in suicides, domestic violence, and property crime in the years following the crash, a testament to the despair left in the wake of the illusion of thousands of investors.
David Murcia Guzman is now a spiritual leader
Today, in 2026, David Murcia Guzman sits in La Picota prison in Bogota. After serving a nine-year sentence in the United States for money laundering, he was returned to Colombia to complete a separate 30-year sentence.
But confinement has not silenced him; it has merely transformed him. Inside the walls of La Picota, Murcia has reinvented himself as a spiritual leader. He preaches to fellow inmates about the “New Family DMG,” framing his movement now not as a commercial enterprise, but as a path to spiritual redemption.
His political pulse still beats. In early 2026, his supporters organized a “Firmaton” (signature drive), petitioning President Gustavo Petro for his release.