BUENOS AIRES — She went from night-shift airport cop to pinup girl. From chilly anonymity to red-hot notoriety. Next up: The "suitcase girl" is in line for a TV ice-skating gig.
"I never imagined anything like this would happen," Maria del Lujan Telpuk told the Argentine edition of Playboy in an interview that accompanies her appearance on the cover this month. "And all for a suitcase that somehow put me into the middle of a rivalry of nations."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, February 21, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 50 words Type of Material: Correction
Argentina's 'Suitcase-gate': In an article in Sunday's Section A about the Argentine woman whose discovery of a bag full of cash set off a major political scandal, the name of Argentina's former president and husband of the current president was given as Ferdinand de Kirchner. His name is Nestor Kirchner.
Dubbed "Suitcase-gate," one of Latin America's most celebrated political scandals is the best thing that has happened to Telpuk. Her police vigilance was the catalyst for the explosive episode, which has chilled U.S.-Argentine relations and embarrassed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Andy Warhol would surely have relished how Telpuk, 27, soared to stardom. Like Monica S. Lewinsky, Kato Kaelin and others thrust unexpectedly into the public eye, Telpuk is getting her 15 minutes of fame -- and savoring every second.
Fate intervened in her humdrum life as the federal policewoman was working the graveyard shift at Aeroparque airport here. It was 3:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 4.
A Cessna Citation jet leased by an Argentine state energy firm touched down from Caracas, Venezuela's capital. Out stepped a cluster of VIPs, mostly Argentine government functionaries and high rollers from Venezuela's state oil company.
In various interviews here, Telpuk recalled asking a burly passenger named Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson what he had in his suitcase.
"Books and some papers," he replied, Telpuk told the newspaper Perfil.
When asked to open the bag, Telpuk said, the previously composed Antonini Wilson began to stammer and act strangely.
When she saw what was inside the luggage, "I almost died," she told Playboy. "The bundles of bills were there, in plain sight, nothing hiding them. I'd never seen so much money in one place."
The undeclared cash -- totaling $790,550 -- was seized, Antonini Wilson was allowed to go, and the case generated some early headlines. A senior Argentine government official was fired.
The story soon faded, the money's provenance and destination apparently one of those never-to-be-resolved imponderables. Antonini Wilson, a businessman and dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizen, returned to his spacious home in South Florida and his passion for Lamborghinis and Porsches.
