A Colombian police officer caught taking a bribe tried to eat the evidence and continued to deny wrongdoing even as he was choking on the cash, authorities say. The Guardian reports that the officer and a colleague tried to extort payments of 500,000 pesos a week—around $120—from a businessman in a Bogota suburb by threatening to arrest him on false allegations of a sex crime. The businessman contacted an anti-kidnapping and extortion unit, authorities say. The officer ate nine bank notes worth 500,000 pesos and was hospitalized when they became stuck in his throat.
Video that went viral in Colombia—and inspired many memes—shows the officer gasping for breath as he says, "I have received nothing, absolutely nothing, I don’t know what they are talking about." The officer survived after medical treatment. Carlos Manuel Silva, director of the Cundinamarca Prosecutor's Office, said "the material with which the bills are made is a strong material, it is paper money and (it is not) easily digested," per El Espectador. The officer and his colleague are facing charges including aggravated extortion. (More Colombia stories.)
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