
Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch man accused in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday for a plea & sentencing hearing in a case where it is alleged that he attempted to extort hundreds of thousands of euros from the woman’s family. This is according to court documents filed on Friday.
The plea’s additional facts weren’t immediately accessible. Requests for comment were not immediately answered by his American attorney or the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama.
The hearing will take place in federal court in Birmingham at 9:30 a.m.
In 2010, a federal grand jury accused van der Sloot on two counts of wire fraud and extortion that were related to the scam.
Van der Sloot was extradited from Peru, where he is serving a 28-year term in a different case for the 2010 slaying of 21-year-old Stephany Flores, to the United States in June.
18-year-old Holloway from the suburbs of Birmingham disappeared while visiting Aruba for his high school graduation. Van der Sloot, who was at the time a pupil at the island’s international school, was last seen leaving a bar with her.
Never was the body of Holloway located. In connection with the case, Van der Sloot was detained but then released and never charged.
A probate judge in Alabama ruled that Holloway was legally dead in 2012.
Van der Sloot was charged by a federal grand jury in 2010 with attempting to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Holloway’s family in exchange for a promise to reveal the location of her body.
Even though van der Sloot was aware that the information he provided was “worthless,” Holloway’s mother sent a $25,000 down payment to him in 2010, and her representative had agreed to pay him an additional $225,000 once her remains were positively identified.
According to statements made by his attorney earlier this year, Van der Sloot kept the $25,000 and used it to gamble.
Van der Sloot agreed to be extradited to the United States, according to his attorney, Máximo Altez, because the maximum-security Challapalca prison was the “worst prison in the world” where he was being held.
According to Altez, “any prison in the United States is a five-star hotel.”