Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Loser Scammed His Sugar Mama // The Jorge Landeros Murder Story

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Jorge Landeros was a yoga and Spanish instructor who spun a web of romantic and financial manipulation around Sue Ann Marcum, a beloved accounting professor at American University. Over the course of their relationship, Landeros acted as a con man, mismanaging and draining Marcum's investment funds. Following an escalating dispute over the missing money, Landeros brutally beat Marcum with a liquor bottle and strangled her to death inside her Bethesda, Maryland home.

So why did this very intelligent woman fall for this much younger loser? Now, the guy's name is Jorge, and Jorge's about 35 when this story starts, and he's living in Washington, D.C., and Jorge's got a lot going on. He works as a yoga instructor, he also teaches Spanish in his community, and he's known to be a handsome guy. Just look at this handsome motherfucker. And so one day, in 2005, a woman takes his Spanish class, this woman, Sue. Sue is 47 and she's very intelligent. She's a professor at American University School of Business. She teaches accounting and taxation.

So she starts taking Jorge's class. And she appears to like him and his style of teaching. So eventually he starts teaching her yoga as well and he becomes her private yoga instructor. And as they regularly meet for lessons and the more time they spend together, the more Sue starts thinking Jorge, he's kind of fine. And Jorge starts thinking Sue kind of fine, even though he's significantly younger than her. Anyway, one thing leads to another, and they start smashing, and then they start dating.

And a few years go by, and it's now 2008. And Jorge and Sue, they're still together, and it seems like Sue is super in love with him. And at some point during their relationship, Jorge discovers that she has a bit of cash saved up. I mean, she's not rich or anything. She's a college professor. but she has a little bit of funds stashed. So he goes to her, and he convinces her to let him invest her money for her. He tells her that he has experience trading stocks, and he says he'd love to help build a secure financial future for the both of them.

Then he suggests that they create an investment fund together, using only her money, of course. And Sue trusts him completely, so she agrees. And so Jorge opens up a joint investment account. and Sue starts transferring some of her savings into it. And from there, he begins day trading with the money, which is essentially gambling. And he doesn't know what he's doing, so he isn't very good at it. And pretty quickly, he starts losing.

But instead of admitting that this isn't going well, allegedly, Jorge tells Sue that they simply need to invest more. Well, whatever he tells her, he convinces her to remortgage her house, withdraw money from her retirement fund, she even borrows money from her dad and hands it over to Jorge to invest. But no matter how much money she pours in, he keeps making terrible trades and he keeps losing.

Except that he's not losing all of it. When he takes her money to invest, he also secretly pockets a portion of it. He transfers it over to his personal accounts. So Sue is the one losing money while he is actually making money. Now, Sue is an accounting and taxation professor, so I want to assume at some point she must have realized that this trading he's doing, it isn't going well, and that it was a bad decision to let him do it. But we're not sure why she didn't put a stop to it, probably because she was in love with him.

Regardless, Jorge's bad trading and embezzlement shenanigans go on for a while, until eventually she runs out of funds and her bills start piling up. By this point, around 2009, Jorge has lost over $300,000 of her money. However, he's made about $250,000 personally for himself. And those numbers just don't add up. And just when it seems like things can't get any worse, they do. Now I assume Jorge had been making a ton of day trades every business day from Sue's account. Because over time, the total volume of those trades, exceeds $100 million.

Meaning, he didn't earn $100 million. It means he traded $100 million worth of stocks over and over and over again because he traded so much. Well, eventually, all this trading catches the attention of the IRS. And to their automated auditing systems, it looks like this accounting professor had made millions of dollars in revenue, which she didn't. So come tax season, they hit Sue with an adjustment notice stating that she's going to, to owe about $15 million in unpaid taxes, plus another $3 million in penalties. And I don't know how Sue let things get to this point, but now not only is she broke, but she's in a lot of debt.

And this is devastating to her. I mean, not only does this threaten her income, but it threatens her reputation as an accounting professor. A few months later, Jorge comes over to Sue's house to meet up with her. And we don't know exactly what happened between them, but I'm guessing she tells him that she's had enough and that she wants her money back. And again, we don't actually know. Whatever happened must have caused him to snap because suddenly he stands up and he grabs a bottle of tequila and boom, he starts beating her with it. And she runs, but he chases her.

And he corners her in the basement and then he grabs her and he starts strangling her. And unfortunately, Sue doesn't survive. Then, Jorge wants to ensure that the murder doesn't get traced back to him, so he starts emptying drawers, opening cabinets, and throwing Sue's stuff everywhere. He also slices open the screen to a kitchen window to make it look as if someone forced their way inside the house. He's trying to stage the scene to make all of this look like a burglary gone wrong. Then after that, he takes some of Sue's things, her wallet, her TV, a cell phone, a Nintendo Wii,

and he steals her Jeep Grand Cherokee, and he drives it several miles away, and he parks it and abandons it. Then he flees to Mexico, and he lives there. Now, after Sue was murdered, several hours go by, and one of Sue's friends had been expecting a call from her, but he hasn't heard anything. So he tries calling, and Sue isn't picking up,

which is unusual for her. So he goes over to her house to check on her, and that is when he finds her in the basement, dead, and he immediately calls the police. So police show up, and they start investigating. And the place looks trashed, but pretty quickly they're skeptical about this whole thing being a burglary gone wrong. Partly because the window screen that was sliced open was cut from the inside, not the outside. Also, a bunch of her stuff is missing, but so.

Sue is still wearing an expensive necklace. And why would a burglar leave an expensive necklace behind? So they investigate further, looking for the person who could have done this. And during the investigation, they discover that Sue has a life insurance policy worth a half a million dollars, and the sole beneficiary is a guy named Jorge. So now, Jorge is a person of interest, and police start searching for him. Meanwhile, he's living in Mexico, and Maryland police reach out to him and they start corresponding with him via email. So after a few months of back and forth, he agrees to return to the U.S. and give them a DNA sample to clear his name.

So the moment he crosses the border into El Paso, Texas, Maryland detectives meet up with him and he gives them a DNA sample. Well, when the lab results come back, it's a match, which means that Jorge's DNA. was all over that murder scene. So police put out a warrant for his arrest. But before they can arrest him, Jorge disappears again. And he goes to Wadalajara. And that is where he lives and stays under a false identity. And it's starting to look like he actually got away with murder.

Until... Until 12 years go by. And it's now 2022. And the police and the FBI, they start looking at this cold case. again, and they start looking online, and they find Jorge through social media. He's been living under a fake name as a yoga teacher in Guadalajara. And so, bam, the Federales arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

And eventually, he's extradited back to Maryland, and he goes to trial, and he's found guilty, and he gets sentenced to 25 years in prison.