For Fidel Castro's playboy son Antonio, it seem-ed the perfect opportunity for another conquest. An attractive woman was pursuing him over the Internet, smitten by his wealth and power.
For Fidel Castro's playboy son Antonio, it seem-ed the perfect opportunity for another conquest. An attractive woman was pursuing him over the Internet, smitten by his wealth and power.
Over eight months their romance blossomed online, with each exchange becoming more sexually charged. But like so many cyber relationships, all was not as it seemed.
Claudia Valencia was really a prankster in Miami named Luis Dominguez. Born in Cuba, Dominguez says he organised the sting to expose the hypocrisy of a country that lavishes luxuries on its leaders while repressing the public.
"While everyday Cubans were banned from using the Internet cafu00e9s, this guy had unlimited access to the web," Dominguez told the Miami Herald, which ran transcripts of 'Claudia' and Castro's chat room conversations.
In them, Castro, boasts of spending weekends in an upmarket resort, of shopping trips for designer clothes and of his travels across the world in his role as physician to the Cuban baseball team.
Dominguez said he invented Claudia after studying photographs of Castro's former girlfriends.
Incidentally, Castro is engaged.
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