Brazilian criminal lawyer Deolane Bezerra, 38, who just a few days ago showed herself to her 21 million followers on Instagram visiting Rome, was arrested this Thursday accused of laundering money for the most powerful local organized crime group, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC). Investigators accuse her of participating in a scheme that moved more than 300 million reais (65 million dollars) and which includes the most emblematic leader of this criminal brotherhood, Marco Herbas Camacho, Marcola, and his brother Alejandro, along with two nephews, among others. The prosecution has presented the operation as part of the government strategy to attack those who, by moving illicit funds, give oxygen to organized crime, which in Brazil is called “the upper floor,” in contrast to the youngsters who sell drugs in the alleys of the favelas.
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Besides neutralizing money laundering, the Attorney General of São Paulo has made explicit an additional dual objective. “This action has a pedagogical character and a deterrent intention. There are no shortcuts. It is useless to rub money in the faces of young people to make them become PCC lawyers,” Paulo Sérgio de Oliveira e Costa declared at a press conference. “The influencer is a key piece in the money laundering scheme,” he emphasized.
Bezerra was arrested early in a house located in one of the most luxurious neighborhoods of São Paulo, called Alphaville. She had precisely returned from Rome the day before. The daily story she posted on Instagram shows her next to the Colosseum, in the piazza of Spain, or with bags from brands like Dior or Yves Saint Laurent.
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The Brazilian police have requested Interpol to arrest three people, including two nephews of the leader Marcola, in Italy, Spain, and Bolivia.
The businesswoman is also accused of receiving unexplained money from a transport company that, according to the police, belongs to the PCC. The company is located very close to the prison, in the municipality of Presidente Venceslau. Bezerra was already imprisoned for the same accusation last year in an operation unrelated to this one. At that time, the main suspect was her mother.
“We have reached the upper floor,” highlighted prosecutor Lincoln Gakiya, one of those who has investigated the PCC most thoroughly. The group, which was born in the nineties inside a prison to defend the most basic rights of inmates, has grown unstoppable until becoming an organization with about 40,000 men and women who, besides trafficking drugs, are increasingly infiltrated in Brazil’s formal economy and have tentacles in dozens of countries. Moreover, it controls entire neighborhoods and prisons throughout Brazil where it imposes its law, applied by its own courts.
Chasing those who move organized crime money to suffocate it is the current Brazilian Government’s priority recipe against the strategy of the local far-right and the United States, supporters of fighting drug trafficking with military attacks and lists of terrorist organizations.
Two police operations carried out in 2025 have become emblems of one approach and the other. In August, the police and the Ministry of Finance dismantled a network of investment funds accused of laundering money for the PCC. Without firing a shot. “The magnates of organized crime are not in the neighborhoods but in some of the noblest addresses and abroad,” said then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Two months later, a raid in a favela in Rio de Janeiro ended in a brutal bloodbath, with 121 dead, including several police officers. Although the main suspect pursued, a leader of the Comando Vermelho, was never arrested, the governor called it a great success and the public applauded, according to polls.
Bezerra, who worked as a criminal lawyer in a firm shared with her sisters, gained national prominence after becoming a widow in 2021. Her husband, a funk singer, fell from the balcony of the hotel room the couple shared. The investigation concluded it was an accident. She rose to fame, began accumulating followers while showing her luxurious life and her work as a lawyer. From there, to advertising and a reality TV contest.
Investigators maintain that “the public profile, formal business activity, and asset movements were used [by the detainee] as layers of apparent legality to hinder the identification of the illicit origin of the funds,” according to the note released by the prosecution.
