Conflicting Tales on How a Brooklyn Businessman Evaded Bolivian Custody Jacob Ostreicher, right, with the actor Sean Penn, who lobbied for his freedom. In an odd twist to a serpentine tale, two discrete stories emerged on Tuesday about how a Brooklyn businessman who was jailed in a squalid prison in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, for 18 months, then placed under house arrest, managed to escape and make his way to the United States. Meridith Kohut for The New York Times The Bolivian justice minister, Cecilia Ayllón, said that Mr. Ostreicher had slipped away "clandestinely" and that the government would ask the United States to extradite him. At a press conference in La Paz, Bolivia, Justice Minister Cecilia Ayllón described a remarkably lax house-arrest arrangement with little supervision and suggested that the businessman, Jacob Ostreicher, had been gradually testing the boundaries of his confinement, including trips to La Paz, until he simply slipped away "clandestinely." "We now see that the only purpose of all of this was so that in a given moment he could flee the country," Ms. Ayllón said. Mr. Ostreicher, who is in his mid-50s, went to Bolivia several years ago to manage a rice-farming enterprise he had invested in. He ended up being accused by the Bolivian authorities of laundering drug money, a charge he denies. Prosecutors never formally charged him, but in June 2011 he was jailed in Palmasola prison, a notorious complex with 3,500 prisoners that is ruled internally by an inmates" committee. Mr. Ostreicher claimed that he was assaulted and humiliated until he paid off functionaries of the committee. Ms. Ayllón said the authorities believed that Mr. Ostreicher traveled from the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz to La Paz. An official later said he had flown to La Paz early Friday morning. From there, Ms. Ayllón said, he apparently slipped across the border to Peru, most likely at Desaguadero, a small town on the picturesque shore of Lake Titicaca, about an hour and a half from La Paz. Ms. Ayllón said there was no record that Mr. Ostreicher had crossed the border, adding that he had evaded border controls. "Obviously for him it was easy," she said, adding that Bolivia has a long border and many crossings. We have some weaknesses like the lack of control at border crossings. She said that Mr. Ostreicher traveled on to Lima, where he appeared to have been using his own name and passport. She said that records in Lima showed he left Lima on an LAN airlines flight to the United States Sunday night. Mr. Ostreicher's time in Bolivia received a lot of publicity after the actor Sean Penn publicly called for his release. Mr. Penn's efforts were instrumental in obtaining Mr. Ostreicher's transfer from prison to house arrest. Representative Christopher H. Smith of New Jersey, who has been active in efforts to obtain Mr. Ostreicher's freedom, issued a brief statement that ended with his thanking "Sean Penn for his tireless work to free Jacob." Aides to Mr. Smith said he would not say more. Mr. Penn's publicist, Mara Buxbaum, did not return a call seeking his comment. But Mr. Ostreicher's daughter, Gitty Weinberger, told an entirely different story Tuesday. She said she had been told by her uncle, Aron Ostreicher, that her father was kidnapped from Santa Cruz. Her uncle, she said, made contact with the kidnappers and "negotiated a ransom." She said she had not yet spoken with her father. "He paid X amount of money and my father was dropped off in Pacific waters," said Mrs. Weinberger, 31, the mother of five, in a phone call from her home in Lakewood, N.J. She did not know whether by Pacific waters her uncle meant a boat. "From there he was taken to an undisclosed location," she said. She said she received confirmation of her father's escape when she received a phone call Monday afternoon from Mr. Smith telling her that the State Department had learned that Mr. Ostreicher was "safe in the United States in an undisclosed location." "He's 100 percent in the United States," said Mrs. Weinberger. A State Department spokesman said "Mr. Ostreicher arrived in the United States Monday morning," but would not give more details. Aron Ostreicher did not return several calls asking for an account of the escape or the supposed kidnapping. Joseph Berger reported from New York, and William Neuman from La Paz, Bolivia. Monica Machicao contributed reporting from La Paz, and Andrea Zarate from Lima, Peru.