Ryan Lochte says he was mugged at gunpoint, but a judge in Rio thinks his claim doesn’t hold water.
The jurist ordered the gold-medal US swimmer’s passport seized Wednesday as she noted there were holes as big as the Olympic rings in his robbery tale — including a surveillance video showing him and three of his “heist-victim” teammates holding what looks like their supposedly stolen possessions as they returned to the Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro.
They even seemed to be laughing just a couple of hours after the alleged early-morning holdup.
“The victims arrived with their physical and psychological integrity unshaken, even joking with one another,” Judge Keyla Blanc said of the footage.
Because of the doubts, Blanc issued the passport seizure order for the 32-year-old Lochte and fellow US swimmer James Feigen, 26, so they could be questioned. But Lochte had already traveled back to the United States.
“Bottom line, he’s home. He came back yesterday,” the 12-time Olympic medal winner’s dad, Steve Lochte, told the Daytona News-Journal of Florida.
The athlete was spotted walking through Charlotte, NC’s international airport with his Playboy Playmate gal pal, Kayla Rae Reid, People magazine reported.
On Wednesday night, Lochte’s two other teammates involved in the alleged robbery, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger, were taken off their flight in Rio and told they could not leave the country until they testified about the robbery.
It’s not clear where Feigen was.
Lochte and his teammates caused an international stir — and a heap of embarrassment for officials in crime-plagued Rio — when they claimed they were mugged by gunmen posing as police officers as they returned from a night of clubbing early Sunday.
“These guys came out with a badge . . . and pulled us over,” Lochte told the “Today” show’s Billy Bush on Sunday. “They pulled out their guns. They told the other swimmers to get down on the ground . . . I refused. I was like, ‘We didn’t do anything wrong.’”
But Lochte’s story raised red flags with Rio officials, who wondered why he didn’t immediately report the mugging to cops and why authorities found out about it only after the swimmer’s mother, Ileane, revealed it in news interviews Sunday.
In a call to NBC’s Matt Lauer Wednesday night, Lochte maintained that he was robbed.
But he altered his story, admitting his original claims about having a gun put to his head weren’t true, and that it was only waved in his direction.
Lauer said the falsehood was a “traumatic mischaracterization” on the part of the swimmer.
Lochte also told Lauer he didn’t want to report his story at first because he was afraid he would get in trouble with swim-team officials for drinking, but then realized it was OK because he was over 21.
Lauer also said that when he asked Lochte if he was up to any other shenanigans on the night of the alleged heist, the swimmer insisted he hadn’t been.
The fact that the four swimmers delayed their report of the crime was among the reasons Rio officials grew suspicious.
Authorities in Brazil also were skeptical because Lochte told them he and his pals were robbed by four thugs who took their wallets, but Feigen said there was only one gunman.
The biggest splash of cold water on the swimmers’ claims was the video, which clearly shows them still holding personal possessions including watches and cellphones as they go through an X-ray machine. Feigen even appears to be holding a wallet.
Brazilians, meanwhile, took to Facebook and other social media to call the American swimmers liars, according to media reports in the Olympics’ host nation.
“The next time you want to go to a party and hang out with transvestites and need an excuse, try being more creative,” one Brazilian told Feigen on Facebook. “You told a huge lie that stained the image of a country. You are liars.”
With Post wire services