The Department of Justice reported that three men were sentenced for a horrific human smuggling enterprise that included kidnapping, torturing, and forcing migrants into labor in Cuba, Miami, and Louisiana.
According to a news release issued on Friday, three men—40-year-old Osmel Benitez of Miami, 39-year-old Victor Manuel Perez Cardenas of Tampa, and 45-year-old Jhonny Walther Izaguirre Lopez of Baton Rouge, Louisiana—were convicted in the May 2024 operation.
According to officials, the three planned to kidnap migrants who had been trafficked from Cuba to the United States.
On May 18, 2024, Perez Cardenas transported those migrLargo. ants “by boat to a deserted shoreline on Key Largo.” Perez Cardenas, armed with a weapon, led the aliens to a neighboring road, where Benitez and other members of the company waited with vehicles to transfer them to Miami,” according to the news release.
Several of the victims were brought to a farm in Miami that day, where the men and others held them captive while attempting to extort money from their friends and families.
“At the property, Benitez and other members of the enterprise beat the aliens with a stick and a machete and conducted mock hangings of two aliens,” officials said. “In one recorded incident, Benitez and another co-conspirator forced an alien to stand on a chair, placed a noose around his neck, and struck him with the flat side of a machete.”
The tape of the pretend hanging was provided to the migrant’s family “to coerce payment,” and Izaguirre Lopez, among others, “contacted the aliens’ families and friends, threatening to kill or harm the captives unless money was sent.”
When four of the migrants couldn’t pay, Izaguirre Lopez decided to take them to Louisiana “to work for his construction company in order to pay off their debts.”
On May 20, 2024, law authorities stopped Izaguirre Lopez on the Florida Turnpike in Sumter County while he was driving the victims.
More than a year later, all three men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap. Benitez and Izaguirre Lopez also pled guilty to conspiracy to offer and procure forced labor, violent crimes in assistance of racketeering, conspiracy to possess a firearm, and brandishing a firearm during and in connection with a violent crime. Benitez and Perez Cardenas pled guilty to conspiracy to smuggle, transport, and harbor immigrants in violation of US law, and Izaguirre Lopez pleaded guilty to moving aliens within the United States.
Benitez, Perez Cardenas, and Izaguirre Lopez were sentenced to 34, 17.5, and 28 years in jail, respectively.
Benitez and Perez Cardenas are Cuban nationals, while Izaguirre Lopez is Honduran, and they all face deportation after their terms are completed.
“The violent, inhumane conduct that Benitez, Cardenas, and Lopez doled out to the victims of their illegal alien smuggling and kidnapping operation is almost beyond imagination,” said Brett Skiles, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Miami. “The depths of their depredation included mock hangings, forced labor, and threats to kill or harm – heinous conduct commensurate with their sentences. Let this case serve as a warning to other human smugglers that their illegal actions will not be tolerated.”
Three more suspected co-conspirators, Victor Rafael Arcia Albeja, Jose Angel Marrero Rodriguez, and Yoelys Prada Ramos, are awaiting trial.
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