A federal jury Monday convicted three Cuban immigrants of all charges tied to a major Las Vegas-area theft ring.
The
three defendants — Alexis Torres Simon, 46; Julio De Armas Diaz, 54;
and Alexander Del Valle Garcia, 42 — were found guilty of stealing drugs
and expensive merchandise from delivery vans and warehouses around the
valley, as well as planning the robbery of a van driver.
The charges included conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery and attempted interference with commerce by robbery.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey set Aug. 18 sentencing dates for all three defendants, who are in federal custody.
The 12-member jury deliberated less than three hours since it got the case late Friday.
Defense
lawyers, who said they would appeal the convictions, contended during
the two-week trial that the case hinged on the word of a six-time felon
motivated to set up the defendants.
But prosecutors argued that
secretly recorded conversations showed that two of the defendants had
their own “big mouths” to blame for their legal troubles.
Assistant
U.S. Attorneys Daniel Schiess and Christina Brown singled out the
undercover work of the six-time felon Yordani Corona Del Toro, who
helped the FBI break up the theft ring.
Del Toro, 23, also a
Cuban immigrant, secretly recorded Simon and De Armas Diaz planning the
robbery and kidnapping of the delivery van driver, who was hauling
pharmaceutical drugs, the prosecutors told the jury.
Simon and De
Armas Diaz were taken into custody April 8, 2013, as they were about to
carry out the robbery scheme, according to trial testimony. Del Valle
Garcia was arrested several days later.
The recorded planning session, or as Schiess called it the “big mouth evidence,”
occurred the day before the robbery was to go down, when Simon and De
Armas Diaz were driving Del Toro around town on a dry run.
“It was clear as can be,” Schiess told the jury in his closing argument. “Is there any doubt what they were doing?”
Defense lawyers throughout the trial attacked the credibility of Del Toro and the thoroughness of his FBI handler, agent Shay Christensen.
They
argued Del Toro lied during the investigation and set up their clients
to escape punishment for felony convictions in two burglary cases in
state court.
Del Toro got probation in both cases, despite plea
deals allowing state prosecutors to seek life in prison for him as a
habitual criminal after he left the country for several months last
year.
He testified that he fled to Mexico and then Cuba, leaving
his newborn daughter behind, out of fear for his safety. The wife of one
of the defendants sent his mother a threat, indicating he would pay for
cooperating with FBI agents, Del Toro said.
Agents assigned to
the FBI’s organized crime squad linked the ring to the Oct. 15, 2012,
warehouse theft of $573,756 in Coach merchandise, mostly purses, in
southeast Las Vegas.
Ring members also broke into unattended delivery vans to steal drugs and other goods, prosecutors said.
One
theft was said to have occurred Nov. 14, 2012, from a delivery van in
the parking lot of a Smith’s grocery store on North Rainbow Boulevard.
Another happened March 13, 2013, in the parking lot of a Walgreen’s
store on West Desert Inn Road.
This was the first criminal trial
for Dorsey since she took the bench last summer. It also was
Christensen’s first trial as an FBI agent, as well as the first time
former federal prosecutor Kathleen Bliss appeared in trial as a defense
lawyer. She represented Del Valle Garcia.
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