CONTRA EL PINGALISMO CASTRISTA/
"Se que no existe el consuelo
que no existe
la anhelada tierrra de mis suenos
ni la desgarrada vision de nuestros heroes.
Pero
te seguimos buscando, patria,..." - Reinaldo Arenas
By Sally Kestin, Megan O'Matz and William E. Gibson
Photography and videography by Taimy Alvarez
Members of Congress want to know
who pockets the stolen U.S. dollars that flow to Cuba, whether the Cuban
government is behind the crime, and if American policy makes it too
easy.
Those questions are even more crucial now that President Obama is moving toward normalizing relations
with the Communist nation, lawmakers said in response to a Sun Sentinel
investigation that documented a revolving door of crooks and cash to
the island.
Criminals are exploiting a unique immigration law, the Cuban
Adjustment Act of 1966, that grants near-automatic entry to Cubans who
make it to U.S. soil, the Sun Sentinel found. Even Cuban Americans in
Congress, traditionally staunch supporters of preserving the
preferential treatment the U.S. affords to Cubans, say some change is
needed.
“Should we, as American citizens, look the other way while people
abuse a law that is one of the most generous in the history of the
world?” said U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a newly elected Republican and a
Cuban American from Kendall. “I think this policy is deeply flawed, and
we have to find a way to reform it.”
Rings of Cuban immigrants have capitalized on America’s open door and
its strained relations with Cuba by engaging in high-dollar frauds and
theft, shuttling back and forth with money plundered in the U.S. and
escaping to Cuba to evade justice.
“We don’t want to have a situation that makes it easy for people who
are involved in crime rings in Cuba to come here, or who are sent here
by crime rings, or the Castro regime ... to come, commit crimes and then
travel back freely with all of the money that they stole, oftentimes
from taxpayers,” said Rep. Ted Deutch, a West Boca Democrat who serves
on the House Foreign Affairs committee.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo
Curbelo has no evidence but said he believes the criminal network in
the U.S. is the work of the Castro government. It is a suspicion shared
by some colleagues in Congress.
“I believe it's very likely that the Cuban government is sponsoring
all of this activity and is profiting from it,” Curbelo said.
Congress should investigate that possibility, Deutch said. “We ought
to dig to find out where [the money’s] going when it gets there,” he
said.
One U.S. senator tried in 2011 and got nowhere.
Concerned about Cuban immigrants committing Medicare fraud, Sen.
Charles Grassley asked in a hearing whether Cuban officials may be
involved or may have facilitated fraud. He followed up with a letter to
Attorney General Eric Holder and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, tried unsuccessfully in
2011 to investigate the prevalence of Cuban immigrants in Medicare fraud
and possible Cuban government connections. AP Photo.
“It is already concerning that organized crime has moved into health
care fraud because it is so lucrative,” wrote Grassley, an Iowa
Republican who served on the Judiciary Committee. “It is even more
troubling if foreign government officials are also facilitating or
directing fraud.”
In response, an assistant attorney general wrote only that federal
agencies coordinate “where appropriate” with international criminal
investigations. The letter did not answer the senator’s questions about
the number of Cubans involved in fraud or how long they had been in the
country, saying federal agencies that investigate fraud do not track
that information.
But the government does have that data. Mining federal bookings
records, the Sun Sentinel found that Cuba natives are far and away the
leaders in health-care fraud.
Though they comprise less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, they
make up 41 percent of the health-care fraud arrests nationwide, the
analysis shows. The next largest group, defendants born in the U.S.,
represent 29 percent of the arrests, followed by Nigerians and Russians
at 3 percent each.
Snitches and spies
The reach of Cuban criminal rings extends well beyond Medicare fraud.
Immigrants from the island have specialized in a series of lucrative
economic crimes, ripping off auto insurers, credit-card companies and
retailers, often in highly organized, astonishingly brazen heists.
The crimes typically carry light sentences, and criminals who don’t
want to risk jail time can return to Cuba with little fear of being
extradited.
Digging through hundreds of court documents, the Sun Sentinel found references to possible Cuban government connections:
⚫ The accused leader of a Cuban drug and smuggling ring based in
Southwest Florida, Ernesto Feito, “had a state badge as an international
security officer from Cuba” and was “able to move people in and out of
Cuba via fishing boats without any problem,” an informant told
investigators in 2005. The operation was “sanctioned and encouraged and
aided by Fidel Castro and Cuban governmental spies.” A fugitive for six
years, Feito, now 49, was captured in 2013, but prosecutors cited a lack
of evidence and dropped the case.
⚫ An informant who helped prosecutors win convictions in a South
Florida ring that billed Medicare more than $56 million told a state
fraud investigator in 2007 that the organizer was a Cuban intelligence
officer. Mario Aleman “was an agent for G-2 Security Forces” and had his
brother transport up to $180,000 at a time back to the island, said
informant Jorge O’Reilly. Aleman, now 53, returned to Cuba and was never
charged.
O’Reilly “was credible, very credible,” investigator Jack Calvar told
the Sun Sentinel. “I couldn’t get any information out of Cuba.”
⚫ A defendant in a credit-card fraud and fuel-theft crew on Florida’s
west coast refused to testify against a leader of that ring because, he
told a detective in February, the man’s brother was a Cuban
intelligence officer who “would hurt his family” in Cuba.
⚫ Convicted Medicare fraudster Renier V. Rodriguez, now 63, was a
lieutenant colonel in Cuba and director of a military school. He
regularly traveled to Cuba after coming to the U.S., but his lawyer told
the Sun Sentinel he was homeless at the time of the fraud and used as a
pawn by others.
Cuba denies training or sending people to the U.S. to steal. “The
Cuban government in no way encourages that,” said a high-ranking Cuban
official who spoke on condition he not be named. “There is no
complicity.”
Members of Congress are not convinced.
Immigrants arrive seemingly trained on how to commit fraud, said Rep.
Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican and son of Cuban immigrants.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, left, Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen have indicated a willingness to re-examine the Cuban
Adjustment Act.
“You have to wonder how people who just arrived here from Cuba within
a very short period of time have it all set up, have a very
sophisticated system to defraud, and as soon as they get caught, they go
back,” he said. The illicit money in Cuba “is not going to the people.
This is going to the regime’s institutions.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami,
said she is not aware of “any instructions that the regime is giving to
people, but it does call attention to the fact that a lot of these folks
are coming, recently arrived from Cuba, and are committing these crimes
and then they are on the lam back in Cuba with millions of dollars.”
A law unto themselves
Cubans are the only nationality with their own immigration law. The
Cuban Adjustment Act, passed nearly 50 years ago to provide an escape
for those fleeing communism, presumes Cubans to be political refugees
and does not require them to prove persecution or seek asylum.
Unlike other immigrant groups, Cubans are allowed into the country
without visas. They’re eligible for financial assistance and
fast-tracked for legal residency and citizenship, regardless of how they
arrive or why they left Cuba.
The open-door policy provides no mechanism for the U.S. to check the
backgrounds of many Cubans arriving at the border. Even with Cubans
immigrating through legal channels, such as a family reunification
program for immediate relatives, background information is limited.
“The reality is with Cuba it is very, very difficult to determine if
they have a criminal history,” said Antonio Revilla, a Miami attorney
and former immigration prosecutor. “As far as our knowing what’s
transpired in Cuba, what kind of people they are in Cuba, we have
limited knowledge.”
The law allows Cuban immigrants to become permanent residents after
just a year, travel back to Cuba and legally re-enter the U.S.
Many are now going back and forth like Cuba is their winter home,
said Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive director of the Washington,
D.C.-based Cuba Democracy Advocates, which supports stronger measures
against the Cuban government.
“There is a new category of Cubans that are coming for other reasons
that are not political. That’s fine, and we welcome them,” he said, but
they “should play by the same rules as everybody else in the world.”
Immigrants from other countries who don’t have visas must prove
political persecution to stay in the United States. Those who succeed
jeopardize that status if they return to their home countries before
they become U.S. citizens.
Cuban immigrants who return to the island as soon as they obtain a
green card “undermine the argument that they have a legitimate fear of
persecution,” Curbelo said.
“I don’t think any American citizen can support the systematic abuse
of a generous immigration law,” the freshman Congressman said. “It’s
certainly very demoralizing to people from other countries who would
like to come to our country and have a more prosperous future and are
not able to do so.”
As Congress takes up broader immigration reform, Curbelo said, “I
think we certainly have to take a hard look at the Cuban Adjustment Act.
“I’m not for eliminating the Cuban Adjustment Act, but we certainly need to tighten it,” he said.
Ros-Lehtinen said she doesn’t believe the act facilitates crime in
the U.S. but said “it’s not supposed to be as a ticket in and out ... to
say that you’re persecuted, you get to speed up your paperwork, but
then you’re able to go back and forth.”
The law “should be used only for those who are fleeing persecution,”
she said. “I’m not in favor of getting rid of it because tomorrow there
will be someone who will be worthy of that designation, so what we need
to do is cut down on its abuse.”
Influential voting bloc
The Cuban delegation in Congress, an influential voting bloc, has
stopped past attempts to repeal the law, despite arguments that it is
unfair to other immigrants and no longer necessary.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wants to keep the Cuban Adjustment Act but cut down on its abuses.
The act “has been an anachronism” for decades, pitting one deserving
group of immigrants against others, said Doris Meissner, former
commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in the
Clinton administration. “It’s always caused controversy over why do you
treat Haitians one way and Cubans another way?”
Mike Kopetski, a former Congressman from Oregon, felt a backlash when
he tried to overturn the law in 1994, calling it indefensible and
overly generous.
“A lot of the representatives from South Florida in particular were
very upset with me,” said Kopetski, now an international trade
consultant. “I was frustrated by the fact it was Florida and led by
Cuban Americans in Florida who were dictating our Cuba policy in this
area when this is a national policy.”
In recent years, some Cuban Americans in Congress have become more
open to modifying the law over concern about the increased
back-and-forth by new immigrants and criminals.
A 2012 proposal would have revoked the legal residency of immigrants
admitted under the law who returned to Cuba before becoming a U.S.
citizen. The bill’s sponsor, former Rep. David Rivera, a Cuban American
from Miami, noted that fugitives who had stolen billions from Medicare
and Medicaid “live in Cuba protected by the Cuban government.”
The proposal stalled. During one committee hearing, opponents said it
divided Cuban families and unfairly punished those who wanted to visit
sick or dying relatives on the island.
Claver-Carone, who supported the bill, told the Sun Sentinel it would
have resulted in a “huge drop” in frauds and other crimes by Cuban
immigrants in the United States.
Revilla said he does not believe the law is responsible for crimes committed by Cuban immigrants.
“I don’t think Cubans are coming here saying, ‘I’m going to come
here, become a resident, then commit a crime,’” he said. “It’s human
nature, just like Americans commit crime.”
Time for reform
Momentum for reform has been building with increased openness that began five years ago.
The Obama administration in 2009 reversed rules limiting trips and
money Cuban Americans could take to the island. And in August 2013, the
State Department extended travel visas for Cubans to visit the U.S. from
six months to five years and allowed multiple trips.
Also in 2013, the Cuban government made it easier for its citizens to
travel abroad, allowing them to stay in the U.S. for up to two years
without losing their homes and benefits in Cuba.
Both countries expect increased travel once diplomatic relations are
restored. Diaz-Balart said the U.S. must demand the return of fugitives
hiding out in Cuba, which in published reports has expressed an
unwillingness to do.
“It is unconscionable that the Obama administration would work out a
deal with the anti-American, brutal Castro regime to ease sanctions,
establish diplomatic relations, and return three convicted spies while
doing nothing to bring these criminals back to the United States,” he
said.
Rep. Deutch said all U.S. policy toward Cuba should be re-examined.
“Now [immigrants] have the ability to go back and forth and they have
the ability to take unlimited money,” he said. “It’s certainly
important I think for us to take a look at the connection and the
interaction between the existing law, the changes in policy and this
increase in crime, and determine whether there might need to be some
changes.”
Joel Bauta Lopez earned $7 a
month as a bus dispatcher in Cuba. Within a few years of his arrival in
the United States, he was driving a Hummer, living in his own condo and
vacationing at Caribbean resorts.
Bauta made his riches bilking American insurance companies.
“I had just been here for two years. I needed the money,” Bauta, 42,
told the Sun Sentinel. “In Cuba, we live in a system where if you don’t
invent, if you don’t rob, you don’t eat.”
Bauta was part of a Cuban crime wave that’s aided by U.S. policy and
proliferating. He came to the U.S. without an entry visa, got to stay
because of his special status as a Cuban, was arrested twice for fraud,
and spent less than two months in jail.
America’s open-door policy, intended to give refuge to those fleeing
the Castro government, has allowed a thriving underground criminal
network to take root and expand its reach from South Florida across the
nation, the Sun Sentinel found in the first broad look at organized
Cuban crime.
These criminals often operate in rings specializing in lucrative
crimes that can yield astonishing sums with little risk of stiff
punishment: credit-card fraud, auto accidents staged to con insurers,
cargo theft, Medicare fraud, indoor marijuana farming.
Many return to Cuba for visits, flaunting their new wealth and
enticing family and friends to join them. Others are brought here
specifically to tend marijuana plants or set up fraudulent medical
clinics, then go back. Some participate to pay their debts to the
smugglers who brought them here.
Many of the rings are highly organized and sophisticated, involving
as many as 100 people. Others are small, grass-roots cells that,
combined, have managed to siphon millions from the U.S. economy.
One crew opened a home health-care agency in Miami in 2010 and within
three days submitted $1.5 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare.
Another Miami-based ring stole $15 million over two years between
2010 and 2012, but did it bit by bit: a few hundred dollars at a time,
buying gift cards across the country with fraudulent credit cards.
Agents seized piles of cash in a Cuban credit-card fraud ring
involving more than 20 people, including money-wirers, overseas
hackers, shoppers, discount-dollar-store owners, and a credit-card
embosser. The group hit stores in 45 states and Puerto Rico. Photo
courtesy of Florida Attorney General's Office.
The Sun Sentinel found similar patterns in how the schemes are
orchestrated, and a symbiotic nature in which one crime furthers
another. The 2007 drowning of a Cuban immigrant off the island of Palm
Beach, for example, led federal agents to a vast network that
manufactured counterfeit gift cards with stolen credit-card numbers and
used them to steal gasoline that fueled boats to smuggle Cubans to
Florida.
Some crimes are even executed from Cuba. While hiding out on the
island, one fugitive wanted for Medicare fraud in the United States
signed power-of-attorney papers to collect on an arson he had arranged
at his Miami home.
Recruits from Cuba
The rings import people from Cuba to be foot soldiers in their criminal organizations.
Newcomers are typically recruited for lower-level tasks: tending
marijuana grow houses, unloading stolen goods from cargo heists, lending
their names as owners of sham medical clinics.
When police swoop in, these recent arrivals can be swiftly sent home —
flush with more cash than they ever could have amassed in their
impoverished homeland, and safely beyond the reach of the U.S., which
has no functioning extradition process with Cuba.
It’s a pattern police and bail bondsmen have seen over and over, most
recently with new arrivals brought to care for the plants in marijuana
grow houses.
“They leave their whole families in Cuba, go back to visit for two or
three weeks every couple months,” said Miami bounty hunter Rolando
Betancourt, who tracks fugitives for insurance companies and bail
bondsmen. “It works out good for the grow-house owners because nobody is
going to flip. If anything happens, they’ll pay your bond and your way
back to Cuba.”
Bondsman Sal Rivas of Miami said the operations happen as if by
script. A ringleader who has been in the United States finances the
indoor marijuana lab. “He teaches the guy who just got here from Cuba.
It’s usually a relative or a guy from the same town. It’s planned: if we
get caught, you’re going back to Cuba.”
On the island, where the average salary is about $20 a month, Cubans
can be dazzled by the ill-gotten wealth friends and family bring back
from the United States.
Abel Rivas, 48 and no relation to the bondsman, was one who returned
and flaunted his bling. In America, he collected Social Security
disability benefits and stole cargo. When cops busted him for hijacking a
truck with $20,000 worth of perfume, they found a photo of him visiting
Cuba, sporting a Rolex and leaning on a rented Mercedes surrounded by
Cuban pals.
Convicted cargo thief Abel Rivas (third from right in white T-shirt
and jeans) visits Cuba, renting a Mercedes there and sporting a Rolex.
The other men pictured weren’t implicated in the 2006 heist of a perfume
truck in Hollywood, Fla. that sent Rivas to prison. Photo courtesy of
Willie Morales, retired Miami-Dade Police cargo theft task force
detective.
“If he goes to Cuba and he has money and gets to rent a Mercedes and
has nice clothes ... and the guy is buying them all beers, why wouldn’t
those guys jump in a raft and come over here?” said Willie Morales, a
former Miami-Dade Police detective who investigated Rivas. “It looks
like a great life.”
Other Cubans are swept into the criminal rings, like indentured servants, to repay the smugglers who bring them here.
Yoan Moreno owed $5,000 to a cousin’s husband in Tampa for getting
him out of Cuba, and helped stage a fake car accident to pay off the
debt. Moreno “was told to say he had a shoulder injury” and signed forms
for treatment he never received at a clinic, according to a 2013
statement he made to insurance fraud detectives in Jacksonville. He
spent two days in jail and was ordered to repay nearly $7,000 to an
insurance company.
The leaders of a South Florida staged-accident ring brought Oscar
Franco Padron from Cuba and put him in charge of one of their sham
clinics, said Randee Golder, a Boynton Beach lawyer who represented a
chiropractor in the case. “They helped pay to bring his family over,”
she said. “Padron kind of owed them.”
Leaders of a Cuban crime ring in Texas, charged in 2010 with bilking
Medicare of $9 million, “dispatched Cuban nationals to various cities
throughout the United States,” paying them $40,000 to $50,000 cash to
open bank accounts and rent mailboxes for fake cancer and HIV clinics —
and then leave the country, federal court documents state.
In South Florida, Elizabet Lombera of Miami Lakes recruited friends
and neighbors from her hometown of Güines, Cuba, about 35 miles
southeast of Havana, to be phony owners in a Medicare scheme that netted
more than $12 million in less than two years.
One member of the ring got away before his arrest; the FBI believes
he went to Cuba. Lombera pleaded guilty, and is serving
three-and-a-half years in a central Florida prison in the 2011 case.
As authorities closed in on another Medicare scam in 2007, the
77-year-old Miami front man for a medical equipment company was whisked
away. A car full of strangers drove Ramon Moreira from Miami to Mexico,
“where he was holed up in a home for a week” and then transported to
Cuba, according to court records.
Moreira was caught trying to re-enter the U.S. in 2010 and was jailed for less than seven months.
U.S. taxpayers paid about $1 million in false Medicare claims from Moreira’s company.
‘I knew it was a crime’
Joel Bauta Lopez’s evolution from Cuban bus dispatcher to American
insurance scammer made him a fortune and ended with just a short stint
in jail.
Growing up in a suburb of Havana, Bauta often skipped meals because
monthly government food rations lasted only days. “If I had lunch, I
didn’t have dinner,” he said.
He longed to come to the U.S., especially after seeing friends return for visits with nice clothes and fancy rental cars.
Bauta didn’t have an entry visa when he arrived in the United States
in 2001, but was welcomed under the Cuban Adjustment Act. “I was allowed
to stay because I’m Cuban,” he said.
Bauta settled in Tampa, where he had an aunt, and worked as an oyster
shucker and cabinet maker. Then he got a better offer: A friend of a
relative in Cuba operated a Tampa accident clinic engaged in
auto-insurance fraud and wanted to open another one in Miami.
Bauta agreed to run it and by 2005 had opened his own clinic, E&B Rehabilitation Center near Miami International Airport.
He approached people he knew from Cuba and told them they could make
some money if they had an accident and came to his clinic. He staged
fake crashes and paid participants $1,000 to $2,000 apiece in return for
billing their auto insurers for phony treatment.
A no-fault insurance state, Florida requires personal injury
protection that pays up to $10,000 in medical bills for each person in
an accident. A vehicle with five people can generate $50,000.
Bauta needed five patients a month to break even but said he often
had four times that. He said he spent the money as soon as it came in,
on cars, a $230,000 condo in Sweetwater, and trips to Mexico, Panama,
Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. He returned to Cuba for
visits, renting the best cars he could find — on one trip, an Audi
costing $100 a day.
He had become the successful Cuban American he’d always envied.
“The guy over there who’s desperate sees you with a rented car, good
clothes, and wants to know what you’re doing,” he said. “Joking around, I
would say, ‘I’m a millionaire. I’m running a clinic.’ They’d say, ‘But
you don’t know anything about medicine.’”
His luck changed in 2009. Bauta, his wife and three employees were arrested in an undercover sting.
Friends and family encouraged Bauta to flee. “The first thing they
tell you when you get in trouble is, ‘Go back to Cuba,’” he said.
Bauta instead decided to take his chances with the U.S. legal system,
brazenly. With his criminal case still pending, he got right back in
the fraud business and opened another clinic in Miami, Ganesha Medical
Center. Detectives busted him and his wife again in 2010.
“I didn’t give it a lot of importance that I got arrested, and I did it again,” he said.
It wasn’t a bad gamble: Bauta spent two months in jail and about seven months on house arrest.
He said he then moved on to a legitimate job, selling flowers wholesale.
“Cubans who’ve only lived in the Communist system, we come with a
mentality of wanting to make easy money,” he said. “Today, I know what
the American dream is — to work, live well with my family, try every day
to improve my life.”
Highly organized
South Florida auto-insurance industry fraud investigator Fred
Burkhardt said the small-scale operations of a decade ago have evolved,
becoming “very sophisticated, very organized.”
“Someone is sitting back with a strategy, figuring out where the
clinics will be, where the patients will come from,” said Burkhardt, a
supervisory agent for the Illinois-based National Insurance Crime
Bureau, a nonprofit that coordinates with law enforcement. “There’s a
structure involved. There are specific duties that people have.”
Investigators have seen similar organization with marijuana grow
houses. “They had the exact same wiring panels; they had the exact same
hydroponic setup. It was as if they had a formula,” said Dana Coston,
spokesman for Cape Coral Police Department in Southwest Florida.
Cuban grow houses are often “carbon copies” of each other, said
Timothy Wagner, director of the South Florida High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area. “There’s no question they’re coming here from Cuba
already recruited and trained. And we don’t see that with other
countries.”
Some involved in fraud also reported learning their trade on the
island. In Coral Gables, a woman arrested in a counterfeit credit-card
case told a police officer she was trained in Cuba, said police
spokeswoman Kelly Denham.
Police in New Jersey were surprised by the techniques used in a grow
house they discovered in March, occupied by a recent Cuban immigrant
from Florida, his girlfriend and 200 pot plants worth about $200,000.
The setup included a swimming pool, as do some Florida grow houses.
“The pool was used to collect rainwater. The rainwater was filtered
down into the basement. It was just an awesome setup, lights all over
the place,” said Capt. Christopher Ruef of the Egg Harbor Township
Police Department. “Right away, I said, ‘This is organized.’”
On a single day in October, Miami-Dade Police raided 13 marijuana
grow houses, seizing 586 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $2
million. Police arrested 11 people – all Cubans, said Lt. Jose Gonzalez
of the Miami-Dade Police Department’s narcotics unit.
In central Florida’s Volusia County, a detective investigating a ring
of grow houses estimated as many as 80 people were involved. One
testified that he went to live in his brother’s grow houses immediately
after he arrived from Cuba in 2009. He was paid $200 upfront and $5,000
to $10,000 more when the plants were harvested.
“I was given instructions as to how to take care of that house, how
to feed them,” Alexis Mendez-Baez testified, saying he was told “that in
order for me to get ahead in this country that I would have to get
involved with that.”
In cargo heists, another crime favored by the rings, newcomers often
start at the bottom as lumpers, loading trucks, and move up the ladder
into other roles.
“Once they learn the illegal trade they might break off and start
their own group,” said Morales, the former Miami-Dade cargo-theft
investigator. “That’s what has occurred and why we have so many people
involved in this.”
Cargo thief Eduardo del Bono, convicted in 2011, explained to
investigators there is no one syndicate above all, but separate groups
that cooperate, including several in his network. “They all communicate
... and they talk about what they have, and then they exchange
merchandise between each other.”
Ken Morman, a retired Tampa Police major who investigated Cuban cargo
thieves, said the rings pre-arrange buyers for the stolen food and
merchandise. “They got so organized they would go after something and
have it sold before they even got it.”
Eduardo del Bono
45 states, 60,000 gift cards, $15 million
The 2012 case of a crime ring with nationwide reach and deep roots in
Cuba and Miami reveals just how sophisticated and entrenched these
operations can be.
Federal authorities identified the ringleader as Adrian Ortiz, then
29, a Cuban citizen with a green card. He directed an operation that
involved more than 20 people
— money-wirers, overseas hackers, shoppers, discount-dollar-store
owners, and a credit-card embosser known as “El Gordo,” The Fat One.
In a little over two years, this organization stole 22,000
credit-card numbers and used them to buy more than 60,000 gift cards
worth $15 million from Wal-Mart stores in 45 states and Puerto Rico.
Once back in Miami, police say members of the ring used those gift cards
to buy merchandise at Wal-Mart subsidiary Sam’s Club.
Low-ranking members wired money to buy stolen credit-card numbers
from hackers overseas. El Gordo embossed the fake credit cards. Runners
were called when the cards in their names were ready, then dispatched in
pairs from Miami International Airport to Wal-Mart stores from coast to
coast.
They concealed the bogus credit cards in the lining of their luggage.
More cards were sent via FedEx to their hotels, hidden in decks of
playing cards and Monopoly games.
Nationwide
One Miami-based ring sent runners to 45 states & Puerto Rico.
They used stolen credit cards to buy 60,000 gift cards worth $15
million.
At the Wal-Mart stores, the runners used the fake credit cards to buy
as many gift cards as they could. Once home, the shoppers were paid
about 30 percent of the value of the gift cards they bought.
One defendant told investigators the ring sold the gift cards for
about half of their face value to discount-store owners. The store
owners then redeemed them at one Sam’s Club in Doral for millions of
dollars worth of beer, cigarettes and other merchandise that then made
it to the shelves of their Miami and Hialeah shops, according to court
documents.
In a 2012 roundup, agents seized more than $1 million in cash and
arrested 20 people. At the home of one discount-store owner, police
found $888,581 stuffed in plastic bags and shoe boxes.
In a little more than two years, a well-organized ring based in Miami
stole more than 22,000 credit-card numbers, created counterfeit cards
and sent runners to Wal-Marts across the country, where they bought $15
million in gift cards. The gift cards were sold to discount-dollar store
owners in Miami, who police say redeemed them at a Sam’s Club for
cigarettes, beer and other items that then made it to the shelves of
their stores for resale.
Another defendant fled to Cuba and is still missing. One participant
told investigators he knew the others “because they are from the same
town in Cuba.”
Ortiz, the ringleader, got seven-and-a-half years.
“This isn’t an isolated group,” Sam Fadel, a credit-card fraud
investigator, testified at the 2012 sentencing of one of the runners.
“It is a part of a large scheme of organized criminals that are severely
impacting the entire economy.”
Major money, minor consequences
The rings have specialized in crimes that can yield stunning sums of cash with limited risk of stiff punishment.
Some of the hauls:
● Copper wiring stripped in 2011 from warehouses in the Northeast: $25,000 a night.
● Merchandise purchased at central Florida Target stores in 2011 with a stolen credit-card number: $73,577 in one day.
● Fuel stolen in 2008 from Palm Beach County gas stations with counterfeit credit cards: $25,679 in four days.
Raul Echazaba, left, was part of a South Florida crew of Cuban
immigrants convicted of stealing copper from vacant warehouses in
Pennsylvania that a detective said netted $25,000 a night. Back home in
Miami, they lived large, driving luxury cars, partying at nightclubs and
fishing on a custom-made boat. Photo courtesy of Muhlenberg Township
Police.
One Tampa-based auto insurance fraud ring collected $20 million in
just a couple of years. Before police could arrest them, participants
had bought and resold eight half-million dollar homes on the same
cul-de-sac, and two had fled to Cuba.
“They’re here like a year, and then they’re a millionaire,” said
Detective Bill Brantley of Florida’s Division of Insurance Fraud.
The crimes targeted by the rings typically carry relatively low
penalties, crimes that in Florida usually result in probation more than a
third of the time, the Sun Sentinel found.
Even stealing millions from Medicare carried minimal risk — only a
small fraction of fraudsters are prosecuted and, until recently, the
average sentence was three years. Now it is about four years.
“The possibility of profiting five, six, seven or $8 million for a
very small jail sentence is awfully enticing,” said Alex Acosta, former
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
A Miami ring of 20, busted in 2012 for staging house fires with
candles and artificial plants, collected more than $1.5 million in
renters’ insurance but only two went to jail: one for 364 days and the
ringleader for two-and-a-half years.
Many participants, new to the U.S., have no criminal histories in
this country, resulting in lighter sentences, said Detective Matthew
Cardenas of the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office in Texas.
Authorities often don’t know what criminal record, if any, a person
had in Cuba because of the strained diplomatic relations between the two
countries. Immigrants coming to the U.S. from friendly countries that
share information with the U.S. are subjected to more thorough
background checks and can be denied entry or residency for serious
offenses.
Cardenas investigated a credit-card fraud and fuel-theft ring that
netted one defendant $50,000 each month. “Any person would say, ‘I’d
risk going to jail for a few months, if I could make $50,000 a month,’”
he said.
Medicare has been notoriously easy to rip off. A U.S. Government
Accountability Office report in April estimated that of $604 billion in
annual payments, $50 billion were unsupported or fraudulent.
One reason: the government has historically paid most claims first before determining their legitimacy.
“There’s no questions asked for 90 days,” said William Norris, a
Miami criminal defense attorney. “By that time, you’ve got your second
Maserati.”
Spreading across the U.S.
When cops started busting marijuana grow houses in Central Florida,
they noticed that all roads seemed to lead back to a certain city in
South Florida.
“The majority of the people we have encountered have come through
Hialeah,” said Lt. Brian Henderson of the Volusia Bureau of
Investigation. “Every house, we’ll see a vehicle that comes back to a
house in Hialeah. They have once lived in Hialeah ... Some of them were
recruited in Hialeah.”
From Morón, Cuba, to Miami: Luis Soto and Miguel Almanza knew each
other from Morón, Cuba on the pictured at left. Once in Miami, they
opened medical equipment companies, some in the names of others from
Morón, and billed Medicare about $50 million in fraudulent claims. Soto,
now 48, was sentenced to four years, and Almanza, 42, to 10 years.
Texas investigators noticed something similar as they probed a
credit-card ring that stole more than $1 million from retailers in
multiple states.
“There was always a nexus to Florida: a previous address or some
connection: family, friend, relative,” Cardenas said. One defendant
“flat out told me: ‘This is bigger than you’ll ever imagine. This is on a
global scale.’”
From Miami, Cuban crime rings have branched out across the nation to
tap new prospects or escape increased law enforcement attention.
Over the past two decades, Cuba natives with addresses in Florida
have been convicted in 34 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.,
according to the Sun Sentinel’s analysis of federal crimes dominated by
the rings. Their combined take: $74 million.
The U.S. issued this tourism visa to Barbaro Gomez Soto of Cuba, who
arrived in the summer of 2012. That September, police in Perry, Ga.,
arrested him and his adult son for credit-card fraud at a Wal-Mart. The
men were part of a wave of Cubans, many from Florida, accused of
stealing hundreds of credit card numbers from financial institutions
worldwide, manufacturing fake cards and ripping off big-box stores
across central Georgia. Gomez served 186 days in a Georgia jail,
followed by probation.
Auto accidents staged to defraud insurers started in Miami in the
late 1990s and by 2007 began stretching to Fort Myers, Tampa, Orlando
and Jacksonville, said Burkhardt, of the National Insurance Crime
Bureau.
When law enforcement in Florida cracked down, Cuban cargo-theft gangs
shifted operations to Georgia, making it a hub, “a center of gravity
for cargo theft,” according to a 2006 report by the global intelligence
firm Stratfor.
Cuban-run marijuana grow houses spread from Miami through the rest of
the Florida, and by 2010 had crossed into the Southeast. “I started
getting calls from my counterparts in Jacksonville and Atlanta saying
they were seeing Cubans,” said Wagner, the director of the South Florida
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
Convicted prescription drug thief Alfredo Tapanes, in a secretly
taped conversation with an informant, discussed the need to move beyond
the reach of Medicare-fraud investigators in Miami.
“So if you open a clinic in Wyoming, nothing would happen?” the informant asked.
“Of course not. ... and in New York also,” Tapanes replied. “They
keep paying in those places. Everything you do here you can also do over
there.”
¨Saturno jugando con sus hijos¨/ Pedro Pablo Oliva
Seguidores
Carta desde la carcel de Fidel Castro Ruz
“…después de todo, para mí la cárcel es un buen descanso, que sólo tiene de malo el que es obligatorio. Leo mucho y estudio mucho. Parece increíble, las horas pasan como si fuesen minutos y yo, que soy de temperamento intranquilo, me paso el día leyendo, apenas sin moverme para nada. La correspondencia llega normalmente…”
“…Como soy cocinero, de vez en cuando me entretengo preparando algún pisto. Hace poco me mandó mi hermana desde Oriente un pequeño jamón y preparé un bisté con jalea de guayaba. También preparo spaghettis de vez en cuando, de distintas formas, inventadas todas por mí; o bien tortilla de queso. ¡Ah! ¡Qué bien me quedan! por supuesto, que el repertorio no se queda ahí. Cuelo también café que me queda muy sabroso”. “…En cuanto a fumar, en estos días pasados he estado rico: una caja de tabacos H. Upman del doctor Miró Cardona, dos cajas muy buenas de mi hermano Ramón….”. “Me voy a cenar: spaghettis con calamares, bombones italianos de postre, café acabadito de colar y después un H. Upman #4. ¿No me envidias?”. “…Me cuidan, me cuidan un poquito entre todos. No le hacen caso a uno, siempre estoy peleando para que no me manden nada. Cuando cojo el sol por la mañana en shorts y siento el aire de mar, me parece que estoy en una playa… ¡Me van a hacer creer que estoy de vacaciones! ¿Qué diría Carlos Marx de semejantes revolucionarios?”.
Quotes
¨La patria es dicha de todos, y dolor de todos, y cielo para todos, y no feudo ni capellanía de nadie¨ - Marti
"No temas ni a la prision, ni a la pobreza, ni a la muerte. Teme al miedo" - Giacomo Leopardi
¨Por eso es muy importante, Vicky, hijo mío, que recuerdes siempre para qué sirve la cabeza: para atravesar paredes¨– Halvar de Flake[El vikingo]
"Como no me he preocupado de nacer, no me preocupo de morir"- Lorca
"Al final, no os preguntarán qué habéis sabido, sino qué habéis hecho" - Jean de Gerson
"Si queremos que todo siga como está, es necesario que todo cambie" - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
"Todo hombre paga su grandeza con muchas pequeñeces, su victoria con muchas derrotas, su riqueza con múltiples quiebras" - Giovanni Papini
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" - John Lennon
"Habla bajo, lleva siempre un gran palo y llegarás lejos" - Proverbio Africano
"No hay medicina para el miedo"-Proverbio escoces "El supremo arte de la guerra es doblegar al enemigo sin luchar" -Sun Tzu
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother" - Albert Einstein
"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office" - H. L. Menken
"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" -Elie Wiesel
"Stay hungry, stay foolish" - Steve Jobs
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years ther'ed be a shortage of sand" - Milton Friedman
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less" - Vaclav Havel
"No se puede controlar el resultado, pero si lo que uno haga para alcanzarlo" - Vitor Belfort [MMA Fighter]
Liborio
A la puerta de la gloria está San Pedro sentado y ve llegar a su lado a un hombre de cierta historia. No consigue hacer memoria y le pregunta con celo: ¿Quién eras allá en el suelo? Era Liborio mi nombre. Has sufrido mucho, hombre, entra, te has ganado el cielo.
Para Raul Castro
Cuba ocupa el penultimo lugar en el mundo en libertad economica solo superada por Corea del Norte.
Cuba ocupa el lugar 147 entre 153 paises evaluados en "Democracia, Mercado y Transparencia 2007"
Cuando vinieron a buscar a los comunistas, Callé: yo no soy comunista. Cuando vinieron a buscar a los sindicalistas, Callé: yo no soy sindicalista. Cuando vinieron a buscar a los judíos, Callé: yo no soy judío. Cuando vinieron a buscar a los católicos, Callé: yo no soy “tan católico”. Cuando vinieron a buscarme a mí, Callé: no había quien me escuchara.
Un sitio donde los hechos y sus huellas nos conmueven o cautivan
CUBA LLORA Y EL MUNDO Y NOSOTROS NO ESCUCHAMOS
Donde esta el Mundo, donde los Democratas, donde los Liberales? El pueblo de Cuba llora y nadie escucha. Donde estan los Green, los Socialdemocratas, los Ricos y los Pobres, los Con Voz y Sin Voz? Cuba llora y nadie escucha. Donde estan el Jet Set, los Reyes y Principes, Patricios y Plebeyos? Cuba desesperada clama por solidaridad. Donde Bob Dylan, donde Martin Luther King, donde Hollywood y sus estrellas? Donde la Middle Class democrata y conservadora, o acaso tambien liberal a ratos? Y Gandhi? Y el Dios de Todos? Donde los Santos y Virgenes; los Dioses de Cristianos, Protestantes, Musulmanes, Budistas, Testigos de Jehova y Adventistas del Septimo Dia. Donde estan Ochun y todas las deidades del Panteon Yoruba que no acuden a nuestro llanto? Donde Juan Pablo II que no exige mas que Cuba se abra al Mundo y que el Mundo se abra a Cuba? Que hacen ahora mismo Alberto de Monaco y el Principe Felipe que no los escuchamos? Donde Madonna, donde Angelina Jolie y sus adoptados around de world; o nos hara falta un Brando erguido en un Oscar por Cuba? Donde Sean Penn? Donde esta la Aristocracia Obrera y los Obreros menos Aristocraticos, donde los Working Class que no estan junto a un pueblo que lanquidece, sufre y llora por la ignominia? Que hacen ahora mismo Zapatero y Rajoy que no los escuchamos, y Harper y Dion, e Hillary y Obama; donde McCain que no los escuchamos? Y los muertos? Y los que estan muriendo? Y los que van a morir? Y los que se lanzan desesperados al mar? Donde estan el minero cantabrico o el pescador de percebes gijonese? Los Canarios donde estan? A los africanos no los oimos, y a los australianos con su acento de hombres duros tampoco. Y aquellos chinos milenarios de Canton que fundaron raices eternas en la Isla? Y que de la Queen Elizabeth y los Lords y Gentlemen? Que hace ahora mismo el combativo Principe Harry que no lo escuchamos? Donde los Rockefellers? Donde los Duponts? Donde Kate Moss? Donde el Presidente de la ONU? Y Solana donde esta? Y los Generales y Doctores? Y los Lam y los Fabelo, y los Sivio y los Fito Paez? Y que de Canseco y Miñoso? Y de los veteranos de Bahia de Cochinos y de los balseros y de los recien llegados? Y Carlos Otero y Susana Perez? Y el Bola, y Pancho Cespedes? Y YO y TU? Y todos nosotros que estamos aqui y alla rumiando frustaciones y resquemores, envidias y sinsabores; autoelogios y nostalgias, en tanto Louis Michel comulga con Perez Roque mientras Biscet y una NACION lanquidecen? Donde Maceo, donde Marti; donde aquel Villena con su carga para matar bribones? Cuba llora y clama y el Mundo NO ESCUCHA!!!