A 24-year-old Cuban identified as Erik Ventura-Castro was sentenced this Wednesday to 30 months of federal prison for being part of a criminal network that illegally brought thousands of Cubans into the U.S. through fraudulent documents, asylum fraud, and money laundering, as announced by the Department of Justice.
Ventura-Castro, a resident of Hialeah, becomes the first sentenced member of a group of 12 defendants who were part of a criminal organization active between January 2021 and June 2025.
On May 7, the young Cuban pleaded guilty to conspiracy to traffic in foreign nationals for profit and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.
The Deputy Attorney General of the Criminal Division, A. Tysen Duva, described the scope of the scheme:
Ventura-Castro was part of a complex conspiracy responsible for bringing foreigners into the United States on a massive scale. The accused and others recruited migrants through social media, charged thousands of dollars to smuggle them into the country, and assisted them in obtaining immigration benefits to which they were not entitled.
How did the network operate?
The organization operated under the guise of Asesoría y Servicios Migratorios LLC, a Tampa-based company that presented itself as a legitimate immigration advisory service.
He was attracting clients through social media and a WhatsApp group called "PROCESSING ESTA AND TOURIST VISA TO THE USA FOR SPANISH CITIZENS," where he was offering his fraudulent services.
The scheme involved creating documents that certified false European citizenships -primarily Spanish- so that Cubans could fraudulently apply for electronic travel authorizations (ESTA), also claiming that the applicants had not been in Cuba since 2011.
The special agent on duty for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Tampa, Nicholas Ingegno, described the behavior as a serious crime.
"They orchestrated a sophisticated plan to deliberately recruit and traffic thousands of Cuban citizens to the United States, illegally obtaining immigration benefits through fraudulent applications, false statements, and illicit financial transactions," asserted Ingegno.
The figures of fraud
The smuggling services were charged between $1,500 and $40,000 per person, and in some cases, the organization even chartered private planes to transport whole groups of migrants.
Ventura-Castro personally made over 40 electronic payments to USCIS to process fraudulent ESTA applications, and transferred more than $97,000 from the United States to the Cayman Islands, Colombia, and Mexico to finance migrant flights.
In total, the network generated more than 18 million dollars in revenue, channeled over seven million through payment apps like Zelle, and allocated more than 2.5 million for flight payments.
The director of USCIS, Joseph Edlow, was emphatic:
"The sentence handed down today is evidence of our all-out war against immigration fraud. This criminal organization generated thousands of false asylum applications and flooded the country with illegal foreigners."
The status of the case and the upcoming trials
This case, which involves 12 defendants linked to a network of Cuban migrant trafficking dismantled in September 2025, was processed under the framework of the Joint Task Force Alpha (JTFA), the initiative by the Department of Justice to combat human trafficking perpetrated by cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
Five of the 12 defendants - Liannys Yaiselys Vega-Perez, Miguel Alejandro Martinez Vasconcelos, Layra Libertad Treto Santos, Emanuel Martinez Gonzalez, and Walbis Pozo-Dutel - have already pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Three more defendants -Lazaro Alain Cabrera-Rodriguez, Luis Emmanuel Escalona-Marrero, and Gisleivy Peralta Consuegra- have a trial scheduled for September 21, 2026, a date that will mark the next judicial chapter of a case that revealed the operation of one of the most sophisticated immigration fraud networks documented in South Florida in recent years.
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