A investigation by the New York Times published this Tuesday reveals that the criminal network known as the Cuban Mafia in Quintana Roo —the same organization that secretly extracted baseball player Yasiel Puig from Cuba in June 2012— is linked to “El Cangrejo”.
Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, nicknamed "The Crab" due to a peculiarity in his fingers, is a colonel in the Cuban Ministry of the Interior and the grandson of Raúl Castro, who appointed him in 2016 as the head of his personal security detail, overseeing the General Directorate of Personal Security within MININT.
According to court records and interviews cited by the New York newspaper, one of the convicted leaders of the organization, José Miguel González Vidal, told the authorities that he gave Rodríguez Castro a high-performance boat, a Rolex watch, a motorcycle, and luxury clothing as bribes to keep the Cuban Coast Guard and Customs at bay.
The FBI is said to have supported that testimony with text and voice messages extracted from the phones of members of the network.
González Vidal, a 38-year-old Cuban-Spanish citizen, pleaded guilty at the end of 2023 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges of conspiracy under RICO law.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security classified him as a "career criminal" with multiple prior convictions for theft, fraud, and illegal use of credit cards. A federal judge recently sealed his record, a measure that is typically taken when a defendant cooperates with prosecutors.
Rodríguez Castro has not been formally charged in the United States. The Cuban regime described the allegations as "slander," and "Cangrejo" himself did not respond to the newspaper's requests for comment.
The escape of Puig in 2012 was financed from Miami by Raúl Pacheco, who agreed to pay $250,000 dollars to the smugglers in exchange for 20% of the future earnings of the baseball player.
After four failed attempts, Puig escaped on a speedboat with his girlfriend, the boxer Yunior Despaigne, and a Santeria priest. The group arrived clandestinely at Isla Mujeres, off the coast of Cancun, where they were held in a motel for more than 20 days.
The ransom amount rose to $400,000, and the captors threatened to mutilate the player to ruin his career. Finally, an armed group hired by the financiers from Miami stormed the motel and freed the group held by the Cuban Mafia in Quintana Roo.
Weeks later, Puig signed a $42 million contract for seven years with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Sisyphus Operation, jointly conducted by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, determined that the network stole more than 600 engines and vessels in southwestern Florida since 2009 to transport thousands of Cuban migrants to Mexico.
Around 25 people died during those journeys, according to court documents. Migrants who could not pay the $10,000 fee were held and tortured; some women were forced to work in nightclubs.
«We applied physical punishment. Sometimes they were beaten with a wooden board or a Taser gun," stated convicted trafficker Reynaldo Crespo Márquez in 2023 before a federal court in Miami.
David Bolton, a private investigator who alerted federal authorities about the operation, described its members as "the true pirates of the Caribbean" and labeled them as "ruthless killers."
Among the Cuban baseball players trafficked by the same network was also the shortstop Adeiny Hechavarría. In April 2026, Mexican authorities arrested Remigio Valdez-Lao, a 59-year-old key financier of the group, who is expected to be extradited to the United States.
The revelations carry special weight due to the increasing political prominence of "El Cangrejo" in 2026: the MININT colonel has met this year with the team of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with a delegation from the State Department in Havana, and with the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, becoming an informal interlocutor between the regime and Washington.
Meanwhile, Puig is facing his own legal troubles: in February 2026, a federal jury in Los Angeles found him guilty of obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents in an illegal betting case, offenses that could lead to a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
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