Four Cubans —two women and two men— were rescued on Friday by the State Police of Quintana Roo after being held captive in a house in the Valle Verde neighborhood of Cancún, where their captors beat them, filmed the assaults, and sent the videos via WhatsApp to their relatives in Cuba, demanding 5,000 dollars for each release, according to a report from Expediente Quintana Roo.
The operation was triggered when a neighbor heard cries for help coming from a building on De Los Jaguares Street and alerted 911.
Upon entering, the agents found a total of nine people; four of them directly identified the other five as their captors.
The detainees —identified as Alejandro "N", Llanet "N", Zaida "N", Francheska "N", and José Luis "N"— have been placed at the disposal of the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for the Fight Against Kidnapping and Extortion. During the operation, five mobile phones and a keychain were secured.
The newspaper Diario Cambio 22 added that the captors were of Cuban nationality, but this news has not been confirmed so far.
The operation was interinstitutional: the Secretariat of Citizen Security, the Secretariat of the Navy, and the Secretariat of National Defense participated.
One of the victims, identified as R.G.G., explained how she fell into the trap: she saw a supposed job offer posted on social media in Cuba and boarded a boat from Playa Boca de San Diego in Pinar del Río.
Upon arriving in Quintana Roo, he was put into a gray truck and taken to a safe house, where he was beaten and stripped of his belongings.
"Without an interview, without references, they only asked him to arrive in Quintana Roo," detailed Expediente Quintana Roo about the victim's account.
Then the transnational extortion began: the captors recorded him during the beatings and sent the images to his family with a direct message: pay or continue the torture.
Authorities warn that this mechanism—traction through fake ads in Facebook and TikTok groups, detention in safe houses, and filmed extortion—"is being replicated in Cancun against Cuban, Venezuelan, and Central American migrants seeking work in the Riviera Maya."
The case adds to a series of similar incidents that have intensified in 2026. Just days earlier, the justice system of Quintana Roo sentenced two Cubans —Yosbel Lázaro Planas Pita and Roinel Morejón Rodríguez— to four years and six months in prison for holding a man and demanding $8,000 from his family.
In March 2026, federal authorities identified six Cubans part of another network dedicated to the kidnapping and torture of migrants in Mexico, and in May they rescued a Cuban woman among 18 women victims of trafficking lured with false job offers in the tourism sector.
The phenomenon has deep roots: the so-called "Cuban Mafia of Quintana Roo," investigated by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Operation Sisyphus, operated for over a decade, charging up to $10,000 per migrant, with at least 25 documented deaths and 21 convictions.
In April 2026, "El Milo" was arrested in Quintana Roo, identified as the financial mastermind of that network.
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