A federal jury in the Middle District of Florida convicted this Friday Lazaro Alain Cabrera-Rodriguez, a 28-year-old resident of Hialeah, Florida, for leading a criminal network involved in international human trafficking and money laundering that exploited the desperation of thousands of Cubans to get rich.
The verdict found him responsible for three charges: conspiracy to commit human trafficking for profit, conspiracy to commit international money laundering, and conspiracy to conceal the instruments of that laundering.
Cabrera-Rodriguez operated a network under the guise of a travel agency, which lent an air of legitimacy while coordinating the illegal transportation of migrants from Cuba to the United States via third countries.
The organization charged between $1,500 and $40,000 per person, chartered private planes to transport groups of migrants, and funneled more than $20 million through up to 57 bank accounts controlled by the accused and their accomplices.
Cabrera-Rodriguez is scheduled to be sentenced on December 17 and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison.
The scam network
One of the central mechanisms of the fraud involved creating fake European citizenship documents —primarily Spanish— to circumvent the exclusion of Cubans from the United States' Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA).
The network submitted at least 600 fraudulent applications to Customs and Border Protection, falsely stating that the applicants had not been in Cuba since 2011, when in fact they had.
The organization operated under the facade of a company called Asesoría y Servicios Migratorios LLC, based in Tampa, which publicly presented itself as a legitimate immigration consulting service.
To attract clients, the organization advertised its services on social media and in a WhatsApp group called “ESTA and tourist visa processing for Spanish citizens.”
Between 2021 and 2024, Cabrera-Rodriguez and his accomplices transferred over $600,000 from the United States to abroad to finance migrant flights, according to financial records presented at the trial.
"She used her travel agency as a front to illegally bring Cubans into the United States. The agency provided her with an appearance of legitimacy to evade detection while she submitted at least 600 false visa waiver applications, organized flights from Cuba to third countries, coordinated with other traffickers across America, and laundered over 20 million dollars through 57 bank accounts," stated the Deputy Attorney General of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, A. Tysen Duva.
The special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Tampa, Nicholas Ingegno, was more direct: "This was not aid, nor was it humanitarian. It was a criminal enterprise built on treating people as commodities and exploiting their desperation for profit."
The case is part of Operation Take Back America and was processed under the Joint Task Force Alpha (JTFA), the joint initiative of the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to dismantle human trafficking networks linked to cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
In total, 12 people have been charged in this case. Seven of them have already pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Erik Ventura-Castro, 24 years old, was the first to receive a sentence: 30 months in federal prison on July 29. Yuniel Lima-Santos, 31 years old, pleaded guilty in August to 10 charges and faces up to 20 years in prison.
Within the conspiracy, Lima-Santos was responsible for the logistics of transportation: he purchased international and domestic flights to move migrants from their countries of origin to various locations in the United States.
Along with the co-defendant Frandy Aragon Diaz, he illegally brought five foreign nationals into the country and admitted to having assisted in introducing Cuban women who later worked in adult entertainment clubs to settle their smuggling debts.
To conceal the illicit money, Lima-Santos established a shell company in Florida with no employees, payroll, or declared income, used exclusively to transfer and disguise the funds coming from smuggling.
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