HIALEAH, Fla. — A 24-year-old Cuban national was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for his role in an international alien smuggling, asylum fraud, and money laundering conspiracy that funneled thousands of Cuban nationals into the United States using fraudulent European visa waivers and fake asylum claims, the Department of Justice announced.
Erik Ventura-Castro of Hialeah conspired with at least 11 others between January 2021 and June 2025 to operate an alien smuggling organization that charged between $1,500 and $40,000 per person, advertised its services on social media, and filed hundreds of fraudulent Electronic System for Travel Authorization applications with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Ventura-Castro personally submitted over 40 electronic payments to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for fraudulent ESTA applications and transmitted over $97,000 from the United States to the Cayman Islands, Colombia, and Mexico to purchase flights for illegal immigrants.
“Ventura-Castro was part of a complex conspiracy responsible for smuggling aliens into the United States on a massive scale,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “The defendant and others recruited aliens using social media, charged thousands of dollars to bring them into the country illegally, and helped them get immigration benefits to which they were not entitled.”
The scheme exploited the ESTA program by fabricating claims that Cuban applicants held European citizenship and had not been in Cuba since 2011. Court documents show the conspirators knew Cubans are ineligible for the ESTA program and that applicants were actually in Cuba when applications were submitted. Co-conspirators sometimes chartered private planes to move groups of illegal immigrants through third-party countries.
“Today’s sentencing is evidence of our all-out war on immigration fraud,” said USCIS Director Joseph Edlow. “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is proud to have worked with our law enforcement partners to dismantle this criminal enterprise, which churned out thousands of fake asylum claims and flooded the country with illegal aliens.”
U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe for the Middle District of Florida called the operation “an elaborate human smuggling scheme, for profit,” while Acting Special Agent in Charge Nicholas Ingegno of HSI Tampa said the conspirators “knowingly orchestrated a sophisticated scheme to recruit and smuggle thousands of Cuban nationals into the United States, and unlawfully obtained immigration benefits through fraudulent applications, deliberate misrepresentations, and illicit financial transactions.”
Twelve individuals were charged in a superseding indictment. Five co-defendants — Liannys Yaiselys Vega-Perez, 31; Miguel Alejandro Martinez Vasconcelos, 31; Layra Libertad Treto Santos, 30; Emanuel Martinez Gonzalez, 29; and Walbis Pozo-Dutel, 31 — have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. Ventura-Castro pleaded guilty on May 7 to conspiracy to commit alien smuggling for financial gain and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. Three remaining defendants — Lazaro Alain Cabrera-Rodriguez, Luis Emmanuel Escalona-Marrero, and Gisleivy Peralta Consuegra — face trial scheduled to begin Sept. 21.
The case was prosecuted through Joint Task Force Alpha, the DOJ’s lead effort against transnational human smuggling organizations. JTFA has produced more than 465 domestic and international arrests, more than 424 U.S. convictions, and more than 368 significant jail sentences to date.