RESCUE NETS FLEEING Cuba FUGITIVES

Posted on 04/29/2016 | About Cuba

The Disney Fantasy was in the waters near Castaway Cay when passengers noticed stranded boaters. When the captain was notified, a small boat was sent out to rescue three Cuban nationals. A call was made to the US Coast Guard who arrived within 30 minutes to rescue the migrants. But the boaters were not migrants escaping Cuba, they were in fact fugitives fleeing from the US where there was a warrant for their arrest.

Two of the defendants had outstanding warrants on federal charges in New Orleans, the US Marshals Service said. An arrest warrant for the third man, charged in the same case, was issued Friday because authorities did not know beforehand that he had violated the conditions of his bond. Luis Rivera-Garcia, 26, Juliet Estrada-Perez, 23, and Enrique Gonzalez-Torres, 23 had been charged in October 2015 with credit card fraud in Louisiana. Under the conditions of their bond they were allowed to travel the eastern part of Louisiana and to South Florida. 

In April, Estrada-Perez and Rivera-Garcia were arrested in Fort Myers by local sheriff's deputies and charged with trafficking in stolen credit cards. It is alleged that they had 28 fraudulent cards on them. They were released on bond. That arrest triggered federal officials in New Orleans to issue a warrant for them. 

The trio are accused of being part of a ring that installed skimming devices on gas station credit card machines and capturing the card numbers of unsuspecting customers. The numbers were then encoded onto counterfeit gift and prepaid debit cards and used to purchase merchandise and gift cards.