Two Miami men sentenced for stealing COVID-19 ventilators bound for El Salvador
Two Miami men who pleaded guilty to stealing millions of dollars’ worth of COVID-19 ventilators destined for El Salvador as part of a U.S. aid program have been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.
Luis Urra Montero, also known as “Flaco,” 25, was sentenced this week by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke. His partner, Yoelvis Denis Hernandez, aka “Guajiro,” 42, was sentenced in December. Both men, arrested in 2020, pleaded guilty to theft of government property.
The defendants cut plea deals while admitting that they stole 192 medical ventilators worth about $3 million. The ventilators, owned by the U.S. Agency for International Development (“USAID”), were bound for a COVID-19 intensive care facility in El Salvador as part of a U.S. aid program during the pandemic.
Hernandez and Montero stole a tractor-trailer loaded with the ventilators in August 2020 before they were to be shipped from Miami International Airport to El Salvador, according to court records filed by federal prosecutors. They stole the trailer from a lot where the driver had left the truck overnight.
The FBI recovered most of the stolen ventilators in Southwest Miami-Dade and, with help from police, built the case against the two men.
This story was originally published February 4, 2022 at 11:56 AM.
