Kidnapping involved a doctor, blowtorch, Walmart and strip club. Now it involves prison
The kidnapping, torture, binding and abandonment of a plastic surgeon led to a Deerfield Beach man’s sentence of 11 years in federal prison.
Justin Boccio also was ordered to pay $83,000 in restitution after he pleaded guilty to his role in a criminal episode that began at a Walmart and ended in the parking lot of one of the Cheetah strip clubs in Broward. The charges were kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
While letting the 33-year-old know how long he’d be staying with the federal government, U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga excoriated the 33-year-old Boccio: He “forgot his decency and his values when he participated in the torture of this innocent human being.”
Boccio and cohort Serge Nkorina also forgot about the existence of surveillance cameras and how easily people can cross-reference phone numbers, according to the criminal complaints and Boccio’s admission of facts.
Nkorina, who was picked up in Spain in June, has yet to be convicted on his charges.
After Nkorina moved in with Boccio, a former co-worker, and Boccio’s wife in 2018, he suggested they kidnap a plastic surgeon who employed a woman Nkorina lived with previously.
Boccio got supplies, a blowtorch among them, from a Home Depot, a shopping trip the big box retailer’s surveillance cameras chronicled. He rented a gray van from Budget Rent-A-Car, the same gray van that would show up on surveillance cameras at Walmart, Cheetah and outside the doctor’s office. The phone number Boccio gave to Budget matched that of his FPL bill.
On Jan. 14, Boccio and Nkorina grabbed the plastic surgeon in a Walmart parking lot, blindfolded him and tossed him in the van. They took him to a CubeSmart storage in Margate. The blowtorch came into play.
The motive was robbery.
“While at the storage unit, Nkorina burned Victim 1’s hands with a blowtorch, while threatening to kill Victim 1 with a firearm and other weapons,” Boccio’s admission of facts says. “Nkorina and Boccio further demanded information about Victim l’s home address in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and access codes to Victim l’s residence. During the kidnapping, Nkorina and Boccio were wearing headlamps and baseball caps.”
They left the doctor with hands and legs tied in a car sitting in the parking lot of one of the Cheetah strip clubs in Broward. Court documents don’t say whether it was the Cheetah Pompano or Cheetah Hallandale Beach. Police officers found the doctor once he managed to honk the car horn repeatedly.
All Boccio and Nkorina’s information on the doctor’s home went for naught. Their criminal complaints say Boccio told investigators signs of people being home — lights on, car in the driveway — kept them from hitting the doctor’s home.
This story was originally published December 8, 2019 at 1:00 PM.
