MIAMI — For Cubans looking for a way to reach the United States, the offers appeared on social media: help arranging flights, obtaining travel authorizations and filing immigration paperwork. Photos of travelers at airports and messages celebrating arrivals in South Florida helped advertise the services.

Six participants in the network behind those promotions have been sentenced to federal prison, the Justice Department announced. Authorities say the operation charged customers up to $40,000, laundered more than $22 million between 2021 and 2025 and used a Tampa immigration services business to submit more than 1,700 fraudulent asylum claims.

“These defendants turned illegal immigration into a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said in a statement.

Court records describe an enterprise that handled successive stages of the journey: recruiting customers, booking travel, coaching them for immigration inspections and preparing applications to help them remain in the country. Its routes included Miami and Fort Lauderdale, as well as crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Liannys Yaiselys Vega-Perez, 27, who managed the immigration services business and admitted personally filing hundreds of fraudulent asylum applications, was sentenced to four years in prison. It was the longest of the six sentences announced by federal authorities.

Layra Libertad Treto Santos, 30, an employee and manager who also filed fraudulent asylum claims, received 30 months. Miguel Martinez Vasconcelos, 31; Luis Emmanuel Escalona-Marrero, 32; Walbis Pozo-Dutel, 32, and Emanuel Martinez Gonzalez, 29, each received two years. All six pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to their roles.

The network charged between $1,500 and $40,000 for smuggling services and sometimes chartered private planes to move groups, according to the Justice Department. Organizers offered recruiters commissions and bonuses, kept ledgers of customers and unpaid balances, and promoted successful journeys to attract more business.

One part of the operation targeted Cubans who also held European citizenship. Organizers advertised help obtaining permission to travel through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, known as ESTA, so customers could enter the U.S. as European tourists.

The applications used false addresses and falsely denied the travelers’ presence in Cuba, according to prosecutors. Customers were coached to claim they were tourists, conceal or leave behind their Cuban passports and lay low after arrival before acknowledging their Cuban citizenship and seeking immigration benefits, the superseding indictment says.

Other customers traveled through third countries before crossing the U.S.-Mexico border outside designated ports of entry. Organizers arranged flights and hotels along the way and provided instructions on answering immigration officers’ questions.

The initial criminal complaint describes how those journeys became promotional material. Investigators found a video showing a customer boarding a plane in Havana bound for Fort Lauderdale, along with messages celebrating arrivals on the Cancun-Fort Lauderdale route and photographs of passports and airline tickets.

In one WhatsApp promotion, a conspirator offered an additional $1,500 to a seller who recruited 10 customers described as Spanish clients, according to the complaint.

The network’s records included unaccompanied minors. Investigators recovered a ledger entry tracing one Cuban child’s planned route from Havana through Grand Cayman to Miami. Border records showed she arrived at Miami International Airport in October 2023 after her fraudulent ESTA had been canceled and was paroled into the country, the complaint says.

Messages recovered from a defendant’s phone included a photograph with the child and discussions about a connecting flight to Houston. Investigators said the phone also contained her travel records and ESTA documentation.

The complaint describes pressure to collect outstanding fees. One woman told investigators that co-defendant Frandy Aragon-Diaz charged her $40,000 for her journey and that she worked off the debt while living with him in Tampa. During a monitored call, he demanded repayment and threatened her family, according to the complaint. Aragon-Diaz remains at large, authorities said.

After arrival, some customers turned to the network’s Tampa business, Asesoria y Servicios Migratorios, for asylum applications and other immigration paperwork. Vega-Perez admitted in her plea agreement that she and her co-conspirators invented background narratives, directed employees to prepare fraudulent applications and signed forms as though they were the clients.

Customers were not allowed to review asylum applications before submission and were denied access to their own online U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services accounts. Vega-Perez admitted telling one customer they “did not need a copy” of their application.

The indictment describes another customer being told that their asylum story was too long and too personal and needed to be modified. Prosecutors said the business submitted applications containing nearly identical boilerplate language.

Vega-Perez was neither a licensed attorney nor an accredited immigration representative. She admitted hiring and training employees to carry out the fraud, and her plea agreement attributes more than 1,700 fraudulent asylum claims to the business and its conspirators.

Money collected from smuggling customers moved through shell companies to conceal its source and recipients. Vega-Perez admitted creating Somosuno LLC, a company with no employees, payroll or reported income, and moving proceeds through it before distributing funds to herself and others through the immigration business, personal accounts and other companies.

More than $7 million in Zelle payments went into accounts associated with defendants during the conspiracy, according to the indictment. The Justice Department said the network spent more than $600,000 with a single airline between July 2022 and November 2024.

Martinez Vasconcelos purchased tickets and helped finance charter flights, transmitting at least $150,000 to companies outside the United States to advance the operation, authorities said. Pozo-Dutel provided flight and hotel information and coached travelers on what to say to border officers.

Escalona-Marrero arranged with a co-conspirator in Mexico to ship Cuban passports to the United States so Border Patrol would not confiscate them and travelers could later use them in asylum applications, authorities said. Martinez Gonzalez helped arrange travel after customers arrived and accepted payments while working with his girlfriend and co-defendant, Marianny Lucia Lopez-Torres.

The court ordered Escalona-Marrero to forfeit $2.9 million, Martinez Vasconcelos $150,000 and Treto Santos $95,000.

Vega-Perez’s attorney, Victor D. Martinez, sought a sentence below the advisory federal guidelines range, citing her cooperation, remorse, lack of criminal history and financial and emotional support for her father.

His sentencing memorandum described childhood abuse in Cuba, including an incident in which her brother threatened her with a knife, and said she eventually fled her home and relocated to Nicaragua. Her background did not excuse her conduct, Martinez argued, but should weigh in her punishment. He also requested mental health and substance abuse treatment.

The prosecution charged 12 defendants. Yuniel Lima-Santos, 32, and Gisleivy Peralta Consuegra, 41, pleaded guilty and await sentencing, according to the Justice Department. Erik Ventura-Castro, 25, received 30 months in July. Lazaro Alain Cabrera-Rodriguez, 29, was convicted at trial in September and awaits sentencing.

Lopez-Torres and Aragon-Diaz remain at large. Homeland Security Investigations in Tampa, Border Patrol’s Miami sector and USCIS fraud investigators led the investigation, with assistance from authorities in the Cayman Islands.

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