MIAMI — On Saturday afternoon, Leroy Ortega, known as “El Enano,” Spanish for “The Dwarf,” was at FDC Miami, a federal administrative detention center in downtown, according to inmate records.
Ortega, 43, was awaiting sentencing after investigators and prosecutors identified him as being part of a crew of clumsy thieves who traveled from Colombia to South Florida for jewelry heists.
Federal prosecutors announced on Friday that Ortega, 43, pleaded guilty to Hobbs Act robbery conspiracy and two counts of Hobbs Act robbery on Feb. 12 in Miami.
Ortega was among the robbers who likely mistook a photographer for a jewelry courier when they stole a case with a computer and photography equipment on Oct. 16, 2019, in Miami-Dade County, according to prosecutors.
Ortega was also involved in the theft of a salesperson’s backpack with jewelry valued at about $125,000 that was in a car on Nov. 7, 2019, in Miami Beach, according to prosecutors.
Ortega’s sentencing is on May 1. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
THE FBI OPERATION
Ortega was among a group of about a dozen defendants in three indictments after robberies related to the International Jewelry Exchanges in Aventura and the Seybold Jewelry Building in Downtown Miami prompted the FBI’s “Operation Boujee Bandits.”
“With our hardworking special agents, analysts, and professional staff triaging leads and sharing threat intelligence with law enforcement partners around the world, we’ve been able to efficiently and effectively disrupt these criminal groups,” Mathew Fodor, the FBI special agent in charge of the FBI Atlanta field office, said in a statement.
Agents from the FBI field offices in Miami and Tampa also worked on the operation. Miami-Dade and Palm Beach deputies, and police officers from the Miami Beach, Tampa, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, and Fort Pierce also participated in the operation.
“This transnational theft crew came to the United States to steal from American businesses and preyed upon unsuspecting, hard-working citizens who were just trying to do their jobs as jewelry couriers,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva, of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in a statement, adding, “Ortega played an integral role with other already convicted defendants to execute sophisticated, high-value robberies that caused millions of dollars in losses. The Criminal Division will investigate and prosecute organized theft networks and hold to account those individuals who participated in them at all levels.”
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, and the Criminal Division’s Office of Judicial Attaché in Bogotá, Colombia, were also involved in the cases.
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