A federal jury in the Southern District of Florida convicted Ramon Arellano Sandoval, 65, of Antioch, Tennessee, on charges of attempted sex trafficking of a minor and attempted production of child sexual abuse material involving a 14-year-old victim residing in Medellín, Colombia. A US federal district judge subsequently sentenced Arellano Sandoval to 30 years in federal prison, according to Alcaldía de Medellín Mayor Federico “Fico” Gutiérrez, who confirmed the sentence on May 21, 2026.

The case, prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida under case number 24-cr-20519, represents the tenth conviction obtained under a joint US-Colombia enforcement initiative targeting foreign nationals who travel to Medellín to sexually exploit minors. Three other US citizens previously sentenced in connection with the program include Stefan Correa and Manuel Poceiro, who each received life sentences, and Mohamed Anaswed, who received 21 years in federal prison.

According to court records and evidence presented at the February 24 trial, Arellano Sandoval exchanged thousands of text and video messages with the victim, who was 14 years old at the time, and who lived in a rural area near Medellín. Prosecutors presented evidence that the defendant knew the victim’s age, repeatedly solicited sexually explicit videos from her, directed her to produce illicit material in exchange for electronic payments, and traveled to Colombia to engage in commercial sex with her.

“The evidence showed that this defendant pressured a child to create sexually explicit videos and even traveled overseas to abuse her. That conduct is predatory, criminal, and intolerable.” — Jason A. Reding Quiñones, US Attorney, Southern District of Florida

The jury found Arellano Sandoval guilty of attempted sex trafficking of a minor, which carries a maximum sentence of life in federal prison, and attempted production of visual depictions of the sexual exploitation of a minor, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years.

“The jury’s verdict delivered justice for a 14-year-old victim who was targeted and exploited by a 65-year-old man who knew exactly what he was doing,” said US Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “The evidence showed that this defendant pressured a child to create sexually explicit videos and even traveled overseas to abuse her.”

The investigation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Miami under Special Agent in Charge José R. Figueroa, with operational support from HSI Colombia. Assistant US Attorneys Tim Farina and Camille Smith handled the prosecution. On the Colombian side, the arrest and evidence collection involved the Alcaldía de Medellín, the Policía Nacional through its Dirección de Protección y Servicios Especiales (DIPRO), the Fiscalía General de la Nación, and Migración Colombia.

“La justicia no tiene fronteras cuando se trata de proteger a nuestros niños, niñas y adolescentes,” Gutiérrez wrote on his X account, referring to cross-border judicial cooperation in cases involving the exploitation of minors. The mayor indicated the administration would continue pursuing similar prosecutions, stating that any foreign national traveling to Medellín to exploit minors would be pursued until obtaining a conviction, including in their country of origin.

‼️La justicia no tiene fronteras cuando se trata de proteger a nuestros niños, niñas y adolescentes.🚨Otro condenado más.

Ramón Arellano Sandoval, de 65 años de Estados Unidos, fue sentenciado a 30 años en prisión federal de ese país, por los delitos de intento de explotación… pic.twitter.com/mepkNuOURX

— Fico Gutiérrez (@FicoGutierrez) May 21, 2026

The Arellano Sandoval case follows a similar prosecution earlier in 2026 against Michael Jaime Inofuentes, also a US citizen, who was sentenced by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to 18 years in federal prison. Court evidence in that case established that Inofuentes sexually abused a 15-year-old in Medellín and paid for encounters in hotels, resulting in a pregnancy in early 2024. The investigation, triggered by a complaint from the victim’s mother to Colombian authorities, led to Inofuentes’s arrest in Miami. Prosecutors introduced WhatsApp conversations, financial transfers, and the defendant’s own admissions, which included statements that he had fathered other children in Colombia under similar circumstances. Related court documents and additional case information are available through the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov and through the PACER system at pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov under case number 24-cr-20519.

On November 29, 2022, the Monagas family heard from Lismar Monagas for the last time. Since then, the family has lived in uncertainty about what has happened to Lismar, a 21-year-old Venezuelan woman who, at the time, was living in Peru and being controlled by a group with ties to human trafficking.

Lismar left Venezuela on October 16, 2021, without any warning. Her grandfather, Leonel Monagas, learned afterward that Lismar, who he had raised as a daughter in the neighborhood of El Cementerio, a working-class sector located in the west of Caracas, had left the country irregularly, without a passport, by bus.

It was the first time Lismar had left Venezuela. She was happy and hopeful. She documented her journey through Colombia and Ecuador in videos and with video calls to her family. Leonel, however, feared the worst. And he was right: unbeknownst to her, Lismar had been captured by a human trafficking network.

“The first few days she told me that they gave her things and clothes, and I told her that this was dangerous, and that they were going to charge her because I suspected why they had taken her,” Leonel said.

Hundreds of Venezuelan women have fallen victim to human trafficking networks in recent years. But Lismar’s story shows how these networks are adopting new strategies, like increasingly recruiting victims beyond the Colombian border and increasingly using women to recruit.

Falling into Sexual Exploitation

Like the nearly eight million Venezuelans who have migrated, Lismar Monagas left her country to help her family — mainly her son, who is now eight years old, and her grandfather, Leonel. But instead of the situation she thought she was moving for, she became another of the many Venezuelan women victims of human trafficking.

According to Mulier Venezuela, a non-governmental organization that studies the trafficking of Venezuelan women in Latin America, 415 Venezuelan women were rescued from trafficking networks in 2021. And that number has since increased. In 2022, the year of the most recent statistics, 1,390 Venezuelan women were rescued, of whom 294 were girls and adolescents.

But these are only the women who have been rescued and recorded. The actual number of trafficking victims inside and outside of Venezuela is likely much higher. Venezuela’s Minister of Interior and Justice Remigio Ceballos Ichaso announced earlier this year that authorities had dismantled 16 criminal gangs dedicated to human trafficking and rescued 55 victims. But these cases are generally underreported, so government data is usually just a fraction, as well as unreliable.

“The state does not report data for many cases of violence against women. This is part of the Venezuelan government’s policy of opacity, where they do not fulfill their duties,” Estefania Mendoza, a lawyer and coordinator for Mulier Venezuela, told InSight Crime.

As the number of women trafficked has increased, trafficking victims are increasingly being recruited further from the Colombia-Venezuela border, like Lismar, in the center of the country. Due to the worsening economic crisis and the complex humanitarian crisis, criminals were pushed to seek victims in other areas, Mendoza explained.

“This context is what increasingly makes the exploitation of people an alternative form of income for unscrupulous people,” she said.

The Collectors

For Lismar, it all began when a friend, who lived in the same neighborhood of Caracas as she did, offered her a job as a sex worker in Peru. The friend said she had all the contacts that would allow Lismar to earn money, and coordinated the logistics for her to leave the country on a bus departing from the terminal in Caracas. But although Lismar knew she was going to do sex work, she did not imagine that she would end up being a victim of sexual exploitation.

Throughout the region, it is common for women to recruit their peers. Although there is no data disaggregated by nationality, women account for 45% of those prosecuted for human trafficking in South America, according to the latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report on human trafficking.

Mendoza said this is because in general, women are the weakest link in sexual exploitation networks and so victims of exploitation are often forced to recruit other young women into the network. “[Women] use their gender and nationality to make a connection, to generate trust and recruit others,” she explained.

This modus operandi is becoming more and more common.

On March 12, 2024, the Scientific, Criminal and Criminalistic Investigations Corps (CICPC) officers rescued four young women in Táchira, a state bordering Colombia. It appears that they had been recruited by another previously recruited minor.

A CICPC official told InSight Crime that the unit also rescued four young women in 2022 in Aragua state who were recruited by friends. “They told them how much they earned doing sex work, and that they only had to take a few photos so they could go to Peru. That was a very notorious case,” said the official, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

In addition to recruitment by other victims, the economic crisis in Venezuela has led to cases where family members and close friends hand young women over to sexual exploitation networks, who, in desperation, agree to what are actually fake job offers out of necessity, according to police sources interviewed by InSight Crime.

“We are not only talking about vulnerable migrant women being targeted, but also about women, girls and adolescents in Venezuela who are in a very precarious economic situation,” Mendoza specified. “Women’s bodies always end up being like a currency,” she said.

A Living Hell

When she arrived in Peru, instead of working with her friend, Lismar found herself in the hands of a criminal organization, which imposed a high-interest “debt” on her for the “investment” they had made to get her out of Venezuela, one of her friends told InSight Crime. She had to pay a daily fee, and if she did not make enough on any given day, the debt would grow.

For months, Lismar was sexually exploited by the human trafficking network that took her to Peru.

“They bought her clothes, put fake nails on her, and gave her money to buy makeup so she could work in a plaza. There were slow days when she had no business, and they would send her to a hotel in lingerie to be used by the men who visited. And when she did nothing, they took her away … to punish her,” her friend said.

Soon, her family learned that things were not going well.

“She started to change. She began to say that she had a debt and that they were making her do things against her will. That she wanted to pay that debt to come [to Venezuela],” said her grandfather Leonel. “On one occasion she called me crying, saying that she wanted to come home, that every day she had to be with three men … She had to pay 200 soles a day [$50] and when she didn’t make the money, it [her debt] grew,” he added.

But the debt was impossible to pay, and some time later, several of her relatives received extortion calls with death threats from a woman who identified herself as Oriana Hernández, and who was supposedly Lismar’s boss. In the messages, she demanded money to pay off Lismar’s debt in Peru.

Although Hernández never mentioned the name of a criminal gang, Leonel and Lismar’s relatives turned to social networks, mainly Facebook, to investigate. They began monitoring Lismar’s friends in Peru.

“One of them identified herself as connected to Hijos de Dios (Children of God), and in some publications she included some train [emojis], so it is possible that they have ties to Tren de Aragua,” said one of Lismar’s relatives, who asked not to be identified.

Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that has spread across the region, and one of its factions in Peru, Hijos de Dios, have been involved in the sexual exploitation of Venezuelan and Peruvian women for several years.

In December 2022, one of Leonel Monagas’ former neighbors, who is now based in Colombia and has ties to gangs in Peru, told Lismar’s family that she had been killed for failing to pay her debt. Peruvian authorities, however, have not confirmed the murder, nor do they have any trace of Lismar.

Since the young woman migrated to Peru, her grandfather Leonel has had trouble sleeping. He divides his days between his work as a laborer and his efforts to find his granddaughter, whom he affectionately calls “cachito.” He takes some comfort in an arrangement of balloons that she sent him in June 2022 for Father’s Day in Venezuela, and listening to voice notes that Lismar sent him before she lost communication with her family. For now, he said, he will keep following any trail that could lead to his granddaughter.

This article, written by the Venezuela Investigative Unit, was originally published by InSight Crime, a Medellín-based foundation dedicated to the investigation and analysis of crime and security in Colombia and Latin America.

According to the criminal complaint and the underlying affidavit, law enforcement officers stopped Stefan Andres Correa, 42, of Miami, Florida, attempting to board a flight from Miami to Bogota, Colombia. It is alleged that, law enforcement officers discovered nine cellular phones in Correa’s possession containing videos of Correa engaging in intercourse with purported minor children, as well as a chat exchange with a suspected sex trafficker, where Correa allegedly paid for commercial sex with children aged between 10 to 12 years old in Colombia. According to the allegations, during the chat exchange, Correa agreed with the suspected sex trafficker to meet with the minor victims once he arrived in Colombia.

This document is reprinted from the US Attorney’s Office. We will update this story as more information becomes available.

Correa made his initial appearance on April 19. A detention hearing is scheduled for today, April 23, at 10:00 a.m. If convicted, Correa faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison with a maximum sentence of life in prison as well as up to a lifetime of supervised release. The charges he is facing are 18:1591.F and 18:1594.F Attempted Sex Trafficking of a Minor and 18:2423.F Attempted Travel to Engage in Illicit Sex Conduct

U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida and Special Agent in Charge Anthony Salisbury of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Miami made the announcement.

HSI Miami investigated the case with assistance from HSI offices in Cleveland, Ohio, and Bogota, Colombia, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).  The Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section’s Office of the Judicial Attaché in Bogota, Colombia, also provided critical assistance. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Astigarraga-Little is prosecuting it.

To read the full complaint (federal charges), click here.

A criminal complaint contains mere allegations, and all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by the U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Divisions Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate better, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

To report suspected human trafficking or to obtain resources for victims, please call 1-888-373-7888; text “BeFree” (233733), or live chat at HumanTraffickingHotline.org. The toll-free phone, SMS text lines, and online chat function are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Help is available in English, Spanish, Creole, or in more than 200 additional languages. The National Hotline is not managed by law enforcement, immigration, or an investigative agency. Correspondence with the National Hotline is confidential, and you may request assistance or report a tip anonymously.

To report online child sexual exploitation visit https://report.cybertip.org/ or call 1-800-843-5678. The Cyber Tip Line is operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in partnership with HSI and other law enforcement agencies.

To learn more about the National Resource Hotline, visit www.humantraffickinghotline.org. To learn more about the U.S. Department of Justice’s efforts to combat human trafficking, visit www.justice.gov/humantrafficking.

Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Southern District of Florida at www.flsd.uscourts.gov or at https://pacer.flsd.uscourts.gov, under case number 24-mj-02786.

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Construction workers torture chickens on Bogotá Metro project:

#Denuncia🚨 Violencia contra animales (¿santería?) en obra del @MetroBogota @Bogota ‼️

El hecho atroz ocurrió en la Av Boyacá con 1a de mayo. Quién nos envió el video, dice que trabajadores hacen esto cada vez que terminan una etapa de la obra.

Sres @AnimalesBOG @FiscaliaCol… pic.twitter.com/haUm9bNE8A

— Andrea Padilla Villarraga (@andreanimalidad) March 19, 2024

Read more at Finance Colombia https://www.financecolombia.com/

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While prostitution without intermediaries is legal in otherwise socially conservative Colombia, Medellín in particular has seen a rise in sex tourism, angering many locals. On the other hand, engaging in sexual activity with a minor is a serious crime in Colombia.

Monday, Mayor Gutierrez used his emergency powers to outlaw prostitution effective immediately in Medellín’s El Poblado sector, including the Parque Lleras and Provenza neighborhood popular with tourists. Emergency measures are effective for six months. The mayor also restricted bars, restaurants, and nightclubs to a 1 am closing time.

This move comes after a curfew measure for minors, still in effect, that the mayor enacted at the end of January in several commercial districts of the city where nightlife is a major component.

“We have to recover these spaces that crime has been taking over, ‘deconfusing’ these areas of the city and putting our women and especially our girls, boys, and adolescents at risk. The work of our mayor’s office will continue there, every day, 24 hours a day, and with all our support,” said Gutiérrez, who explained that this sex trafficking is controlled by the La Terraza, La Raya, and Robledo mafias active in Medellín.

Dominick Divencenzo is facing charges of sexually exploiting minors.

“Here, we need everyone’s commitment, understanding that this is a situation that has hit rock bottom. We did not come here to hide problems. We came to recognize them. There is a serious, difficult situation. I said it from my first day in office. Some measures have been taken and these are other exceptional ones,” said Gutierrez.

Earlier last month, two American citizens were arrested in Medellin in operations coordinated between Colombian police and the US Department of Homeland Security, both for the sexual exploitation of minors. Then, last week, due to a tip from a concerned neighbor, 36-year-old Timothy Alan Livingston was detained when he was caught in a luxury guest house with two girls, aged 12 and 13.

36-year-old Timothy Alan Livingston was detained when he was caught in a luxury guest house with two girls, aged 12 and 13.

Sources explain to Finance Colombia that Livingston was released after initial detention because there was not enough evidence to immediately charge him with a crime (Habeas Corpus), in other words, they were not able to immediately establish that he had engaged in sex acts with the children, who had been taken into custody after the incident by the child welfare authorities. Though still under criminal investigation, Livingston immediately fled to Florida, though Colombia has an extradition treaty with the United States, and the United States has demonstrated willingness to extradite US citizens to Colombia to face justice.

The Colombian police temporarily sealed the luxury guest house, called “Gotham” and located in Medellín’s upscale Poblado area in the Parque Lleras neighborhood. The closure lasts for 10 days pending additional legal sanctions. The mayor has called for “Extinción de Dominio” (similar to asset forfeiture in the United States), which is when the government seizes property used or paid for by criminal activity.

Gotham is not a hotel but a guest residence with five units, marketed through Airbnb. When contacted by Finance Colombia, the management company that actually owns the building shared this statement (translated by Finance Colombia):

We categorically repudiate any form of sexual exploitation of boys, girls and teenagers. We do this not only as responsible tourism actors in the city of Medellín, but also in our condition as fathers, mothers, daughters and sons. The exploitation of minors is aberrant and since the beginning of our company we have been committed to combating and preventing it. Our team is made up of 17 women, administrators of properties, that we have worked for the protection of the rights of women, children and adolescents from Colombia.

In recent years we have met with authorities on countless occasions, including the National Police and the Mayor’s Office of Medellín, to address traffic prevention strategies, sexual violence, drug trafficking and other phenomena that affect the safety of visitors and citizens and the integrity of our children. We have actively participated in the Intersectoral Roundtable and Interinstitutional Prostitution of the Mayor’s Office of Medellín to contribute to combating exploitation of minors in accommodation and lodging establishments.

All reservations in this tourist home are made through Airbnb. On this platform We require that users, whose identity is previously verified, expressly accept our policies against sex tourism, child exploitation and drug consumption before reserving the property. In addition to the above, as hotel operators, we have implemented policies and even more robust practices to guarantee security in tourist housing. In all the public spaces of the building we have installed security cameras, we keep strict records of guests, we implemented security procedures at the reception desk and even train periodically and in a documented manner, all our staff against child exploitation.

We are committed to implementing stronger security measures than usual in properties that are reserved through digital platforms. Despite our best efforts, a foreigner, who has been identified by the authorities, Timothy Alan Livingston, circumvented and violated our security schemes.

On the night of March 27, 2024, Mr. Livingston tried to enter with two companions who were carrying identification as adults. However, the security guard prohibited their entry suspecting that they could be minors. The building’s security cameras show that Livingston would have returned to the building and entered illegally in the early morning of March 28, when the night security guard’s shift had already ended.

Thanks to the complaint of a neighbor, the National Police was alerted to the situation and since then our entire team has been actively collaborating with the ongoing investigation. We are currently collaborating, and will continue to actively collaborate with the authorities, including the National Police and the Attorney General’s Office, to facilitate and expedite their investigations with the aim of prosecuting those responsible for this aberrant event.

We join the calls for justice to be done and we will continue to work closely with the local and foreign authorities to provide all information that allows identification, arrest and prosecute those responsible. As responsible tourism actors we are also affected by this case that harms many hotel properties and forces us not to neglect security for even a minute.

Our country has deep social problems. Just between January and August 2023, there were 8,295 sexual crimes against minors, according to data provided by the Attorney General’s Office. Our commitment is to promote quality tourism and that is why we have actively participated with the authorities, and with industry associations such as Fenalco and Cotelco, for many years to combat the scourge of child exploitation. We are horrified by the events that occurred, and in light of this phenomenon, given that we are also mothers and fathers with small children. We are concerned citizens who want justice to be done and a sustainable long-term tourism strategy implemented in the city of Medellín for the benefit of society and without crime or immorality.

We are with all Medellin and Colombian [citizens] during this painful process.

Upon arrival, the women were forced to perform sex acts for customers of their captives. Their passports were held, and they were never paid, but told they in fact owed money for the trip. Over time, 10 victims escaped and were able to contact authorities who opened an investigation. Colombia’s attorney general’s office has said that the mother in the triad, Osorio Cárdenas, had actually been prosecuted for similar offenses almost a decade ago, in 2013.

According to Colombian government statistics, since 2013, there have been 405 cases human trafficking for sexual exploitation, 134 cases involving forced labor, and 48 cases of servile marriage pursued by the Colombian government. Real numbers are certainly much higher.

The International Organization for Migration in Colombia says that victims encountered outside of Colombia are most frequently rescued from China (73 cases), México (59 cases) Spain (42 cases) Argentina (41 cases) and neighboring Ecuador (31 cases). 72 victims have come from Antioquia (Medellin & surrounding areas), The coffee growing region anchored by the cities of Manizales, Pereira & Armenia (99 victims), 74 victims from Bogotá, and 77 victims from Cali & its surrounding area. There were 71 cases of foreigners rescued within Colombia; often from Venezuela.

Leidy Johana Osorio Bermúdez

Photos courtesy Fiscalía General de la nación