EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A federal judge has sentenced a Chaparral, New Mexico, man to 90 months in prison for taking hostage two foreign nationals until their families paid $20,000.
Ricardo Arce III, 44, conspired with two co-defendants to hold a Georgian and a Honduran, deprive them of cellphones and wallets, and record videos of at least one of the victims being beaten up to scare his family into paying a ransom, federal officials said.
Arce pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to take a hostage and two counts of hostage-taking in connection with the 2021 events. He received a sentence Wednesday in the Las Cruces, New Mexico, courtroom of Senior U.S. District Judge Robert C. Brack.
Two co-defendants, Jonathan Gonzalez and Vicki Sowell, pleaded guilty to similar charges earlier and were sentenced to 180 months and 32 months in prison, respectively.
Federal records show a citizen of the Republic of Georgia had hired a smuggling organization to assist him in joining his family in New York. He arrived in Juarez, Mexico, on April 4, 2021, and entered the United States through El Paso.
The Georgian told federal investigators that, instead of sending him on his way, men on the U.S. side took him to an unknown location, punched him, kicked him, slammed him to the ground and threatened to shoot him on the kneecaps and then kill him unless his family gave them money.
The victim said one of the men videotaped the beating to show his family they were serious. Court records show the Georgian saw a second hostage being held at same location.
That was a Honduran national who later told investigators he was smuggled from Juarez to El Paso, taken to a trailer holding 14 additional individuals. The Honduran said he was separated from the group and taken to a white “stash house” where he saw the Georgian being assaulted.
Court records show both victims later identified Arce as the man videotaping and Gonzalez as the man administering the beating. Family members and friends of the hostages paid their captors nearly $20,000 in wire transfers, some of which went to Arce and Sowell, records show.
The El Paso FBI Field Office, the U.S. Border Patrol and local law enforcement agencies in El Paso and Doña Ana counties investigated the case.
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