Alleged Russian Plot Involves Cuban "God"

 By Jordi C. Martínez-Cid

This a glib title for an allegedly serious plot being charged out of the Southern District of New York. The indictment chargies five people, allegedly working at the direction of Russian military intelligence, with conspiring to finance terrorism and, for three of them, to commit murder for hire. Two of the five are Cuban nationals.

The defendants are: Yuri Khrameev, 63, a retired Russian intelligence colonel; his son Kirill Khrameev, 27, allegedly an FSB officer; Oemis Romagoza Durruthy, 35, a Cuban national; Yaidel Delgado Suarez, 35, also Cuban, known as “Viking”; and Angel Eduardo Castro, 22, a Venezuelan national. All five remain abroad and none is in custody. Prosecutors allege that in 2026 the network recruited a Venezuelan immigrant in Brooklyn to surveil, and ultimately offered $40,000 to “eliminate,” a Russian dissident believed to be living near Washington, D.C. A parallel 2025 thread allegedly involved an American recruit near the Estonia-Russia border, offered roughly $25,000 to kill a man in Vilnius, Lithuania, for “telling lies about Russia,” and arson jobs when he declined. In 2024, the network is separately accused of directing actual arson and sabotage attacks on businesses and infrastructure in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Lithuania.

Which brings me to Mr. Romagoza.  By the government’s account and international reporting, he has spent at least the last seven years in Petrozavodsk, Russia, teaching salsa at a studio called Made in Cuba. He married a Russian woman in 2022 and took her citizenship. By 2023, evidently under financial strain, he began recruiting on Facebook and Telegram—offering $1,500 and bonuses per “job” to Latin Americans chasing construction work in Poland or mercenary contracts in Ukraine—under the aliases “Adrian” and, I am not making this up, “Dios.” Spanish for God. He allegedly coordinated the attacks in Prague and Lithuania in 2024 and, as recently as November 2025, obtained surveillance footage of the Washington-area dissident’s home.

Less surprising to me than a Cuban giving himself the call sign God is that, as of yet, there is seemingly no tie to the dstrict. But there is something almost novelistic about a man who by day taught dance to Russian retirees and by night, under the name God, allegedly ran a transcontinental sabotage-and-recruitment operation for Russian Intelligence.  How can that not have anything to do with Miami? Movie to feature Andy Garcia and Nestor Carbonell.

CLEs, Mentorship Opportunity, and UM

By John R. Byrne 

1. The Florida bar has added some exotic CLE requirements in recent years, including professionalism and technology. Take it from someone who just squeaked by his recent CLE credits deadline, some of those are harder to come by than you'd think. But you have some excellent CLE opportunities coming up here courtesy of the South Florida Chapter of the FBA.

• September 24, 2026 (Thursday) @ Boies Schiller Flexner LLP: Demystifying Artificial Intelligence with Judge Damian, Magistrate Judge Louis, attorney Mark J. Heise and FIU law students Zachary Stangl. 1.5 General CLE Credits, .5 Ethics and 1.5 Technology. You can register here.

• October 21, 2026 (Wednesday) @ Zoom: Navigating the Local Rules: Guidance from the Bench and Bar with Judge Ruiz, Magistrate Judge Elfenbein, and attorneys Ryan Stumphauzer and Michael Mikulic. 1 General CLE Credit. You can register here. 

2.  If you're interested in serving as a mentor for local law students, you should attend the FBA's Law Student Mentorship/Networking Happy Hour on October 14 @ Batch Gastropub. RSVP here. 

3. Miami Hurricanes football team is experiencing a resurgence recently, making the national title game last season and currently ranked 5th in the AP poll. Big news dropped yesterday, with the school agreeing to a "historic mega deal with Nike." The 10-year deal, which is worth more than $200 million, goes into effect in 2027. There's a SDFLA connection here, though. According to the Herald article, UM Board of Trustees chairman Manny Kadre was the driving force in making the deal happen. Kadre served as one of Judge Moreno's first law clerks.  

Get Your FBA Installation Tickets!

By John R. Byrne

Individual tickets for the South Florida Chapter of the FBA's Installation are now on sale. It's on Saturday, October 3 at the Frost Museum of Science. 

In the tradition of David Letterman, here are the Top Ten Reasons You Should Attend:

10. Drinks and food are free* (*once you pay the price of the admission). 

9. You get to connect with excellent lawyers who regularly practice in this district. 

8. This year, the venue will have air-conditioning! If you attended last year's installation, you know how helpful that is for an indoor event in Miami. We've spared no expense, people. 

7. Our chapter is inviting retired district court and magistrate judges this year. So, you may get a chance to ask Judge Goodman whether any criminal defendant ever admitted to owning horses when he was going through his standard colloquy on indigency. 

6. We're giving out the two big awards---the NED (named after Judge Davis) and the BOB (named after Bob Josefsberg). The NED is being awarded to Judge Gayles and the BOB to David Markus. 

5. This is the first year that we've named the distinguished FBA member service award after Bob Josefsberg and I understand that some of his family may attend the event. It's a nice way to celebrate a really special human being who gave so much to our legal community and the community at large.

4.  There will be speeches (but they'll be short!). I love speeches at events (weddings, investitures, etc.). But we have limited program time so you won't be held hostage for very long. 

3. The event is always well-attended by our federal district court and magistrate judges. You get a chance to speak with them in a setting where there is zero chance of them sanctioning you for any reason. 

2. You're contributing to good causes. The FBA uses profits from the event to subsidize CLE events and to pay for the various community outreach programs it runs, including the Civil Discourse and Difficult Decisions Program. 

1. You get all three bloggers in one room! David O. is getting an award, The Martinez-Cid law firm is a sponsor, and I'm the outgoing president of the FBA and am obligated to attend to hit my contractual incentive payments. 

You can RSVP through this link. 

Lil Durk acquitted in California... with a SDFLA connection

 Big not guilty verdict in Los Angeles on Friday evening.  Lil Durk was acquitted of all counts.  He had a great team of lawyers including Drew Findling and Brian Steel.  

But I know what their secret weapon was -- Christy O'Connor, the former AFPD down here in Miami.  Christy now practices in L.A. and is kicking ass.  Congrats to her and the whole team.

 

Political TVPA Trial Before Judge Ruiz

By Jordi C. Martínez-Cid

Since September 8, a jury before Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II has been hearing evidence about what happened inside Bogotá’s Palace of Justice on November 6 and 7, 1985.

If you are like me and had not heard about this until now, in 1985, several dozen members of the M-19 guerrilla movement seized the Palace of Justice. They took hundreds of hostages, including nearly the entire Supreme Court. Then-Colombian President Belisario Betancur refused to negotiate with the guerilla. The military retook the building by force over the next twenty-eight hours, using tanks and heavy weapons. More than one hundred people died, including eleven of the court’s justices. Eleven more people who survived the initial assault, hostages and cafeteria staff supposedly among them, disappeared and were never seen again.

The case is Urán, et al. v. Plazas Vega, No. 0:22-cv-60338-RAR. The three plaintiffs are the daughters of Magistrate Carlos Horacio Urán Rojas, who died during or sometime after the retaking of the palace. The defendant is retired Colonel Luis Alfonso Plazas Vega, who commanded the Cavalry School unit involved in that operation and who has lived in Weston since roughly 2015. The lawsuit was brought under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991.

According to reports, Magistrate Urán’s family spent decades believing he died in the crossfire. That supposedly changed in 2007, when evidence surfaced suggesting that he walked (or was assisted) out of the palace alive, in military custody, before he was killed. The plaintiffs’ theory, as laid out in opening statements by Trina Higgins of Wilson Sonsini, is that Magistrate Urán was mistaken for a guerrilla because he had injured his leg, as had a number of the M-19 fighters. He was taken to a triage building called Casa del Florero, was possibly tortured, and was then executed.

Col. Plazas was convicted in Colombia in 2010 for his role in forced disappearances and sentenced to thirty years before Colombia’s Supreme Court reversed that conviction in December 2015 for insufficient evidence of his direct responsibility. The TVPA suit essentially seeks to hold Col. Plazas legally responsible for Magistrate Urán’s death under a preponderance of the evidence standard.

There is a political subplot to the trial too. Colombia’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, took office just over two months ago. Days before trial, he called for public support of Col. Plazas, calling him “a hero of the Nation” and describing the lawsuit as a kind of “strategic litigation.” President de la Espriella said it is the State's duty to back its soldiers.

Apart from being noteworthy, it is a fitting blog post for today because of Col. Plazas’s opening statement. His defense counsel, Valerie Hassan, ended the opening by comparing the lasting impact of the assault on the Palace of Justice on Colombia to the impact of September 11 on the United States, functionally arguing that the jury should not allow the magnitude of the tragedy to act as a substitute for actual proof that Col. Plazas is personally responsible. She highlighted the lack of certainty regarding what happened to Magistrate Urán, the presence of multiple military units, and how overall command belonged to General Jesús Armando Arias Cabrales, not Col. Plazas.

Trial is expected to run through September 18, and possibly longer. If you want play-by-play coverage in both English in Spanish, you will not be able to find better than the Miami Law Human Rights Program’s Substack. Their coverage is worth reading and can be found here. They even have wonderful courtoom sketches like the one below.

Credit to the artist, Ignacio Hernández (everyone is getting their accent marks today), FIU College of Communication, Architecture and The Arts

“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.”

 By David Oscar Markus

That was Joe diGenova today after resigning from being special prosecutor in SDFLA to look into the "grand conspiracy."

What a mess.

From the NY Post:

Counselor to the Attorney General Joe diGenova abruptly resigned Thursday from a sprawling probe into former officials in the Obama administration, The Post has learned.

“I did resign today by letter to the attorney general. I said that it was a privilege and an honor to serve the president and the department, and I was very grateful,” diGenova told The Post by phone on Thursday night.

DiGenova was investigating Obama-era figures who allegedly pushed claims of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign,

Sources said diGenova had lost support from Department of Justice leaders and the White House amid his “grand conspiracy” investigation, with one source suggesting that the 81-year-old prosecutor and former Trump defense lawyer was “slow-rolling” indictments and getting lost down “rabbit holes.”

Asked whether he had lost focus, diGenova dismissed the accusation and shot back: “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.”

Another source added that the diGenova had been sharing “unrealistic expectations” for the probe with the president about what was possible and not possible, leading to a confrontation with Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Remember that he started with lots of fanfare and pictures, after the last prosecutor -- Maria Medetis Long -- said the same thing...

UPDATE -- Of course all of this is going to lead to fighting at DOJ.  From CNN, which has interviews with a number of inside sources:

Justice Department officials always intended Quiñones, as the top Senate-confirmed prosecutor in the district, to continue to oversee the probe, the people familiar said. The appointment of diGenova was a clear sign that Justice Department leadership didn’t have confidence that Quiñones could deliver, one of them added.

In a recent clash with top Justice officials, Quiñones sought to disavow any responsibility for what has gone wrong with the investigation, one person familiar with the investigation told CNN. Quiñones was told to stop traveling to Washington and elsewhere and to focus on his job in Miami, a person familiar with the investigation said.

A spokesperson for Quiñones didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.     

Magistrate Judge Louis Denies Bond to Tate Brothers

 By John R. Byrne

We've posted before about the extradition proceedings involving the Tate brothers. These are the two social media personalities who are facing extradition to the UK on allegations that they choked and raped women. Judge Louis denied their request for bond. And when you have material like this to work with, the order writes itself:

"In the audio recording described above, Emory Tate exhorted that one must amass multiple passports, explaining that it is no longer

possible to live 'off the grid' but rather, that one should seek to live on as many grids as possible; he very specifically describes how he has passed himself off to various law enforcement agencies using identification documents issued by different countries as a method of evading law enforcement."

Defense counsel came up with some creative arguments. Among them? The Court shouldn't believe much of what the Tates say publicly because their online personas are built on hyperbole, exaggeration, and performance. Still, when a main pitch to the Court is that it should disbelieve your clients' statements, the boomerang risk is real. You can read the whole order here.

Foundations of the Federal Bench: A Journey of Hispanic Legal Excellence

By Jordi C. Martinez-Cid

I hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day. The title of the post comes from an upcoming webinar event which features two of our district’s judges. Seems like a good event, requires little effort (given that it is through Zoom), and you get an hour of CLE credit. Flyer below and registration link here.

Also, in order to preserve my spot on the committee, do not let this event deter you from joining the district’s Hispanic Heritage Program on September 23, at 4 p.m. at the Wilkie D. Ferguson, Jr. Courthouse. You can RSVP for that event by emailing FLSD_Program@flsd.uscourts.gov.