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DB-cleanup/merge-output/sources/145_Unidentified-man.txt
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StellarCrowandClaude Fable 5.1 439e83a4cb feat(sources): Wayback pass, automatic trimming, detention rule, ten cases re-sourced 
Second and third rounds on the dossier pipeline, reviewed locally before commit.

Retrieval
- wayback_pass.py: retries every BLOCKED/DEAD/THIN/ERROR linked source through
  the Wayback Machine; blocks carry the snapshot date, archive URL and the live
  verdict. 143 slots retried: 93 fetched, 37 no snapshot, 12 script shells, 1 PDF.
- fetch_sources.py: fetch_wayback() helper.
- add_extra_sources.py: files staged extra_* finds (web search, not on the DB
  record) into the store with a provenance note.
- Cases re-sourced by web search: 248 (Oslo: Document.no, Avisa Oslo, NRK; the
  linked Le Parisien piece is case 242 and is marked OFF-CASE), 258 Kharkiv,
  260 Singapore, 358 Bangkok, 365 Las Vegas, 388 Verneuil-sur-Seine, 390 Zoersel,
  430 Homestead. 341 of 364 cases now hold a fetched article; 11, 66 and 399
  have no public text source (podcast, police video, direct victim report).

Trimming
- auto_trim.py: case-anchored furniture cut for UNTRIMMED blocks. Finds the body
  run that mentions the case, merges across subheadings and short furniture
  gaps, drops teasers, share bars, date/URL/caption lines and subscription
  pitches; refuses pages with no record term or almost no body. 302 blocks
  trimmed; 16 left on auto-trim-review.md (7 OFF-CASE suspects). Every cut is
  labelled AUTO-TRIMMED, UNREVIEWED in the dossier; the full extract stays in
  staging/. Decisions with anchors in trim-decisions-auto.json.
- build_cases.py / verify_all.py: banners for auto-trimmed and archived blocks,
  staged-file check extended to Wayback blocks, flag legend under the record.

Detention rule
- README "Definitions": the DB field `kidnappings` is the DETENTION violence
  type (victim, guard, staff or relative held to force submission or execute
  the theft), distinct from the Kidnapping scenario (taken away and held).
- detention-flag-review.md / detention-flag-corrections.json: 40 records
  reviewed with evidence; 30 set-to-1 proposals accepted by the owner on
  2026-09-06 (listed in corrections-approved.md), 10 still open.
- apply_detention_wording.py: "Violence Used" in the 70 reviewed summaries now
  names detention explicitly (62 of 70 labelled), supported by the summary's
  own text; idempotent; supersedes the batch scripts' wording.

Worklist and docs
- sofia-worklist.md: 248 decisions, detention rule item replacing the old
  "no abduction" item, fresh-search section for the textless cases.
- README-START-HERE.md: progress notes, run commands, next steps.
- Bug fixed in passing: Wayback blocks stored in-memory text with carriage
  returns; now stored as read back from disk.

verify_all.py PASSES (2321 checks).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZZENdTLzNGsbNy4DyF1yt
2026-09-06 19:36:45 +02:00

172 lines
17 KiB
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Raw Blame History

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================================================================================================
CASE 145 | Unidentified man | December 22, 2022 | USA
================================================================================================
DATABASE RECORD
id 145
date December 22, 2022
original_date December 22, 2022
year 2022
month 12
quarter 2022-Q4
victim Unidentified man
location Little Elm, Texas
country USA
scenario Home Invasion
description Armed gang invades home, torture victims for 3 hours, take jewelry, fail to find hardware wallet with $1.4m.
kidnappings 1
violence_torture 1
drugs_alcohol 0
weapons 1
theft 1
life_taken 0
money_wanted $150,000
coin_type $150,000 in cash, two Rolex watches, and a valuable necklace and pendant.
reports Justice.gov, CJnotebook
notes Group linked to 9 kidnappings in three states
has_processed_date 1
created_at 2025-11-13 05:44:45
(flag legend: 'kidnappings' is the DETENTION flag — 1 when the victim was held against
their will at any point, tied, locked in, held at gunpoint or taken away; it is NOT the
same as the 'Kidnapping' scenario, which means taken away and held. See README, Definitions.)
AI SUMMARY [generated at bulk import, NOT verified against sources]
**Victim:** Unidentified man
**Attackers:** Gang/organized group
**Attack Method:** Home Invasion - victim kidnapped
**Violence Used:** Torture
**Crypto Stolen:** $150,000 in $150,000 in cash, two Rolex watches, and a valuable necklace and pendant.
**Status:** Investigation ongoing
LINKED SOURCES
[url] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/twelve-defendants-sentenced-violent-home-invasion-robberies-steal-cryptocurrency
NOTES ON THIS FILE
* matched to sheet row 146: exact date + country, unique candidate
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARTICLE 1
Source Justice.gov, CJnotebook
URL https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/twelve-defendants-sentenced-violent-home-invasion-robberies-steal-cryptocurrency
Origin reported_K&R sheet, row 146, column "Articles"
Length 2,001 chars
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three suspects arrested in Texas make initial appearance in Houston federal courtroom
EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A federal grand jury has charged 11 individuals with ties to Texas in connection with a string of kidnappings and robberies in three states.
The group has been linked to nine abductions at gunpoint between August 2022 and July 2023 in homes in Delray Beach and Homestead, Florida, Durham, North Carolina, and Little Elm, Texas, court records show.
A federal grand jury in Durham on Jan. 16 issued a sealed indictment against Jose Avila, Haisel Daily, Ruben Nicolopulus Silva, Nathan Quintana, Jesus Santiago, Deangelo Contreras, Tristian Gamez, Victor Gonzalez, Jesus Salazar, Christian Valdez and Jesus Valdez Jr.
The two-count indictment unsealed on Jan. 25 charges them with unlawful abduction for ransom or reward, and conspiracy to obstruct commerce by robbery. Several of them traveled to Texas after the event and three have been arrested. Records show that three were scheduled to make initial appearances in a Houston courtroom before U.S. Magistrate Judge Yvonne Y. Ho of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Records show the first kidnapping took place Sept. 12, 2022, in Delray Beach. That’s when Avila, Quintana and a man not accused in the indictment allegedly detained two victims at their home at gunpoint. The second violent abduction took place three days later and involved a victim taken from a Homestead home and driven against his will to Stuart, Florida.
The suspects allegedly traveled to Little Elm, where four individuals were detained at gunpoint inside their home on Dec. 22, 2022. The indictment alleges Contreras, Salazar, Gonzalez, Chrisian Valdez and Jesus Valdez were responsible for that abduction.
Another violent abduction involving two people at a home in Durham reported on April 2023 is linked to individuals named in the indictment. Records show Gamez, Salazar and Jesus Valdez were arrested in the Houston area last week.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARTICLE 2
Source Justice.gov, CJnotebook
URL (no URL recorded for this column)
Origin reported_K&R sheet, row 146, column "Article 2"
Length 689 chars
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later in 2022, St Felix and his crew targeted a Little Elm, Texas, man and made several trips to attempt the robbery. In December 2022, Seemungal and a Houston-based crew comprised of Deangelo Lee Contreras, 21, Tristian Rene Gamez, 21, Victor Gonzalez, 27, Jesus Salazar, 24, Cristian Valdez, 21, and Jesus Gerardo Valdez, Jr., 27, all of Houston, Texas, committed the home invasion. The Little Elm man and members of his family were held at gunpoint and restrained in their home for over three hours, during which time members of the crew tortured the man and his mother. The perpetrators stole approximately $150,000.00 in cash, two Rolex watches, and a valuable necklace and pendant.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARTICLE 3
Source Justice.gov, CJnotebook
URL (no URL recorded for this column)
Origin reported_K&R sheet, row 146, column "Article 3"
Length 491 chars
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In December 2022, Seemungal and a Houston-based crew, including Deangelo Lee Contreras, Tristian Rene Gamez, Victor Gonzalez, Jesus Salazar, Cristian Valdez, and Jesus Gerardo Valdez, Jr., all carried out the home invasion.
The Little Elm man and his family were held at gunpoint and restrained in their home for over three hours. During that time, the crew tortured the man and his mother.
They stole approximately $150,000 in cash, two Rolex watches, and a valuable necklace and pendant.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FETCHED ARTICLE 1 [AUTO-TRIMMED — UNREVIEWED]
!! Furniture was cut by a script keyed on this case's record, not by a person.
!! It may still carry passages about OTHER cases from a round-up article.
!! The full page extract is kept in staging/ if a cut needs revisiting.
Source justice.gov
URL https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/twelve-defendants-sentenced-violent-home-invasion-robberies-steal-cryptocurrency
Field url
Retrieved 2026-09-05T13:30:03+00:00 via Wayback Machine snapshot 20260524233442, deterministic extraction (HTTP None)
Language unknown
Kept paragraphs headline [0] + 6-31 of 32
Length 9,107 chars
Integrity sha256 3c576937bf3aa92f3fcef88d17bb209787f0c20f8339b9aad0555cea1b39987d
Trimmed AUTO-TRIMMED, unreviewed: kept paragraphs 6-31 plus headline [0]; dropped 5 leading and 0 trailing paragraphs. Case-term hits on page: 10.
Note live URL was THIN on the first pass; text comes from an archived copy dated 2026-05-24
Archive http://web.archive.org/web/20260524233442/https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/twelve-defendants-sentenced-violent-home-invasion-robberies-steal-cryptocurrency
Caveat retrieved from a Wayback Machine snapshot, not the live page. The
snapshot date is in the method line; the live URL was unreadable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ORIGINAL (unknown, verbatim as retrieved)
Office of Public Affairs | Twelve Defendants Sentenced for Violent Home Invasion Robberies to Steal Cryptocurrency | United States Department of Justice
This is archived content from the U.S. Department of Justice website. The information here may be outdated and links may no longer function. Please contact webmaster@usdoj.gov if you have any questions about the archive site.
Twelve Defendants Sentenced for Violent Home Invasion Robberies to Steal Cryptocurrency
A Florida man was sentenced to 47 years in prison on Wednesday for his role in a scheme involving a series of home invasion robberies targeting cryptocurrency. Between Sept. 5 and Sept. 12, a total of 12 men have been sentenced for their role in the scheme.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators stole over $3.5 million from victims through SIM swapping and violent home invasions in which they held victims at gunpoint, assaulted them, and bound them with plastic cable ties. St Felix was convicted on June 25 by a federal jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, after a six-day trial. In addition to his sentence of incarceration, St Felix was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $524,153.39 in restitution.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, beginning in late 2020, St Felix’s co-conspirator, Jarod Gabriel Seemungal, 23, of West Palm Beach, and foreign co-conspirators stole cryptocurrency from victims’ accounts at exchanges. They obtained access to the accounts by gaining control of the victims’ phone numbers through SIM swapping. In 2022, Seemungal and his co-conspirators devised the home invasion scheme and recruited St Felix and others to assist with the invasions. St Felix later became the leader of the home invasion crew. In September 2022, St Felix and members of the crew committed violent home invasions in Delray Beach and Homestead, Florida. In Delray Beach, the victims were held at gunpoint in their home. In Homestead, a man and his family were held at gunpoint in their home, and then the man was abducted, held hostage, and beaten, before the man was found by law enforcement 120 miles from his home.
Later in 2022, St Felix and his crew targeted a Little Elm, Texas, man and made several trips to attempt the robbery. In December 2022, Seemungal and a Houston-based crew comprised of Deangelo Lee Contreras, 21, Tristian Rene Gamez, 21, Victor Gonzalez, 27, Jesus Salazar, 24, Cristian Valdez, 21, and Jesus Gerardo Valdez, Jr., 27, all of Houston, Texas, committed the home invasion. The Little Elm man and members of his family were held at gunpoint and restrained in their home for over three hours, during which time members of the crew tortured the man and his mother. The perpetrators stole approximately $150,000.00 in cash, two Rolex watches, and a valuable necklace and pendant.
In April 2023, St Felix and Elmer Ruben Castro, 23, of West Palm Beach, invaded the home of a wife and a husband in Durham, North Carolina. Prior to the invasion, St Felix’s co-conspirators obtained unauthorized access to the couple’s email account and conducted multiple days of surveillance on their home. During the invasion, the men violently assaulted the couple, threatened them with guns, and restrained them with plastic cable ties. They forced the man to provide access to his computer and cryptocurrency exchange account. Seemungal then remotely accessed the computer and stole over $150,000.00 worth of cryptocurrency. Conspirators laundered the funds through anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies, as well as “instant exchanges” and decentralized finance platforms that did not conduct know-your-customer checks.
In July 2023, St Felix traveled from Florida to Long Island, New York, to commit a home invasion of a family of five. Before St Felix could do so, however, he was arrested. At the time of his arrest, St Felix was in possession of two firearms and plastic cable ties.
Throughout the conspiracy, the conspirators communicated via an encrypted messaging application to plan their crimes. They identified targets and discussed how to gain entry to homes, the tools required to carry out the crimes, the technical aspects of cryptocurrency, and the patterns of life of their targets. They also circulated pictures of their targets and their targets’ homes. In addition to the home invasions described above, conspirators used the encrypted messaging application to plan additional home invasion robberies in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Orlando, Florida; and Georgia. Seemungal and the foreign co-conspirators financed the purchase of rental cars, hotel rooms, and firearms by co-conspirators Haisel Daily, 22, of West Palm Beach, and Ruben Matias Nicolopulos Silva, 22, of Lake Worth, Florida, to use during the robberies.
Seemungal was also sentenced yesterday to 20 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $4,038,479.39 in restitution. Seemungal pleaded guilty on December 19, 2023, for his role in the scheme to steal cryptocurrency by hacking victims’ cryptocurrency accounts as well as the home invasion and robbery scheme.
On Feb. 6, Castro pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 1.
On May 29 and 30, nine of St Felix’s and Seemungal’s co-conspirators pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and were sentenced as follows:
Jose Alfredo Avila, 27, of West Palm Beach, was sentenced on Sept. 11, to 20 years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release and ordered to pay $365,100.00 in restitution.
Contreras was sentenced on Sept. 5, to 15 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $355,800.00 in restitution.
Daily was sentenced on Sept. 5, to 25 years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release and ordered to pay $524,153.39 in restitution.
Gonzalez was sentenced on Sept. 6, to 12 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $355,800.00 in restitution.
Nathan Noel Quintana, 24, of Royal Palm Beach, Florida, was sentenced on Sept. 6, to 16 years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release and ordered to pay $365,100.00 in restitution.
Silva was sentenced on Sept. 5, to 12 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $524,153.39 in restitution.
Cristian Valdez was sentenced on Sept. 6, to 12 years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release and ordered to pay $355,800.00 in restitution.
Jesus Valdez was sentenced on Sept. 6, to 12 years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release and ordered to pay $355,800.00 in restitution.
Jesus Manuel Santiago, III, 23, of West Palm Beach, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 1.
Also, on May 29 and 30, Salazar and Gamez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to interfere with commerce through robbery. Salazar was sentenced on Sept. 5, to five years in prison, followed by four years of supervised release and ordered to pay $355,800.00 in restitution. Gamez was sentenced on Sept. 11, to eight years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $355,800.00 in restitution.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Sandra J. Hairston for the Middle District of North Carolina; and Special Agent in Charge Robert M. DeWitt of the FBI Charlotte Field Office made the announcement.
The FBI Charlotte Field Office investigated the case, with valuable assistance from the Durham Police Department and the FBI New York, Miami, Houston, Mobile, and Newark Field Offices.
The National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) is partnered with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of North Carolina in prosecuting the case. CCIPS/NCET Trial Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Iverson for the Middle District of North Carolina and CCIPS Trial Attorney Brian Mund are prosecuting the case. The U.S. Attorneys’ Offices for the Southern District of Florida, Southern District of Texas, and Eastern District of Texas provided valuable assistance.
NCET was established to combat the growing illicit use of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Within CCIPS, NCET conducts and supports investigations into individuals and entities that enable the use of digital assets to commit and facilitate a variety of crimes, with a particular focus on virtual currency exchanges, obfuscation services, and infrastructure providers. NCET also sets strategic priorities regarding digital asset technologies, identifies areas for increased investigative and prosecutorial focus, and leads the department’s efforts to collaborate with domestic and foreign government agencies as well as the private sector to aggressively investigate and prosecute crimes involving cryptocurrency and digital assets.
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generated from attacks-export-Gart-website.json + reported_K&R | case 145
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