Two Los Angeles County men who helped operate what prosecutors call one of the largest human smuggling organizations in the nation are expected to be sentenced Friday for illegally moving undocumented immigrants from Guatemala into the United States for profit.
Some newly trafficked noncitizens were held captive in a MacArthur Park-area “stash house” until their smuggling fees were paid, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Cristobal Mejia-Chaj, 50, of Westlake, pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court in March to one count of conspiracy to bring, transport and harbor aliens in the United States for private financial gain.
Mejia-Chaj was the right-hand man to the ring’s leader Eduardo Domingo Renoj-Matul, 52 — known as “Turko” — also of the Westlake district near downtown. Renoj-Matul pleaded guilty in March to the same charge as Mejia-Chaj, plus one count of hostage taking.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela is scheduled to sentence both men Friday.
Renoj-Matul admitted in his plea agreement that the organization moved nearly 20,000 undocumented immigrants from Guatemala into the U.S. from 2019 through July 2024 — including seven who died in a car crash in Oklahoma in 2023.
Once the immigrants were smuggled into the United States, some were held in a stash house on James M. Wood Boulevard in Westlake or in Phoenix, Arizona, until smuggling fees were paid, authorities said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that Renoj-Matul’s accomplices in Guatemala solicited immigrants to come to the United States, accepted payment of between $15,000 and $18,000 for each person, and coordinated their transport through Mexico to the United States.
In November 2023, one of the group’s members caused a car accident in Elk City, Oklahoma, while he was smuggling undocumented immigrants from New York to Los Angeles. That accident resulted in the deaths of seven people who were passengers in the vehicle he drove. Of the seven people killed, three were minors, including a 4-year-old child, court papers show.
According to the indictment returned last year, the “Renoj-Matul transnational criminal organization” operated for at least a dozen years.
Prosecutors said that in 2024, Renoj-Matul and Mejia-Chaj held hostage two Guatemalan nationals smuggled into the United States who had not paid smuggling fees. The defendants threatened to kill the victims unless third parties paid for their release, prosecutors said.
Co-defendant José Paxtor-Oxlaj, 45, a driver for the smuggling organization, is serving six years in prison in Oklahoma in connection with the fatal car accident and for illegally reentering the U.S. after removal.
Helmer Obispo-Hernández, 42, a lieutenant in the organization, faces federal charges in the case and is a fugitive, officials said.