He was kidnapped in Fort Lauderdale and waterboarded, FBI says. Then came a bomb threat

Two brothers and a third accomplice kidnapped a man in Fort Lauderdale before realizing they had the wrong person, the FBI says. Instead of letting him go, agents say they threatened to hurt him with electric drill, pointed firearms towards his head and waterboarded him at an AirBnB.

Then the unthinkable happened. The trio tried to abduct their intended target — the victim’s coworker — but it didn’t go as planned when the kidnapped man called in a bomb threat to cause police to rush to his aid, according to investigators.

Jeffry Arista, 32, his brother, Jonathan Arista, 29, had their initial appearance in federal court on Monday The third man, Raymond Gomez, has yet to appear in court. A criminal complaint charges all three with kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap. If convicted, they each face a maximum sentence of life in prison, the United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida said Tuesday in a news release.

According to their criminal complaint, either Jonathan Arista or Gomez, while wearing what appeared to be a ballistic vest, a gold badge and a full-face mask, kidnapped the victim around 7:30 a.m. Friday as he was about to get into his vehicle parked in a garage outside his Fort Lauderdale home.

With the help of a gun, one of the men forced the victim into a Dodge Charger, which had dark tinted windows and a “police” light, before putting a black covering over his head to obstruct his vision. The other kidnapper hurried them to get into the Dodge.

FBI agents say they took the victim into a residential garage of an AirBnB, which Jonathan Arista gained access to the day before the kidnapping. There Jeffry Arista made him reveal his identity. Upon checking his ID, the trio knew they had messed up. The man they had kidnapped was a coworker of their intended target, a man who they said owed money.

“The kidnappers threatened the victim by putting an electric drill to his skin and pointing firearms towards his head,” an FBI agent wrote in their criminal complaint. “At one point, the kidnappers forced the victim into a bathroom inside the residence where they covered his face with four or five black mask sand poured buckets of water on him, effectively waterboarding him.”

“During this time, the victim thought he was going to drown.”

The trio, agents say, brainstormed on how to lure their intended target and made the victim contact his worker. Sometime after 7:30 p.m., about 12 hours after the initial kidnapping, Gomez drove Jeffry Arista and the victim in a black Porshe SUV back to his home. When the victim received a text from his coworker saying he was at their Pompano Beach workplace, agents say the kidnappers took him there and discussed placing a “tracker” on the coworker’s vehicle.

According to the FBI, the kidnappers put into action their plan B — allowing the victim to enter his workplace to find his coworker. Once inside, the victim told his colleague what was going on, called 911 and made a bomb threat “to get a rapid police response.”

Jeffry Arista was taken into custody outside the building. Law enforcement then saw the Porsche speeding away from the area before crashing nearby, where Jonathan Arista was put in handcuffs after being spotted walking away from the crash site.

The following day, law enforcement arrested Gomez, who admitted to being in the Porsche when it crashed, after seeing him and another manplacing bags into a Honda Civic parked outside the AirBnB.

During a sit down with agents, they say Gomez admitted that he and the Arista brothers kidnapped the victim at the direction of an “unknown male,” that he expected to be paid and that he placed a tracker on the car of the victim’s coworker. He also said, according to agents, that the Arista brothers were the ones who waterboarded the victim.

“Gomez did not know the unknown subject’s true identity but advised that the objective was to kidnap the coworker due to a monetary debt,” the criminal complaint says.