A Doral woman posed as lawyer to help migrant get money — then forced her to work, cops say

A Doral woman is being accused of posing as a lawyer and taking advantage of a Venezuelan migrant who turned to her for help in getting child support payments from her ex.

Jeneffer Natally Gaskin Azuaje, 40, was arrested Monday on charges of labor trafficking, scheme to defraud and unlawful use of a communications device. She’s on house arrest after bonding out of the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center near Doral.

“Every investigation of possible Human Trafficking always leads to a very sad place and situation,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. “Both labor trafficking and sexual exploitation aim to destroy a person’s humanity, reducing victims to money-making tools, no different than a hammer or a nail, to put cash in the hands of the victim’s controller.”

In October 2022, the victim went to Doral police and said she was exploited by Gaskin Azuaje for almost a year. She met Gaskin Azuaje in 2018 through a neighbor who was childhood friends with the Doral woman.

The neighbor said she believed Gaskin Azuaje would be able to help her get child support payments from her ex, a former MLB player who lives in Miami-Dade. The couple have two daughters, ages 7 and 5. She told detectives they were together for six years and broke up in June 2017.

When the woman and Gaskin Azuaje spoke on the phone for the first time, she told the victim she was an attorney and vowed to help her as long as she’s honest, court records say. However, Gaskin Azuaje wasn’t a lawyer.

In 2016, Gaskin Azuaje, a native of Venezuela, became a real estate agent in Florida, according to online records. She worked with Brokernation Real Estate Doral, LLC, her Realtor.com profile says. She’s also listed as an officer or registered agent for at least seven companies, state business records say. All but the Doral-based Global International USA LLC, of which she’s the owner, are inactive.

From 2018 to 2020, Gaskin Azuaje sent money, groceries and toys to Maracaibo, the Venezuelan city in which the victim lived, according to police. She also called the victim several times a day to discuss suing her ex for $4 million.

Gaskin Azuaje, at some point in 2018, hired a Venezuelan lawyer who drafted power of attorney letters that gave the Doral woman written authorization to represent the victim in personal, business and legal matters, police say. She sent the victim to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, where she had the papers notarized.

The woman sued her ex in Venezuela through her local counsel. The court ordered the baseball player to deposit $1,000 for each of his daughters into Venezuelan bank accounts. The accounts had about $15,000, though the victim told detectives she never received the money — and that she suspects Gaskin Azuaje accessed it.

Gaskin Azuaje, the first time they met in person in 2019, told the victim: “Trust me, no one is going to help you like I am.”

She then insisted that the client move to the U.S., police say, despite the victim being hesitant to leave her family in Venezuela, police say. Gaskin Azuaje pressed her to come, emphasizing how she had invested a lot of money in her and her daughters.

The victim told police that Gaskin Azuaje said she needed a student visa because that would guarantee they could stay in the U.S. for at least five years. The victim said she wasn’t familiar with the process and just followed the instructions she was given.

Investigators allege that Gaskin Azuaje had one of her friends pretend to be the victim’s husband and listed him on immigration paperwork as the the person paying for their trip.

In March 2021, the victim and her daughters received visas. Gaskin Azuaje purchased their plane tickets, and a day later, they arrived at Miami International Airport.

Gaskin Azuaje picked them up and brought them to her Doral home. She quickly took their visa documents, Venezuelan IDs, birth certificates, medical records and school records, the victim told police. That’s also when Gaskin Azuaje told her she wasn’t an attorney.

From their first day in the U.S., Gaskin Azuaje forced the victim to do chores, like cleaning and cooking, according to court records. The victim told police she started working around the house at 4 a.m. every day.

Gaskin Azuaje, days later, took the victim and her daughters to Clearwater to see her ex during spring training, according to court records. She forbade the victim from speaking with him, instead handing one of his relatives a letter with her contact information.

The player’s manager and the victim’s lawyer in Venezuela began negotiating a deal for child support payments. The baseball player offered $1.3 million, but Gaskin Azuaje rejected the offer, demanding $4 million. The manager said the player would be willing to provide $830,000 and add his daughters to his MLB contract.

Gaskin Azuaje again denied the proposal, police say. She said she wanted more money — and a house.

Shortly after, Gaskin Azuaje went with the victim to open a Bank of America account under her Social Security number. Gaskin Azuaje controlled the account, with the victim telling detectives that one time her ex sent her daughter $500 for a school fundraiser, and when she checked the account, the funds weren’t there.

In November 2021, Gaskin Azuaje realized that settlement negotiations with the baseball player weren’t working out and told the victim: “If you don’t work, you can’t eat,” according to court records.

Gaskin Azuaje in February 2022 drove the victim to fill out a job application at a nearby McDonald’s. The victim, police say, worked there under Gaskin Azuaje’s name for seven months. The Doral woman forced the victim to give up her paychecks, which totaled to more than $15,500.

In August that year, Gaskin Azuaje made the victim and her daughters sleep in the living room so that she could have two men, unknown to the victim, stay in their rooms. The victim told police she stopped working at McDonald’s because she didn’t want to leave her daughters at the house with two strange men.

Gaskin Azuaje, a short time later, kicked the victim and her daughters out of the home after discovering she was communicating with her ex, according to court records. The victim told detectives that Gaskin Azuaje wouldn’t allow her to communicate with him and even checked her cellphone daily.

The victim told detectives she feared for her and her daughters’ safety. She remembers an ominous statement Gaskin Azuaje made: “The bad thing about me, I get revenge.”

Investigators from the Miami-Dade State Attorney Human Trafficking Task Force arrested Gaskin Azuaje. Doral police, the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigation also aided in the investigation.

Miami Herald staff writer Omar Rodríguez Ortiz contributed to this report