Fugitive extradited to Miami to face charges in plot to kidnap and torture doctor with blowtorch
A fugitive who fled to Spain to evade kidnapping charges was extradited to Miami, and now he’ll stand trial on charges that he kidnapped a plastic surgeon and tortured him for nine hours with a blowtorch.
Sergei Nkorina, 55, arrived in Miami on Wednesday night on a flight from Spain, authorities said. He’s accused of burning the surgeon’s hands with a blowtorch and trying to extort money from him.
Prosecutors said Nkorina solicited another man’s help in the botched heist. His co-conspirator, 35-year-old Justin Boccio, pleaded guilty to the plot and kidnapping in 2019.
Boccio, who was a down-on-his-luck flight instructor in Deerfield Beach at the time of the crime, will spend more than 11 years in federal prison for his role in the failed plot.
After weeks of planning the Jan. 14 kidnapping and scoping out the doctor’s Broward County office, the kidnappers did not strike it rich. They walked away empty-handed.
It was about 6:45 p.m. on a Monday when the surgeon, who is not identified by name in court documents, was confronted by a man with a gun and shoved into a van at a Walmart in Broward. Court documents do not specify which Walmart it was.
The abductor blindfolded the doctor, tied up his hands and feet and, and during an hour-long ride, repeatedly shocked the surgeon with a stun gun, prosecutors said.
Once at their destination, which investigators later discovered was a storage facility in Margate, the doctor was tied to a rolling chair. When his blindfold was removed, he could not get a clear view of his two captors because of the headlamps and baseball caps they wore.
What he could see were “several sharp devices and guns,” according to the federal complaint.
The kidnappers beat the doctor, singed the tops of his hands with a blowtorch and some other “hot metal object” and threatened to kill him, prosecutors said.
According to the complaint, the doctor “was willing to give them whatever they wanted, but they just kept hitting him and burning his hands.”
The doctor gave up his home address in Miami-Dade County, gate entry information and the alarm code to his house. He also told the men where they could find $50,000.
His last memory was being forced to drink alcohol and getting back into the van. He passed out, and when he came to he was still bound but in his own car parked at Cheetah Gentleman’s Club on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, court documents show.
He laid on the car’s horn in distress, and cops responded to the continuous blaring at 3:45 a.m.
The kidnappers had already gone to his home with guns at 2 a.m., court documents said. They still wore baseball caps and headlamps as they tried to get inside. One of the surgeon’s family members saw the men approach and turned on the lights, and they took off running.
Nkorina is from Tenerife, Spain, but is an American citizen, prosecutors said. A pre-trial detention hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday in federal magistrate court in Miami.
