Two Queens men who participated in the abduction of a Woodside businessman held hostage and tortured in a Long Island City warehouse for more than a month are now serving long prison sentences.
During a court hearing on Wednesday, Feb. 1, Corona‘s Christian Acuna, 38, and East Elmhurst‘s Dennis Alves, 36, were ordered to serve the next 13 1/2 years behind bars and five years’ probation for their roles in the seizure of the businessman between April 18 and May 20, 2013.
According to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, Acuna and Alves previously plead guilty to charges that they worked with Eduardo Moncayo, 42, of Lyndhurst, NJ, in the plot that began on April 18. Authorities said that Moncayo — while impersonating a police officer — grabbed the victim from in front of a location on Roosevelt Avenue near 88th Street on the afternoon of April 18.
Prosecutors said Moncayo dragged the businessman into a waiting SUV, where the victim was punched about the body and a mask was thrown over his face. The culprits then drove the man to a warehouse on 43rd Avenue, taken to an upstairs room, bound to a chair and assaulted further.
Law enforcement sources said the kidnappers forced the victim to call his mother in Ecuador to request a $3 million ransom in order to be freed.
For the next 32 days, authorities stated, the victim would remain in the Long Island City warehouse and was subjected to periodic beatings and torture. In one episode, one of his hands was burned with acid; in another instance, his captors threatened to sever his fingers and kill him. The victim lost several teeth as a result of being repeated assaulted in the face.
The businessman was finally freed on May 20, 2013, through an operation conducted by the NYPD Major Case Squad. He was found by police with his hands bound with cloth and duct tape.
“Even after being rescued, the victim was deeply traumatized by this experience,” Brown said in a statement on Thursday, Feb. 2. “Under the circumstances, the sentence imposed by the court was more than warranted.”
Moncayo was previously convicted on kidnapping and related charges and is now serving a 25-year prison sentence.
