LOS ANGELES (CN) - The leader of what federal prosecutors say was one of the largest human smuggling organizations in the U.S. agreed to plead guilty to running the outfit that brought about 20,000 immigrants from Guatemala into the United States without authorization over a five year period.

Eduardo Domingo Renoj-Matul, 52, will admit to one count of conspiring to bring aliens into the U.S. for financial gain and one count of hostage taking, according to the plea agreement filed Monday in Los Angeles federal court. He faces a statutory maximum sentence of life in prison on the hostage taking count.

Renoj-Matul, a Guatemalan citizen who lived in the Westlake neighborhood near downtown LA, was arrested in February together with his right hand man.

Also indicted was the supervisor of the organization's team of drivers, who's still a fugitive, and a driver who was involved in a November 2023 Oklahoma car crash, in which six immigrants, including three children, he was transporting for the organization were killed and a seventh was critically injured.

Renoj-Matul, aka Turko, first worked for and then became the leader of the group that for at least a dozen years specialized in smuggling immigrants from Guatemala into the U.S. The group's associates in Guatemala would charge prospective immigrants between $15,000 and $18,000 each to be transported across Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border.

The immigrants were first taken into Southern Mexico where a local smuggling group would take them up to Sonora and into Arizona. There they would be held in stash houses in and around Phoenix for Renoj-Matul's organization to collect them and take them to their own stash houses in Southern California.

One of Renoj-Matul's stash houses was on James M. Wood Blvd., in LA's Westlake neighborhood, where some of the immigrants were held hostage until their smuggling fees were paid.

In April 2024, according to prosecutors, someone "reneged" on a promised payment for one woman that had already been smuggled into the U.S. by the organization. Renoj-Matul then called her mother and threatened that she "'would come home in a box' if her smuggling fees were not paid," according to the indictment.

The woman was held hostage for more than two months at the house on Wood Blvd., and according to indictment, the smugglers called her mother and blamed her for a search of the stash house. Later that year, three armed men showed up at the mother's door in Guatemala and demanded payment from her.

After the immigrants had paid their fees, they were taken to other destinations across the U.S. by the organization's network of drivers. Renoj-Matul arranged for the money to be sent to Phoenix to pay the Mexican smuggling group.

Renoj-Matul's attorney and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in LA declined to comment on the plea deal.

Jose Paxtor-Oxlaj, the driver for Renoj-Matul's organization who was involved in the fatal accident in Elk City, Oklahoma, two years ago, was convicted of six counts of first-degree manslaughter and sentenced to four years in state prison. On top of that, he'll have to spend two years in federal prison for illegally reentering the U.S. after he had been removed to Guatemala in 2010.

Paxtor-Oxlaj is currently scheduled to go on trial in April on the separate human smuggling charges in LA.

Source: Courthouse News Service