MIAMI (AP) — A federal jury in Miami convicted a man of kidnapping the plastic surgeon who had treated his wife and torturing him with a blow torch to get money from him.
Federal prosecutors had brought the case against 56-year-old Serge Nkorina, who was found guilty of conspiring to commit kidnapping and kidnapping earlier this week. Nkorina could face up to life in prison at his sentencing hearing in February.
Nkorina's attorney, Omar F. Guerra Johansson, said the defendant intends to appeal the verdict.
"This case was a hard fought trial, and the jury deliberated for four hours," he said in a statement.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Robert F. Moore and Marc Chattah said Nkorina and another man, who already pleaded guilty, plotted to kidnap the plastic surgeon. Prosecutors said they placed a GPS tracker on the bottom of his car, bought devices from hardware and medical supply stores and rented a storage container in Margate, Florida.
Nkorina and the other man kidnapped the man on Jan. 14, 2019 as he was leaving a supermarket with groceries by using a stun gun on his neck and throwing him into a van, prosecutors said.
At the storage container they tortured him for hours and burned the victim's hands with a blow torch to force him to reveal the security gate and door codes to his home, prosecutors said. But as they were trying to rob his home, they were scared away by the doorbell camera and abandoned the plan and left the victim at a strip club parking lot, the U.S. attorneys said.
