Sept. 18 (UPI) — A Customs and Border Protection officer was convicted of sexually assaulting and robbing four women with a gun at Chicago hotels.
Luis Uribe, 45, was found guilty on Thursday on all charges, including 10 counts of deprivation of rights and one count of brandishing a firearm. The trial lasted two weeks. The convictions carry a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years to life in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso set sentencing for Jan. 21.
He was indicted in 2025, and his lawyers tried to get the indictment overturned alleging misconduct by prosecutors, but the judge denied it. Uribe is a former Marine who has worked for the federal government since 2009, The New York Times reported.
Uribe was working at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. According to prosecutors, between February and October 2022 in Schaumburg and Naperville, Ill., he entered the hotel rooms of four women, showed his badge and threatened them with a gun issued by CBP. All four women were of Chinese descent and were working as prostitutes.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Uribe’s lawyers argued that he had visited sex workers but that the accusations against him were false.
“I never raped anybody in my whole life. I never robbed anybody in my whole life,” The Tribune reported he said from the stand. He said that the relations he had with the women were consensual.
Uribe had followed some of the women to their hotel rooms and forced his way in, prosecutors said. He threatened one woman with a knife and tried to assault her but was interrupted by a knock on the door. She had moved hotels to avoid him
Another woman, who said she was a sex worker, was asked by her boss to get a photo of Uribe to send to others as word got around about his attacks, according to court records. Her boss also told her to get him to agree to stop attacking women in exchange for free sexual favors. But he “did not abide by the terms of the bargain,” documents said.
Source: U.S. News
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