MIAMI — A federal jury in Miami has convicted a man of kidnapping the plastic surgeon who had treated his wife and torturing him inside a storage container with a blow torch to get money from him.
Federal prosecutors say 56-year-old Serge Nkorina and another man, Justin Boccio, plotted to kidnap the plastic surgeon by stalking him, buying devices from hardware and medical supply stores and renting a storage container in an attempt to obtain tens and thousands of dollars from him.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of Florida, Nkorina and his accomplice stalked the surgeon by placing a GPS tracker on the bottom of his car.
In 2019, the plastic surgeon was kidnapped as he was leaving a supermarket. The two men tased his neck and threw him into a van. That's when Nkorina and Boccio took him to the Margate storage container where they tortured him for hours.
His hands were burned with a blow torch to force him to reveal the gate and door codes to his home.
When Nkorina and Boccio attempted to use the gate and door codes given to them, authorities say they were scared off by a light connected to the doorbell camera that came on.
The two men called off the plan and dumped the surgeon at a strip club parking lot.
Boccio already pleaded guilty and is currently serving a 135-month sentence, the U.S. Attorney's Office reports.
Nkorina is awaiting his sentencing scheduled for Feb. 15, 2021. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
