Two men were sentenced to prison for stealing ventilators that were designated to support COVID recovery efforts in El Salvador.
The crime occurred in August 2020, according to a news release issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida after the sentencing of the second of the two men.
The men, Yoelvis Denis Hernandez, 42, and Luis Urra Montero, 25, stole a tractor-trailer from a parking lot in South Florida that was loaded with 192 ventilators, worth about $3 million, that were bound for Miami International Airport for shipping to El Salvador by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the statement said.
At the time, El Salvador was experiencing a pandemic surge and desperately seeking help to save severely ill residents.
Read the full article at the New York Times.