Thieves posing as SWAT get busted by the real deal

With nicknames like ”Carlito,” ”Lechuga” and ”Lino,” the crew of middle-aged armed robbers dressed as SWAT cops and wielded guns. Their score was 60 kilos of cocaine. They planned to kill.But the dope was a decoy. So was their enabler, a supposed disgruntled drug courier who was actually a Miami-Dade undercover detective.

The reverse sting turned deadly. Two of the alleged robbers died in a shootout with Miami-Dade police officers in a West Miami-Dade warehouse parking lot.

Two others, including the alleged mastermind, suffered gunshot wounds.

The survivors are now all convicts.

The mastermind, Paulino Granda, 46, and his brother, Carlos, 44, were convicted by jury last week on a slew of federal robbery, drug and firearm charges. They will be sentenced in August.

The remaining three plead guilty.

The case was investigated by Miami-Dade police and Florida Department of Law Enforcement, prosecuted federally by James Koukios and Michael Gilfarb.

”These guys were very dangerous,” said Amos Rojas Jr., FDLE’s Miami special agent in charge. “It’s justice served. If they would not have been convicted, they would have at some point killed an innocent truck driver.”

The court case details a plot befitting of a police TV drama.

It begins with a stocky, clean-domed Hialeah convict named Paulino ”Lino” Granda. A tattoo of Jesus marks his back. He wears big, square glasses.

Born in Cuba, Granda had been a plumber. Really, police say, he was a career robber.

His first major brush with police made headlines in 1985. Granda and another man kidnapped a Coral Gables attorney named Pedro Echarte.

Echarte talked Granda into stopping at a bank to withdraw money. Coral Gables cops soon arrested them.

Granda served five years in state prison. Echarte’s son, Pedro Echarte Jr., is now a Miami-Dade judge.

Since Granda’s release, state records show 16 arrests on charges ranging from grand theft auto to burglary.

He was released from prison in December 2006 after serving three years for grand theft.

His daughter, Giselle Granda, said shortly after his arrest that he had struggled with drugs but gone clean since his release.

”He was doing great. Healthier. He looked amazing. He’s not the monster they make him out to be,” she said.

Miami-Dade police say Granda had been pulling cargo thefts in the Northeast.

INITIAL ENCOUNTER

In January, an informant told police he encountered Granda, who was buying camouflage clothing at the Dolphin Mall.

I have a crew and I’m looking for work, Granda told the informant.

Posing as a disgruntled drug courier looking to rip-off his boss, a Miami-Dade detective and the informant met with Granda in a Miami parking lot Jan. 26.

A shipment was coming in: 60 to 80 kilos of coke from Colombia. Two drivers. I don’t want any heat on me so rob the truck when I’m away, the detective told Granda.

”Granda made a motion with his hand mimicking holding a hand gun and indicating how his crew would take the driver out of the tractor-trailer,” according to a criminal complaint.

One of Granda’s crew would drive the coke to ”another location” where they’d all split the haul.

Nine days later, Granda laid out his plans to the detective and the informant at a Cuban restaurant in West Miami-Dade.

Lookouts would be posted. Armed with shotguns, Granda and his crew would pull up in a white van dressed as police SWAT officers.

The truck’s drivers would be thrown into the van, robbed of their cell phones and dumped west of Hialeah.

An alternate plan, Granda floated: posing as regular cops, the crew would pull the truck over.

”Granda advised that his people are all professionals and didn’t plan on shooting anyone,” according to the complaint written by Miami-Dade Detective Kenneth Kiple. “However . . . if they had to shoot, they would shoot.”

Five minutes before 11 p.m. on Feb. 22, the informant called Granda. The shipment would arrive soon.

Meet me at the Mobil gas station at Northwest 58th Street and 79th Avenue, the informant said.

Five minutes later, Granda left his Hialeah home in a white Ford F-250, registered to his cousin, Fidel Granda.

Eight minutes later, Granda pulled into the Mobil station and joined the informant in his car.

He was followed by a black BMW SUV. Riding inside was Alexis S. Hernandez, 42, who got out and also hopped in the informant’s car.

A Cuban rafter, Hernandez had been in Miami three years, stayed with a cousin and briefly worked at a carwash.

”I figured he was with bad people but not that bad,” cousin Ricardo Almanza said.

The informant drove Granda and Hernandez to case the tractor-trailer truck parked on the 8600 block of Northwest 68th Street near Doral.

A building of light-coffee colored warehouses — Korean auto parts, air cargo, baked goods — line opposite sides of the lot.

The north side of the lot is closed in by a chest-high concrete wall.

A light was on inside in the truck. There is only one direction in and out.

The three returned to the Mobil. Then the undercover Miami-Dade detective called: The shipment was in. The heist was near.

Granda ordered to the gas station Carlos ”Carlito” Granda and Manuel ”Lechuga” Tellez, whose nickname means lettuce in Spanish.

Granda turned to the informant and said “he was just going to kill the driver and also that they needed someone to tie the driver up and throw him in the trunk.”

In white vans, the silver BMW SUV and a black Expedition, the robbers made their way toward their target.

Granda, however, got lost. He called the informant to ask for directions.

At 11:30 p.m., the BMW pulled up to the parking lot entrance. The black Expedition parked near the trailer.

Wearing a hood over his face, a ”SWAT” shirt under his jacket and armed with a .357 Smith & Wesson, Hernandez jumped from the Expedition.

He was met by officers from Miami-Dade’s Special Response Team.

In English and Spanish, the complaint says, they commanded Hernandez to lower his gun. A firefight erupted.

DEADLY SHOOTOUT

Hernandez and another man, Jose E. Perez, 42, died from police bullets.

Granda and Tellez were wounded.

Perez, 42, worked as a cook at his wife’s preschool, 12470 SW Eighth St.

Isabel Perez, his spouse of 10 years, was out of town and assumed her husband was out with friends.

Perez knew Hernandez, casually, but not the others, she said.

”I don’t think he had any link to the whole operation,” she said shortly after it happened. “I don’t think he knew what was going on.”

The silver BMW, driven by Carlos Granda, tried escaping but rammed a police car and was stopped.

Officers arrested Yosvany Granda and Fidel Granda inside the Ford F-250, in the parking lot of the adult superstore Pleasure Emporium.

Inside the truck they had flex cuffs, duct tape, a large blanket ”and virtually nothing else,” according to a criminal complaint.

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