A Beach Park man has been sentenced to 35 years in federal prison after he and others worked to kidnap and rob several victims at gunpoint in the Chicago suburbs while posing as the police.
Tai Hon La, 35, of Beach Park, and Sedgwick Williams, 48, of Chicago, were convicted last year of participating in a kidnapping conspiracy and unlawful transport of firearms.
La was sentenced earlier this month to 35 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso at a sentencing hearing. The judge in May sentenced Williams to 50 years in prison.
Two other co-defendants, Ivan Ayers, 37, of Chicago, and Jonathan Vargas, 38, of Chicago, pleaded guilty to kidnapping charges and were sentenced late last week.
Vargas was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Ayers’ sentence was not immediately known.
Federal prosecutors said Williams, Ayers, La and Vargas participated in a violent kidnapping conspiracy in the fall of 2019 that targeted specific victims in Chicago and the neighboring suburbs.
The suspects impersonated law enforcement officers to “arrest” their victims, handcuffing and holding them captive while they interrogated, beat, threatened and sought to obtain money, drugs and other valuables from them.
The first kidnapping occurred in Naperville on October 17, 2019.
The suspects posed as law enforcement officers to handcuff and abduct a business owner at gunpoint outside of his electronics store, which they then burglarized.
The group forced the victim into a car and drove him to a vacant unit in Chicago where they physically assaulted him and extorted his family. The victim was brutally beaten, waterboarded and sodomized, prosecutors said.
The victim told investigators he thought he was going to die and was praying to die. “I was praying to God that he puts me out of my misery. You know, I just prayed that I die.”
La, Ayers, Vargas, and a fourth suspect abducted and robbed a victim on Interstate 88 near mile marker 126 in DuPage County on November 8, 2019, prosecutors said.
Williams identified the target and the four suspects followed the victim in their Chevrolet Malibu as the victim drove westbound on Interstate 290 near Interstate 88.
They pulled the victim over while pretending to be law enforcement officers.
Armed with firearms and wearing ballistic vests, La and Vargas approached the victim’s car and ordered the victim out of the car at gunpoint, prosecutors said.
They placed the victim in handcuffs and attempted to get the victim into their car. The victim was able to break away and flee before they got him into their car.
The suspects then moved the victim’s car and stole money and narcotics stored inside it.
Williams and Ayers, as well as two other suspects, handcuffed and abducted a man at gunpoint outside of his residence in Westchester on November 16, 2019, while posing as DEA agents.
The suspects forced the victim into his home, where they seized another victim and forced them both into the basement.
Two other victims later arrived at the residence and were also forced into the basement at gunpoint.
The suspects stole cash and jewelry before fleeing. La participated in the planning of the offense but was not present.
La, Williams, Ayers and a fourth suspect attempted to seize and confine a victim in his home in South Holland by impersonating law enforcement officers on December 11-12, 2019.
They were armed while wearing ballistic vests and carrying handcuffs, flashlights and radios.
Their efforts to abduct the intended victim in that incident were unsuccessful as the victim did not answer the door and instead called 911. Responding officers arrested the suspects after they fled.
“Williams orchestrated a series of incredibly violent abductions and armed robberies throughout Chicago and the neighboring suburbs,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jared C. Jodrey and Kate McClelland argued in a sentencing memorandum.
“Williams and his co-conspirators ruthlessly threatened, restrained, beat, robbed, kidnapped, terrorized, and tortured people for their own personal gain,” the prosecutors said.