A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a 24-year-old Edinburg man to more than 16 years in prison for holding a 4-year-old child ransom.

Gilbert John Montez, who pleaded guilty to hostage taking on April 24, 2023, recruited people and hired people to transport and hold the child for ransom.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas said in a news release that on March 31, 2022 Jose Andres Romo-Torres took the child from his mother at a Mission stash house and gave the child to two strangers, Larissa Celena Gracia and Nichole Marie Garcia Tichacek, who transported the child through the Falfurrias checkpoint to Corpus Christi.

Those women handed the child to Michael Gee Ingram, who transported the child to Houston and the child was then given to Jonathan Orlando Ortiz-De Leon who held the 4 year old in his apartment, according to the release.

On April 7, 2022, a suspect called the child’s family in Tennessee and demanded $6,500 to end the ransom and smuggle the child to its father, a criminal complaint said.

The news release said it was Montez and Ortiz-De Leon who contacted the child’s father.

“On April 3, 2023, Montez hired Carlos Oyervides to help Ortiz-De Leon collect the ransom payment and deliver the child to his father,” the release stated. “Oyervides also spoke with the child’s father and told him he needed to pay the ransom to get his son back.”

The criminal complaint said that a suspect also threatened that if the money wasn’t paid, the child would be harmed.

“The English translation was roughly that if the family did not pay, ‘they would get the child back, but it would not be in a way they would want the child back,’” the complaint stated.

That document goes on to detail how Homeland Security Investigations special agents and Houston police tried to conduct a meeting for an exchange, but after repeated delays, authorities decided it was in the best interest to just track everyone down and arrest them.

U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez, who sentenced Montez, pointed out that this situation was traumatic for the child and that the child was being used as property that had value and could be used for profit, according to the release.

U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani said human smugglers often become kidnappers and that Montez targeted a vulnerable family and leveraged the child’s safety and the parents’ love to extort as much money as possible.

“He did not care that this child was passed from stranger to stranger, each time increasing the risk the child would be harmed,” Hamdani said. “Instead, Montez put profit before people and only cared about making more money.”

Craig Larrabee, HSI special agent in charge in San Antonio, said that agency will continue to work with law enforcement partners to ensure that those who exploit people in ruthless ways face serious consequences.

“HSI is committed to aggressively targeting human smugglers and smuggling organizers that have no qualms about using threats and even violence to collect their smuggling fees,” Larrabee said.

All of the suspects in the scheme have pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison, according to the release, which said Montez remains in custody.