Former East Meadow resident convicted of extortion in El Salvador

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Former East Meadow resident Rafael Flores was convicted on Feb. 7 in El Salvador on charges that he posed as an officer of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and attempted to extort a local politician.

Flores was detained in Dec. 2016 after he met with La Union Mayor Ezequiel Milla in a San Salvador hotel and, allegedly, presented himself as an officer of the U.S. DEA. Flores promised that he would protect Milla’s reputation in exchange for cash, according to a press release from the Attorney General of El Salvador.

Flores was with a man named Santos Edgardo Guzman Ayala, who was acquitted after the court could not find evidence that he was aware of Flores’s alleged illegal activity.

According to El Salvador officials, the court found its verdict after evaluating WhatsApp messages, testimony from Milla and anti-extortion agents and a series of photos that revealed Flores with a package they believed to be the extorted funds.

Flores’s family has previously spoken out against his detention and wrote a letter to the Herald saying that he was meeting with Milla to seek sponsorship for an event to be held at the Coral House in Baldwin that February.

In the letter, they argued Flores was framed by his political enemies and said, “His stance on [certain] issues made him a rival to the political leaders connected to organized crime in El Salvador.”

Flores is a past surrogate for former Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano and has previously run for office in El Salvador. He was born in El Salvador in 1971 and moved to New York in 1984 before becoming a partner of Golden Empire Realty Co. in East Meadow with his brother Gilberto.

Before Flores’s detention, Flores hosted a controversial podcast called “Rafael on the Record,” in which he lambasted certain politicians and accused them of perpetuating corruption by abusing U.S. government funds, trafficking drugs and laundering money.

According to his family, he began hosting meetings with U.S. Representatives to cut funding to El Salvador, arguing that it has fallen into the hands of unsavory politicians.