Man Abducted, Tortured Plastic Surgeon With Blowtorch To Extort Money, Left Victim Dead In Strip Club Lot

A Florida man has been accused of kidnapping a plastic surgeon at gunpoint and brutally torturing him with a blowtorch to extort tens of thousands of dollars, before proceeding to leave the victim dead in a strip club parking lot.

Serge Nkorina, 56, has been found guilty on Wednesday, Dec. 8, of one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping after he and his alleged co-conspirator, Justin Boccio, abducted Dr. Nader Shehata from a parking lot and tortured him inside a storage container with a blowtorch in an attempt to steal thousands of dollars from the victim in January 2019, Law & Crime reported.

On Dec. 30, 2018, Nkorina and Boccio reportedly purchased supplies and rented a van after plotting to kidnap Shehata sometime later that week. They also rented a storage container in Margate, Florida to use as the torture site. The duo allegedly “stalked” Shehata for several weeks to learn about his daily activities and even placed a GPS tracker on the bottom of his car.

Two weeks later, on Jan. 14, the two followed Shehata to a supermarket. When Shehata returned to his car after grocery shopping, the duo “tased his neck” and incapacitated him, before proceeding to blindfold him and throw him into the back of the rental van.

Shehata was then taken to the storage container in Margate, Florida where the duo “tortured him for hours” by beating him and burning him using a blowtorch. During the horrific ordeal, the perpetrators demanded information about Shehata's home address, including access codes to the victim’s residence, according to CBS4 Miami.

The following day, Nkorina and Boccio went to Shehata’s residence to steal money and other valuables from the home. When they tried to enter the home using information that Shehata provided them, however, they were scared off by a light connected to the doorbell camera. The duo aborted the plan and left Shehata for dead at a strip club parking lot.

Shehata was subsequently discovered with his hands and feet bound in the front seat of a car parked in the Cheetah Gentleman’s Club in Hallandale Beach, with severe burns and lacerations all over his body. Officers responded to the scene after someone called the authorities to complain that the car’s horn was sounding continuous.

In December 2019, Boccio pleaded guilty to identical kidnapping-related charges and was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison.

Meanwhile, Nkorina fled the country but was arrested in Spain last year and extradited back to the U.S. in January. He is scheduled to appear before Senior U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck in Miami for his sentencing hearing on Feb. 15, 2022, and is facing a maximum sentence of life in prison.