LUXURY VEHICLES SEIZED BY FEDS

Port Everglades is looking like an auto dealership these days, with rows of highend vehicles on display, including a Mercedes Biturbo SUV worth a whopping $150,000, and even a few low-end cars, such as a Toyota Corolla valued at a meager $20,000.

There are 81 cars lined up, with a collective retail price of $3.2 million. And the feds have confiscated them all, with plans to seize a lot more.

Homeland Security Investigations says the new vehicles have been seized because a ring backed by a notorious Venezuelan billionaire and his associates tried to smuggle them out of South Florida to Venezuela, in violation of U.S. export laws and sanctions against the Latin American nation’s socialist government.

The billionaire, Caracas media mogul Raúl Gorrín, who already faces moneylaundering charges in Miami accusing him of stealing from his own government, has been collaborating with straw buyers and shell companies in South Florida to buy the vehicles and ship them to Venezuela for use by the wealthy, the politically connected and the police, HSI officials said.

“This is a drop in the bucket,” HSI special agent in charge Anthony Salisbury told the Miami Herald, saying there’s no telling how many cars slipped through

Port Everglades to Venezuela before the first unlawful car was intercepted this spring.

While surveying the rows of cars at Port Everglades, Salisbury pointed to a Toyota Tundra truck painted in military green ($66,000), a black Lexus SUV with police sirens and lights ($86,000), and a Jaguar F-Type sports coupe ($62,000).

“These cars are going down to kleptocrats like Gorrín and his associates to live their billionaire lifestyles while the people of Venezuela are starving to death,” Salisbury said. “You can’t get your hands on vehicles like these down there.”

Neither Gorrín nor anyone else has been charged as part of the federal criminal investigation.

AMY BETH BENNETT/SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL Trucks outfitted with police-style light bars are among the 81 vehicles illegally purchased for export to Venezuela seized by Homeland Security Investigations and shown at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday.