A man recently living in St. Paul is among three people federally indicted in connection to the homicide of a man in Florida, which prosecutors announced Friday was related to the MS-13 gang.

The FBI arrested Hugo Adiel Bermudez-Martinez, 30, on March 12 at a residence in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff where he was living with his family. He is charged with murder in aid of racketeering activity.

The homicide happened in 2015. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke at a press conference in Florida on Friday: “These indictments are a warning to all criminals. We don’t care how long ago you committed the crime, we don’t care where you go. We will find you, we will arrest you and we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”

A stepdaughter of Bermudez-Martinez said Friday that he is innocent. She described him as a hard-working man.

On May 3, 2015, the body of 22-year-old Gerson Vilelio Vasquez-Portillo was found in a vacant lot in Palm Beach, Fla. He “was brutally, brutally murdered,” Bondi said. “Stabbed approximately 100 times by multiple gang members before he was shot in the head. He suffered tremendously.”

Law enforcement linked that man’s killing to January and October 2015 murders in Oakland Park, Fla., along with a body found in a makeshift grave in May 2021, also in Oakland Park. Investigators “pieced together evidence showing that MS-13 was responsible for the four homicides,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida said in a statement.

Six people were federally charged in July 2022 and have been convicted of murder in aid of racketeering activity. One of the men, Andy Tovar aka “Fearless,” was described by federal prosecutors as an MS-13 gang leader who approved the murder of one victim and participated in the Palm Beach murder by shooting the victim in the eye. He’s been sentenced to life in prison.

Another man, Wilson Tirado-Silva aka “Sombra,” “was a local MS-13 leader responsible for growing the gang in South Florida,” the statement from federal prosecutors said. “He took MS-13 recruits on kills as part of gang initiation.” Two other men “committed the murders to gain gang membership credit.”

Last month, three more people — including Bermudez-Martinez, aka “Blue” — were charged in connection to the 2015 Palm Beach killing. They are in federal custody. The mandatory minimum sentence for the three men, if convicted, is life in prison and the maximum is the death penalty.

“Look at these three guys,” Bondi said. “They thought they got away with it for almost a decade, but they did not thanks to the great men and women of law enforcement. … If you are a gang member living in this country, I’d self deport right now because we’re coming after you.”

The three men just charged — Bermudez-Martinez, Jose Ezequiel Gamez-Mara Villa and Wilber Rosendo Navarro-Escobar — were members or associates of MS-13, according to a federal indictment. They are accused of killing Vasquez-Portillo “for the purpose of gaining entrance to and maintaining and increasing position in MS-13, an enterprise engaged in racketeering activity, while aiding and abetting each other,” the indictment states.

An attorney for Bermudez-Martinez wasn’t listed in the Florida federal court file as of Friday afternoon. Bermudez-Martinez has been in custody since his arrest and has appeared in federal court in Minnesota about being transferred to Florida; the attorney who represented him in court couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel contributed to this report.