Some guns seized in Venezuela in September 2024 were made solely for US Navy SEAL commandos.[1] The rifles came from Delray Beach, Florida. Allegedly they were intended for a coup against Nicolas Maduro, with shipment arranged by a Venezuelan expatriate living in Florida. This was Ivan Simonovis, named in 2019 as a liaison with the DEA and CIA by Juan Guaido[2] when Guaido claimed the presidency in Venezuela.
In October 2024, Simonovis had been named by Venezuela as key smuggler of the illicit US rifles.[3] US media reported numerous arrests but not the accusation against Simonovis.
Simonovis with his DEA/CIA rep had kept low-profile during the Biden administration. But, on November 6, 2024 Simonovis rose up and invoked Donald Trump while posing for cameras in Florida, saying the president-elect fully backed radical new efforts by Floridian expats to oust Maduro. Simonovis was flanked that day by Florida Sen. Rick Scott.[4]
Today in Florida, Simonovis is a hero. In Venezuela, he is a villain.
Both ways, Ivan Simonovis now represents US-Venezuela conflict. How did we get here? Why a focus on one man, by both sides?[5]
Background
In 1981, a young Caracas cop, Simonovis, created a SWAT team designed by elite police in the US and West Germany.[6] He became known as Supercop. Twenty years later in Caracas, in 2001 safety director Simonovis flew in a new police chief, from New York City: ex-NY Police Commissioner William Bratton – to be “tough on crime” in a nine-month contract. [7]
A year after that, in 2002 Simonovis’s police killed several pro-Hugo-Chavez demonstrators, and Simonovis was imprisoned as accomplice to murder,[8] in 2004. After serving years of a sentence, in 2019, when Juan Guaido claimed interim presidency, Simonovis soon slipped house arrest[9]; several weeks later he was in the US, meeting with US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) – and being named, by Guaido’s spokesman, as “new special coordinator…with security agencies such as the CIA and DEA”[10] for Guaido’s self-proclaimed government in Venezuela. President Donald Trump recognized all this officially.[11]
To expatriates who pray for a return to homeland, Ivan Simonovis is a spiritual leader. As we shall see, his “parish,” South Florida, is sanctuary to an established gun-running network known to be linked to DEA agents. The following account cites several US and foreign news reports quoting Venezuelan minister Diosdado Cabello, a Maduro spokesman.[12]
October 2024
In the October 2024 arrest accounts, Maduro’s spokesman said some assault rifles were seized in Colombia, from mercenaries.[13] Note that in Haiti, Colombian mercenaries killed prime minister Jovenel Moise in 2021.
On the Colombia/Venezuela border, a sizable lawless society includes mercenaries and members of gangs that control smuggling. One such gang is Tren del Llano. According to spokesman Cabello, coup plotters offered this gang hundreds of quality assault rifles from Florida, in exchange for the gang supplying assassins against Maduro.[14]
In fact, this strategy had worked before, in Haiti in 2021.
South Florida, DE agents, Haiti
As the Associated Press reported, South Floridia expat businessmen, conspiring against Haitian leader Jovenel Moise, arranged for lodging in Port au Prince for Colombian assassins against Moise. One was a previous DEA informant, Rodolphe Jaar.[15] Mercs arrived at Moise’s home gate with one shouting “DEA” and wearing a DEA cap, which gained entry for the assassins.
The DEA as it did with Jaar routinely makes operatives of convicted arrestees. And in Venezuela in 2024, the record suggests, DEA did this once more, in the alleged coup attempt on Nicolas Maduro.
DEA and Gregory David Werber
Among arrested alleged plotters in October 2024 in Venezuela is American “hacker” Gregory David Werber, almost certainly the same Gregory David Werber convicted on DEA charges in California and sentenced in 2021 (he had laundered Sinaloa cartel drug money). Serving little of a five-year sentence despite a long previous criminal history, Werber won release on probation in 2022.
This suggests that probation conditions were that Werber use his skills in computers and in Spanish to assist DEagents. At this time a covert op in South America – one similar to the successful Moise hit – would have appeared as a perfect fit for Werber and DEA handlers.
And, in Venezuela in October 2024, a Gregory David Werber was arrested – alongside an associate of the Tren del Llano gang,[16] which group allegedly planned to supply assassins to use smuggled US rifles against Maduro. An alleged role for Werber was to hack and disable Venezuela’s money system simultaneously with assassin attacks. On his cell phone were found hacked classified files belonging to the Bank of Venezuela.[17]
Is there evidence that convict Gregory David Werber was working a DEA operation against Venezuela, resembling that of convict Rodolphe Jaar against Haiti? Much circumstantial evidence supports this notion – evidence suggesting Werber’s 2022 probation was rigged. He was evidently the poorest kind of candidate for probation, a proven scofflaw. Werber has used a total of five known aliases. He had prior federal convictions for credit-card and passport fraud, for transporting stolen goods, and for smuggling, as well as prior state convictions for drug trafficking, for fraud, for grand theft, and for escape from custody.
The DEA had arrested him after discovering Werber was allowing Sinaloa cartel members to launder millions in cash, from West Coast drug sales, into bitcoin bought by Sinaloa through Werber’s Manhattan Beach, California, cryptocurrency business.[18]
Upon his 2022 probation release, the talented Werber soon self-filed a court motion disputing official release conditions. This created an appearance of antagonism against his probation officer – on the legal record – when likely there was only cooperation in fact.
After a judge’s dismissal of this motion, on December 5, 2022, DEA arrestee Gregory David Werber, alias Alejandro Gancedo entered whereabouts unknown – except for Venezuela’s arrest in October 2024 of a man with that name who speaks Spanish.
Perhaps the inauguration of Donald Trump will somehow produce more evidence on this, because a call to “free political prisoners in Venezuela” is now being broadcast by South Floridians – including Ivan Simonovis’s podcast “Uno Solo con Iván Simonovis” – to all who will listen.
[1] TeleSur, November 14, 2024. Also cf. La Iguana Web site, September 16, 2024: Minister
Diosdado Cabello reported that some of the more than 400 rifles seized, brought from the United States, and corresponded to the official weapons of the Navy Seals. “The rifles were made in the United States and are not marketed (to the public),” Cabello said.
[2] InfoBAE, July 11, 2019; Analitica.com, September 7, 2020
[3] Military.com news site, September 16, 2024.
[4] Diario Las Americas, Miami, November 6, 2024
[5] This is my analysis of combined US and international news reports; cf. Agence France Press, Le Monde, BBC, La Nacion, Orinoco Tribune. Northern publications’ accounts seemed often did not mention allegations naming Ivan Simonovis specifically; one Venezuelan publication, the Orinoco Tribune, seemed biased pro-Maduro.
[6] Wikipedia, “Ivan Simonovis”
[7] Bratton would earn $180,000. New York Times, April 21, 2001.
[8] In 2004, Simonovis was convicted as accomplice to murder in the Llaguno Bridge massacre and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment.
[9] Guaido claims Simonovis was released; US media played up a story about his escape.
[10] InfoBAE news Site, July 11, 2019
[11] Currently Simonovis with a YouTube program rallies Florida expatriates against Maduro,[11] and he raises funds with Blackwater founder Erik Prince for the “We’re Nearly There Venezuela” campaign (Ya Casi Venezuela) launched in September 2024.
[12] From mid- and late October 2024 by US media and by Agence France Press, Le Monde, BBC, La Nacion, Orinoco Tribune, and others.
[13] Cabello also presented details of the captured Colombian mercenaries. Among them is Manuel Alejandro Tique Chaves, whom he described as a “paramilitary recruiter.” He added that Tique is associated with so-called NGOs. Cabello also referred to the arrest of Arlei Danilo Espitai Lara, “a paramilitary commander, paramilitary recruiter.” He reported that the trio of Venezuelans who were captured in Apure state were brought by this Colombian national.
[14] In 2021, according to Cabello, US Navy SEAL Wilbert Castaneda traveled to Colombia with 10 people, where he was the group’s logistics operator, with the purpose of ‘exchanging knowledge.’”
[15] The deal promised lucrative contracts for the businessmen, from a new regime to be established after Moise was gone. Associated Press, June 13, 2023
[16] Orinoco Tribune, October 19, 2024
[17] Ibid.
[18] DOJ release, December 6, 2018