Crime & Law

US Border Patrol Officer in Chicago Operated as ‘Serial Rapist,’ Federal Prosecutors Allege

Federal prosecutors allege that a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent operating in Chicago is a “serial rapist” who used his position in law enforcement to sexually assault and rob at least four women at gunpoint throughout 2022.

Luis Uribe, 44, of Pingree Grove, Illinois, was arrested Tuesday and has been charged with 10 counts of deprivation of civil rights under color of law and one count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.

He pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in Chicago on Tuesday afternoon.

In seeking to have Uribe detained pending trial, prosecutors alleged that he turned his position as a Border Patrol officer into a “license to commit or attempt to commit gunpoint sexual assaults and robberies” against sex workers.

According to prosecutors, on six separate occasions throughout 2022, Uribe forced his way into a hotel room where the victims were staying, and robbed and/or attempted to sexually assault the victims.

All of the victims were of Chinese descent, prosecutors said, and each alleged incident occurred in the Chicago suburbs.

One victim was attacked on three separate occasions by Uribe, prosecutors alleged.

After Uribe’s initial attacks in early 2022, word of his “rampant abuse of sex workers in the Chicagoland area” began to spread, prosecutors said.

Luis Uribe (U.S. Attorney’s Office)

At one point, a sex worker was instructed by her boss to meet with Uribe at a neutral location in order to photograph him so the image could be distributed to other workers and Uribe could be bribed into stopping his attacks, prosecutors alleged.

The pair met at a seafood buffet in the northwest suburbs of Chicago where Uribe was secretly photographed and told that if he stopped attacking workers, they would “provide him with free commercial sex with sex workers,” prosecutors said.

“Defendant agreed,” prosecutors said, “however, he did not abide by the terms of the bargain.”

The attacks continued into late 2022. In an alleged incident in October 2022, a woman inside a Schaumburg hotel room answered her door thinking it was housekeeping when Uribe pushed his way inside and brandished his badge and a firearm.

He allegedly demanded cash, and then sexual favors, according to prosecutors.

Schaumburg police collected forensic evidence from that hotel room, which was sent to the FBI laboratory for analysis. Prosecutors said it was determined that there was a “very strong support for inclusion” of defendant’s DNA, such that “it was approximately 97 sextillion times more likely that defendant’s DNA was included on one portion of the bedding than an unknown person’s.”

If convicted, Uribe faces a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years in federal prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison.

He is scheduled to appear in court for a detention hearing Dec. 15.

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