Transcript: 18. Miami's Murderous Muscleheads (Part 1) - The Sun Gym Gang of Danny Lugo | USA

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The Sun Gym at North East 79th Street and Biscayne Boulevard in Miami with its big, shiny windows was the monument of lifestyle in Miami in the 1990’s. Within its walls a world of beautiful bodies, drugs and sex. 

This wasn’t a gym for casual, occasional work-out members. Professional bodybuilders used its facilities to prepare for competitions. Most people who frequented the Sun Gym took fitness to the next level.

Sun Gym opened its doors in January 1987. Owner John Mese was a frustrated has-been bodybuilder turned CPA who was eager to promote bodybuilding competitions in Miami. In his glory days, John was crowned as Mister United Kingdom, a bodybuilding contest he entered while stationed in the UK on military service in 1962. He measured a 60-inch chest and 19 ½ inch biceps. To compare, at the height of his bodybuilding career, Arnold Schwarzenegger's chest measured 57 inches and his arms 22 inches. So yes, John was a well-ripped, big guy.

In 1992, things weren’t going too well for the Sun Gym, the fitness club was as out of shape as it owner. John owned an accounting firm called Mese & Associates in Miami Shore. He also taught Accounting Theory at two local universities and the gym was regarded as a hobby, a side business. A side business that took up most of his time and attention and his obsession to arrange bodybuilding competitions took him away from his accounting practice. 

John would do anything to keep the gym going. Even turn a blind eye to what his employees did in their spare time: one of them was arrested for possession of massive amounts of cocaine and amphetamines, another one killed three drug dealers. Sometimes employees would even steal money and equipment from the gym.

So, when the smooth-talking Danny Lugo entered the Sun Gym’s shiny doors and promised John he would turn it all around, it wasn’t strange that he wasn’t overly concerned about his white collar criminal record. Danny, with his positive can-do attitude and charismatic way of dealing with people, was exactly what the Sun Gym needed.

Once Danny started working there, the bonds that were forged while shooting steroids and lifting weights, were to immortalise the reputation of the Sun Gym in Miami’s history. A sordid tale of revenge and greed originated here and changed countless lives forever.

>>Intro Music

Daniel Joseph Lugo came from a Puerto Rican-Cuban family and was born in New York on the 6th of April 1963. He grew up in the Bronx with two older half-brothers and a younger sister. They were a regular church-going Catholic family. 

Danny was a diligent student who was fluent in English and Spanish. He was awarded a football scholarship by Fordham University and he had a bright future ahead of him. But it was the lure of the body beautiful and the smell of upmarket health clubs that sucked Danny in. He worked as a personal trainer at a Manhattan gym where he met his wife, Lillian Torres. 

In 1989, when Danny was 26, the couple moved to Miami. They had four adopted children, all Lillian’s relations who were left in her care after several family tragedies. Their marriage didn’t survive and they decided to part ways. Although they divorced, they remained close friends and Danny still treated Lillian and the kids like his closest family.

The next significant person in Danny’s life was a woman called Lucretia Goodridge. Danny instantly became good friends with her cousin, Adrian Doorbal, who had recently arrived in the States from Trinidad. Adrian, a young man of about 19 when they met, dropped out of high school and was looking for a brighter future in Miami. 

Danny and Adrian became constant workout partners and landed some personal training jobs together over the course of the next year.

Danny Lugo wasn’t planning on being a trainer for the rest of his life. He had dreams of making it big in Miami. But there was no legal way to make the kind of money he was chasing, so he hatched a scheme that boosted his bank balance tremendously: He preyed on small business owners who were looking for venture capital. Desperate to obtain loans, they turned to an energetic young man called David Lowenstein – otherwise known as Danny Lugo. He made small business owners believe that he would help them get loans from a fictional bank in Hong Kong. An advance fee payment would secure the loan. 

Danny extorted over $70,000 with his scheme and was ultimately caught. In May 1990 he was arrested at the Scandinavian Health and Racquet Club where his job was to sell gym memberships. In court he made a touching Acceptance of Responsibility statement:

"I hereby acknowledge my guilt and I know what I did was wrong. There is no substitute for hard work and I am a hard worker.... It will never happen again for I have learned not to use intelligence for wrong actions to justify the good end."

When the court figured out that Danny falsely claimed that he had a degree in Computer Science from Fordham University, his whole plight was shot to shreds. The truth was: he did attend the University, but dropped out before graduating. He was sentenced to 15 months at Eglin Air Force Base Federal Correctional Institute in Northwest Florida for ‘Advanced Fee Scheme – Interstate and International Wire Scheme Fraud’.

He admitted to a similar scheme he ran in Oklahoma. In total, he ran up about $230,000 from his victims.

When Danny was released from prison, he was adamant to continue his pursuit of the good life. Almost immediately after his release, he started working as a personal trainer at Sun Gym in Miami, but he didn’t want to be a trainer or contract salesman again – he was ready to be a manager. Danny had many plans and ideas and wanted to reform the Sun Gym.

He used the health club as his networking hot-spot. He either used people he met there as cohorts in new schemes or as targets to extort money from.

In this time, working and scheming at the Sun Gym, Danny also married Lucretia Goodridge. They married in a Buddhist ceremony and Danny’s future was full of promise. He still trained with his wife’s cousin, Adrian Doorbal, who was working as a fry-cook at Fiesta Taco at the time. Soon Danny was in a position to hire Adrian to work at the Sun Gym with him. So, thinking that Danny was his ticket to the good life, Adrian agreed to join him in another scheme. 

Danny and another fraudster he had met at the Sun Gym started up 10 medical companies – all fictional. They then went to the Lakes Postal Centre in Miami Lakes and rented as many post boxes as they could. They bought names, social security numbers, dates of birth of legitimate Medicare recipients and mailed fake bills to the government for medical services that were never performed.

Danny Lugo wasn’t the kind of guy you’d want to do business with. He sidelined his fraudster gym-contact who walked away with a pittance of the fraudulent earnings and deposited his own takings into an account which was created in Adrian Doorbal's name. 

Remember: Danny was still on probation after his release from jail and did not want to be detected by law enforcement in any way. This arrangement benefited Adrian greatly and by the beginning of 1994, this high school drop-out migrant had one million dollars in his name.

Danny and Adrian were in the fast lane and ready for more. Two more characters were about to join the perfect storm brewing around Danny Lugo at this time. 

The first was Barbados-born Carl Weekes. Weekes was discharged from the Marine Corps after threatening a sergeant’s life. He lived in New York and fell into bad habits of alcohol and drug addiction, which lead to burglaries and armed robberies. After a seizure, Weekes went into rehab and became a born-again Christian. He was adamant to turn his life around, especially after he found out his girlfriend was pregnant with their third child. He moved to Miami to start over, with the help of his girlfriend's cousin, Stevenson Pierre. The plan was that his family would leave New York and join him in Miami once he had settled.

Stevenson Pierre wasn't too fond of Carl, but he was prepared to help him with room and board, only because he was family. Stevenson worked for the Sun Gym as a collection agent for overdue gym membership bills. He floated around the gym but was much smaller in stature to Danny and the rest of the guys. He was never considered one of the bodybuilders and spent most of his time at Sun Gym pushing paper before Danny fired him.

Stevenson and his lodger, Carl Weekes, were both hard-up for money. After leaving the Sun Gym, Stevenson took a job at a dry cleaning shop in Little Haiti. So when Danny Lugo called with a proposition to make a hundred thousand dollars for two days' work, they were both keen to hear more about it. They met Danny at his office, which was located at John Mese's accounting practice in Miami Lakes.

Danny told them about a bad guy called Marc Schiller who owed him a 100,00 dollars. He also owed another guy from the gym, Jorge Delgado, 200,000 dollars. Jorge joined the conversation and told the story about how he was wronged by the filthy rich Marc.

But the story was oozing with half-truths and lies. Jorge did feel that Marc had done him in, but that could not have been further from the truth. Marc Schiller was a hard-working family man, who kept to himself and did not like too much drama in his life.

Born Marcello Schiller, Marc, was the son of a Russian migrant family in Argentina. He was the second of three children and was no stranger to hardship growing up. After his birth, his family fell on hard times and they moved in with his paternal grandparents. His dad’s brother and his family were also living there, which means three families lived together under one roof. 

When Schiller’s uncle and grandparents moved to the United States in 1964 to look for greener pastures, Marcello's family was pretty much homeless and moved into a small house in a rural area with dirt floors and no running water. The family lived in desolation, their nearest neighbour lived two miles (or just over three kilometres) away. 

They eventually joined the rest of their family in New York, but proud and stubborn as Marcello’s dad was, they did not live in the same neighbourhood. Theirs was a rough place and going to school was a constant battle for survival. Most days Marc was beaten up or harassed either at school or on his way there.

His father could see that this was not good for his family and agreed to move closer to their extended family in Brooklyn. Marc felt comfortable in his new neighbourhood. He could see opportunities all around him and. Young as he was, he decided it was time to make money. He relied on himself to get things he wanted: he would wait outside the supermarket and offered to carry people's groceries home for pocket money. He also delivered newspapers and offered to do odd jobs for neighbours. At the age of eight-years-old, he bought his own bike for thirty-six dollars. 

Marc would go on to fight and fund his own way through university in Wisconsin where he studied Accounting and surprised co-workers by passing his CPA exam the first time, despite working 15-hour days. His career eventually took him back to South America where he had a job as a Financial Controller in Colombia. It was here where he met his wife, Diana, who worked for the same company. In 1985 the couple married and in 1988 their son, David was born. 

But things were about to change for the Schillers. When Marc’s boss was kidnapped by the Army of National Liberation (or ELN) in Colombia, U.S. employees were ordered back to the United States. Marc and Diana decided to settle in Miami, where it was safer, but they would only be a short flight away from Colombia where Diana’s family lived.

Marc knew what he wanted to do and started his own accounting firm called M.S.S. Accounting Services in West Dade. The firm was a success from the get-go. He had a couple of employees and they could barely keep up with new clients signing up.

Marc’s assistant, Linda Delgado, saw an opportunity and asked if there was perhaps a job for her husband, Jorge. Jorge Delgado was a car salesman and he was not doing too well financially. They were living with her parents and struggling to make ends meet. Marc had a soft heart and liked to help people. Especially those who worked for him. He agreed and Jorge started working for him as a general gofer and assistant. In the four years that followed, the men became good friends and Delgado was Schiller’s right-hand man. 

Marc Schiller was a homebody and worked from home as often as he could, which meant Delgado would come to his home daily to collect or deliver documents and files. He was part of the family and often ate meals with them. 

Jorge Delgado was ambitious and wanted more. He wanted his own deals, his own identity and – ultimately – more money. He also started going to the glitzy Sun Gym to work on his image.

Jorge was a skinny guy, not quite the bodybuilding type. He needed a personal trainer to help him buff up. Danny Lugo stepped in to train him and the men became friends. This friendship would change Jorge Delgado's life forever. 

Marc Schiller met Danny Lugo on occasion and felt uneasy about his assistant’s new buddy. Danny seemed to have a bad influence on Jorge, but there wasn't much Marc could do about it. Jorge was a grown man and had the right to befriend whomever he chose to.

One day, Marc had a meeting. As usual, Jorge came to pick him up, but this time Danny was also in the car. Marc made it known that he wasn't happy with this, but it didn’t faze Danny. He chatted jovially and told Marc about a fraud scheme he had been involved with before. Then Danny suggested they do something together and Marc realised he needed to stay away from this guy. He had all the markings of a con-man so Marc started to distance himself from Jorge in order to avoid Danny.

As Hurricane Andrew blew into Miami in August 1992, Marc sent Diana and David away to stay with a friend who lived further inland. She was six months pregnant with their daughter and it was safer for her there. Marc and his brother, Alex, stayed behind to protect his family home. But there was nothing they could do – the storm destroyed everything he’d owned. In fact, the hurricane was so ferocious, the brothers were lucky to survive.

Marc rebuilt their family home as Diana went back to Colombia to give birth to their daughter, Stephanie.

Marc’s brother, Alex, liked life in Miami and Schiller bought a Schlotzsky’s deli near the airport. This would give his brother something to do: Alex would run the deli and they would share profits. 

When Jorge heard about the deli, was extremely upset that Marc did not cut him in on the deal. He was quite vocal about his dissatisfaction and made no secret that he felt overlooked by Marc. 

Marc didn’t quite understand Jorge’s sense of entitlement – Marc didn’t owe him anything. But he didn’t want to have bad blood between them, so in 1993, when he saw an opportunity in the mortgage business, Marc thought of Jorge. 

Together they founded Jomar Investment Inc. – combining their first names Jorge and Marc to name the business. They were buying and selling mortgages and they agreed to the amount they would each contribute. The business was still in its infancy when Jorge announced to Marc that Danny Lugo was also part of the deal. Marc didn't want anything to do with Danny but felt that it was too late to pull out. This situation made Marc feel very uncomfortable. What he observed, was that Jorge did most of the work, but Lugo was always in the wings, keeping a close eye on him.

One year later, Marc Schiller felt like he didn’t know his friend anymore. Jorge was no longer jovial and polite. Instead, he had become huffy and puffy and generally unpleasant to be around. 

Jomar Investment Inc. needed more capital and Jorge set up a lunch meeting with himself, Marc and their banker in Miami Lakes. As they finished their business lunch, the banker plainly asked Delgado: 

“What are you and Lugo doing that you're depositing so much money in the bank?” 

Jorge went pale and stuttered. He couldn’t give the banker a straight answer. Marc went cold: he knew Danny had pulled Jorge into something dodgy. As soon as they were alone, Marc pressed Jorge about the banker’s comment: what was he mixed up in? Jorge answered with anger, making it clear that it was none of Marc’s business. Marc warned him that his friendship with Danny Lugo would be the end of him.

Marc did not trust Jorge anymore. He decided to end their business relationship that very same day. He called Jorge, who had a surprising non-reaction but agreed. They decided to talk about financial arrangements later.

Things remained untouched for a whole month before Marc reached out to Jorge to finalise matters. Marc lost 10,000 dollars by bowing out of the partnership, but he was willing to do so, to keep the split amicable. Jorge did not feel that that was enough. He met with Marc to give him a cheque for his share of Jomar Investment Inc. Jorge was rude and resentful and walked away without even saying goodbye. 

Jorge’s new best friend, Danny Lugo stoked the fires with a disgruntled Jorge: how could Marc Schiller do this to him? After all of Jorge’s years of loyalty and service, Marc kicked him out like a dog. His wife Linda wasn't working anymore and she was pregnant. Scumbag Marc is literally taking food out of the Delgado’s unborn baby’s mouth. 

Meanwhile, Marc realised that he had to move on. He was disappointed in his friend but he couldn’t dwell on it – Jorge wasn’t the same guy he had once called a friend. 

There had been some hiccups in opening the Schlotzsky’s deli he had bought for his brother, which delayed opening date. His brother was no longer interested to run the place and Marc was forced to work in the deli and keep his accounting business afloat at the same time.

Busy and overworked as he was, Schiller was thriving financially. He owned a couple of businesses: his accounting practice which was the main cash cow, he had a nutritional supplement business and owned a 34 story condominium tower. There were half a million dollars in Cayman Islands offshore account; 100,000 in his personal cheque account and 500,000 in his safe at home, in case of emergency. 

Marc was completely unaware of the plot that was brewing at the Sun Gym. Danny Lugo, Jorge Delgado and Adrian Doorbal were concocting a plan to kidnap Marc Schiller. Danny was the instigator, Adrian was the muscle and Jorge provided all the inside information. Carl Weekes and Stevenson Pierre – their down-and-out Sun Gym connections – were recruited to be a part of their gang. The plan was to kidnap Marc, torture him and force him to sign over all his assets. 

The events that followed were even more ridiculous than their claims on Marc’s money. Their first kidnapping attempt was a clumsy one, to say the least. Danny, Adrian, Carl and Stevenson hid under a camouflage blanket in Marc’s front garden and planned to kidnap him when he came out in the morning to get his newspaper. But their cover was blown when a car drove by and the driver saw all of them. They decided not to go ahead with the kidnapping.

The gang had more cartoonish plans and none of them seemed to be fool-proof. Dressed like ninjas, they ran through backyards, yelling ‘abort, abort' like a team of low-budget-movie Navy Seal characters. In the end, they attempted to kidnap Marc Schiller seven times and failed.

Looking back, Marc connected the dots about some strange occurrences leading up to his abduction. His home alarm had gone off two weeks prior. This had happened in the past, but it was usually when there was lightning or a storm. On this occasion, it was not stormy, but Marc did not think too much of it. In fact, it was the Sun Gym Gang trying to enter his home through the garage window. 

On another occasion his car window had been smashed while parked in front of his house. Marc shrugged it all off, thinking it must have been kids from the neighbourhood or something.

On Monday, November 14th, 1995, the gang came as close as they ever had. They waited for Marc to arrive at Schlotzsky’s Deli at 9am in the morning. As Schiller arrived in his Toyota 4Runner, Danny drove up and blocked him into an alley. Marc was forced to stop, and honked his car horn at the car blocking his way. Danny waited impatiently for the rest of the gang to drive up behind Marc, box him in and then grab him from his car. But there was no sign of the other guys. They were stuck around the corner in their Ford Astra van that wouldn’t start.

Marc was unaware of the plot and angrily laid on the car horn to urge Danny’s car to move out of his way. Danny had no choice and drove off. The plan failed: Mission abort – again. 

But the gang was not about to give up, so they recruited another muscle man, “Big Mario” Sanchez – a six-foot-four bouncer and private investigator who also trained at the Sun Gym – on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. They told the him that there was a scumbag drug dealer who owed Danny Lugo a lot of money. Sanchez agreed he would intimidate someone, but he wasn’t going to beat up anyone or do anything illegal.

So they tried again. At 4pm, on Tuesday 15 November 1994 November, the storm clouds rolled in as tropical storm Gordon angered his way towards Miami. Adrian Doorbal, Carl Weekes, Stevenson Pierre and Big Mario stalked Marc Schiller outside Schlotzsky’s deli. 

As Marc walked to his car, three men approached him. It was Adrian Doorbal, Carl Weekes and Stevenson Pierre. Schiller thought they wanted to steal his car, so he said: take it, take the car. But that’s not what they were after. They started beating him up. Marc put up a fight and screamed for help. No one came. Adrian then tasered Marc, while Carl beat him some more. The scuffle carried on for ten minutes before they eventually subdued Marc enough to get him into the van. Big Mario was behind the wheel, ready to go. 

Someone covered Marc’s eyes with duct tape and shoved him in between the driver's seat and the first bench. And for good measure, they tasered him again. His abductors were laughing all the time, seeming to have a good time as they took off all his jewellery, like his presidential Rolex. 

“It went so well, a piece of cake. "

Marc didn't think so, it took three men, ten minutes to subdue him, that’s not really a piece of cake. Another man laughed as he yanked off Marc’s Star of David necklace:

 “We’ve got ourselves a Matzo ball.” 

No surprise, his attackers were racists too. At this point Schiller thought that this was a hit: they were going to take him somewhere and shoot him. And probably dispose of his body in the Everglades.

Big Mario saw the others attacking Schiller and realised this situation was getting out of hand. It was not what he’d signed up for. Adrian Doorbal called someone on his cell phone and said ‘The Eagle has landed'. This is when Marc realised that the abduction was personal: he was clearly the target, it was not a random attack. One of the men said: 

“You have no right to live a good life and we don't.”

They pulled into a warehouse, also known as Speed Racer's, on West 77th Street, Hialeah. It was rented by Jorge Delgado. He used it as a storage space for his business ventures and it was also where the Sun Gym stored some of their equipment. Once inside, the abductors waited for Jorge and Danny and left Marc in the van. At this point Big Mario went home, being scared for himself and for his family's safety. He didn’t want any part of whatever was about to happen.

Danny and Jorge arrived with Marc’s SUV. They didn’t want to leave it outside Schlotzsky’s and raise suspicion. 

It was high fives all around as the gang celebrated finally succeeding in the capture of Marc Schiller. They dragged Marc out of the van and threw him face down in a box. It was a hot and muggy day and Marc feared for his life, he sweated profusely. One of the men offered him water. Grateful for the gesture he said: yes, please. The man threw a cup of water at his face and everybody laughed.

The absurdity of Marc’s abductors continued. They disguised their voices and spoke with animated accents. They used code names like “Sparrow” and “Robin” when talking to each other. The gang called Danny Lugo “Boss” or “Batman”. Marc was referred to as “The Eagle”. 

This gave him a glimmer of hope that he may get out of this ordeal alive. There was one voice that sounded familiar to him. He was sure that Danny Lugo was one of his kidnappers, he knew his New York accent with a slight lisp and Danny’s attempt to disguise it wasn’t very successful.

The gang took turns to pressure Marc into giving them a list of all his assets. At this point, Marc realised that keeping his mouth shut was a matter of survival. As long as he kept the information to himself, they would not kill him. So he refused. 

Then the torture intensified, as did the jokes and laughter – they really enjoyed inflicting pain on him. They pistol-whipped him, punched him and shocked him with the Taser gun, all while he was still blindfolded and cuffed. Marc wasn’t given any food drink for hours. Unable to hold it in any longer, Marc urinated while he was in the box. He was even left to soil himself. 

When he wasn't in his box on the warehouse floor, one of his abductors would walk him to a chair, torture him and walk him back to the box. They walked him in circles to confuse  him. This was unnecessary, he was dehydrated and exhausted anyway. To complete the ambience of the "Warehouse of Pain", the gang brought in a stereo system and played loud, thumping music non-stop. It was booming incessantly, all day and all night. 

They kept pressing Marc for information about his assets and tortured him when he wouldn’t give it up. 

'We are the family. You stole from the family and we want it back." 

Marc, even though he was in pain and fighting to survive, thought how ridiculous this was, but still didn’t tell them anything.

The gang was running out of patience. The first part of their plan was complete, now they needed the money. They told Marc that they had the security code for his house and revealed it. 

This was Marc’s code, all right. But an old one. In fact, it was the code that was used when Jorge Delgado was still working for Marc. He was the only one outside of the Schiller family who could know the code. At that moment Marc was overcome with the feeling of betrayal, which he later admitted, hurt much more than the physical torture.

Marc told them that they had the old code, but they wouldn’t believe him and knocked him around some more. They then revealed their trump card, they already had a list of his assets and read it out to him. Marc realised that he was ruined – Jorge had supplied them with all the details. 

While his gym-buddies tortured his former employer and friend, Jorge Delgado hovered in the shadows and watched.

When Marc overheard a conversation between the men, talking about his family, he was furious, but being tied up and blindfolded, there was nothing he could do.

The gang knew what Marc’s soft spot was raised the stakes: they threatened to bring his wife and kids to the warehouse where they painted the picture of all of the captors taking turns to rape his wife, Diana, while they would make him watch. They would also chain six-year-old David and two-year-old Stephanie to the wall next to him. 

Marc gave in – he could gamble with his own life, but not his family’s lives. When his captors offered him a deal, he accepted right away. Marc’s family could leave the country and go to Diana’s family in Colombia, but then Marc had to sign over all his assets to the gang.

Marc called his wife with a loaded gun pointed at his head. Danny warned him not to raise any suspicion, which he found strange. Marc was a creature of habit, the mere fact that he didn't go straight home from the deli was enough to make Diana suspicious. When he called, she was very concerned and wanted to know where he was. Marc did as he was told and told her he suddenly had to go away on a business trip. He knew she wouldn’t believe him, but he carried on, their safety was the most important thing at that point.

After speaking to his wife, Schiller was returned to his box and slumbered in and out of consciousness for a couple of hours. Then the torture continued. There was nothing else he could have given them, but they either did not believe Marc or simply carried on because his torture gave them so much pleasure.

In a madman's voice, Adrian Doorbal whispered "fire, fire, fire" into Schiller's ear before burning him with the lighter on his hands and arms. Schiller was in severe pain and hardly felt another blow to his head, this hit was executed with a baseball bat, courtesy of Danny Lugo. The pair was pressing Schiller for more information. Greed was oozing out of their pores, they wanted to know if Schiller had anything else that was not on the list of assets they recited to him. 

In the following days, Marc endured hours of torture, but his only concern was his family’s safety. When Danny ordered him to call his travel agent and confirm that his wife had bought her ticket, Marc was more than happy to do so. The agent confirmed that his family would be leaving on the earliest flight to Colombia two days later.

If you wonder why Marc’s wife didn’t call authorities… Marc didn’t think it was strange. He knew Diana would not have sounded the alarm. She assumed Marc had been kidnapped and being from Colombia, she spoke very little English. In her native Colombia, kidnappings of wealthy people in the 1990's were commonplace. Involving police could cost the life of a loved one. Besides: she had two children to protect, she followed her husband's instructions and ran as quickly as she could. Diana, David and Stephanie boarded a plane to Bogota on Friday 18 November. 

As soon Diana and kids were gone – that very same day – the Sun Gym gang moved into Marc Schiller’s house at Old Cutler Cove. 

Once they’d gone through the house, a furious Danny went back to Marc in the warehouse. Diana had taken all of their jewellery, including her Rolex, and did not leave all of the cash in the safe. Marc couldn’t help but feel proud of Diana: clever girl for trying to save whatever she could when something was clearly wrong. 

Marc’s neighbours approached Danny Lugo and asked about the Schillers. And the farce continued… Danny introduced himself as ‘Tom’ and told the neighbours that himself and the other men had taken over the house, as they were CIA agents on a sting operation. The Schillers had been taken into the witness protection program, so the less the neighbours knew, the better. Unbelievably, the neighbours believed him.

‘Tom’ and his ‘CIA associates’ (well, the Sun Gym gang) were settling into the neighbourhood. They helped neighbours with home repairs and hired gardeners to plant some extra shrubs in the Schillers’ garden. One neighbour even accepted UPS deliveries on behalf of so-called ‘Tom’.

When Schiller had confirmation that Diana and the kids had made it to Colombia safely, he was prepared to give in to the gang's demands. Extorting money from Marc became a full-time job for them. The routine was always the same: they took him to a chair, put a gun to his head, cocked the hammer and made him use the telephone to call financial institutions. If Marc refused to call, they played Russian Roulette with him. They would load the gun with two rounds of ammunition, spin the ‘barrel', pull the trigger. Fortunately for Marc, he never lost this game. Every time the game ended, the gang would be in stitches, laughing hysterically.

One week after his capture, they forced him to call Schlotzsky’s and instruct the manager to let all staff go and close the deli down by the end of the week. The manager was taken aback but followed instructions. He also lined his own pockets with cash from the till before he left. It seems that hunting season was officially open for Marc Schiller's fortune – everybody wanted a slice.  

Meanwhile, still in his urine stained and soiled cardboard box, Marc never gave up hope that the cavalry of policemen would burst through the doors and come to save him. He thought his wife would have alerted someone. Perhaps someone at his bank or his lawyer would have called police…. Someone had to realise he was in big trouble and surely the police would respond in full force. Surprisingly, although all of the above-mentioned people suspected everything wasn’t quite right, no one ever reported Marc missing. And nobody ever came to Marc’s rescue.

The gang presented him with more cheques to sign. Cheques that Delgado had brought from the Schiller home. Marc was still blindfolded, so they gave him a pen and put his hand on a document to sign. He didn’t know what he was signing. Two large cheques were made out to a business called Sun Fitness Consultants: one for seven-hundred thousand dollars and another for five-hundred-and-sixty thousand dollars. On some cheques, his signature is sideways or upside down, but somehow, the bank cashed it. All his funds were systematically transferred to the Sun Gym gang.

Danny Lugo used his influence on Sun Gym owner, John Mese to notarise the documents as he was a CPA. John wasn’t quite the poster boy for notaries. He half-checked ID’s and notarised without questioning Lugo too much about the details. Or so he claimed later on.

As for the Schiller family home, transferring it to the gang proved to be a bit of a head-scratcher, seeing as the deeds were in both Marc and his wife's names. 

Marc, worn out as he was, saw an opportunity to entrap the gang. He offered to sign the transfer papers, he would provide both his own signature and his wife’s signature. He would also tell them where a copy of Diana’s ID was, so they could provide it to the notary. Marc knew that his wife’s passport would have been stamped on the 18th of November when she left for Colombia, proving she wasn’t even in the country when the house was set to transfer to Danny Lugo and his friends. Danny agreed, not thinking about the possible implications.

A couple of weeks after Schiller’s abduction, his house had been officially transferred to D&J International – a D for Danny and a J for Jorge. This was a company that Danny and Jorge set up in the Bahamas in preparation for the extortion of Marc Schiller. 

Marc’s captors kept an eye on him around the clock and he became more and more familiar with the dynamics of the group. Firstly, Danny Lugo was the indisputable leader. The others obeyed every demand he made, not because he was persuasive or cleverly manipulative. They were scared of him. He was extremely volatile and unpredictable and would throw temper tantrums like a toddler if anything was out of place.

Adrian Doorbal was Lugo’s constant wingman and inflicted most of the torture. This was clearly his forte and he loved his role. He almost got an orgasmic thrill from burning Schiller’s flesh and dishing out punches for no reason. He was the embodiment of true evil, a sadist who loved causing pain.

Carl Weekes was quite sympathetic to Marc. In his mind, Marc referred to Carl as "Mr Friendly". He was the night watchman and would give Marc cigarettes and soft drinks. 

If Schiller would somehow survive this ordeal, he would very easily give law enforcement character profiles of his captors and tell them exactly what the dynamic was, within the group.

Marc once asked Stevenson Pierre who they were and why they had kidnapped him. Stevenson told a far-fetched story about them being the FBI and they had taken Marc because they were investigating him. When Marc asked for more details, Stevenson threatened to kill him and dump his body in the Everglades. So Marc dropped it.

Danny’s greed caused another delay. He wanted to sell Schlotzsky’s Deli and pocket the money. This would take some time. On the 12th of December, they made Marc call his lawyer, Gene Rosen, to give power of attorney to Jorje Delgado for the sale of the deli. He told Rosen a story about meeting a young Cuban girl called Lillian Torres whom he ran away with and that he wanted to liquidate all his assets. 

Rosen didn't think this seemed right – Marc Schiller was a settled family man, who loved his wife and kids. But he also knew that he was talking to Mr Schiller himself and could not deny him his request, no matter what his strange reasons were.

By this time, Marc had been in captivity for a month and all his assets had been taken from him. The gang’s initial plan was to extort a couple of hundred thousand dollars, but they realised if they kept it up, they could take every last thing in Marc Schiller’s name. 

They presented the captive with one last document: his own death sentence, a two-million-dollar life insurance policy, which were to be transferred to Danny Lugo’s ex, Lillian Torres, in the event of Marc Schiller’s death. 

There was no more use for Marc Schiller. The gang allowed him to call his family in Colombia one last time, to say his goodbyes. He spoke to Diana and then to his six-year-old son, David realising that this was the last time he would ever hear their voices, or they would hear his. His ordeal was about to end and he knew he was not going to walk away alive. 

Thank you for listening to Part 1 of The Sun Gym Gang’s story. Part two will drop next week, same time, same place.

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