MS-13 gangbanger lured love-struck victim to his death with fake Facebook profile: feds

A reputed MS-13 gangbanger lured a lovelorn 20-year-old Long Island man to his death by coaxing him into a rendezvous using a fake Facebook profile, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

Kevin Cuevas “Creeper” Del Cid, 25, pleaded guilty to charges that he posed as a “young girl” in 2016 to get a 20-year-old man to show up in a wooded area near the Merrick-Freeport border, where he was jumped and hacked to death with machetes — one of two brutal slayings Del Cid has pleaded guilty to.

“Kevin Cuevas Del Cid, an MS-13 member, slaughtered two victims based on their assumed alliance with a rival gang,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia said. “Del Cid’s attacks reflect the gang’s brutal rhetoric designed to intimidate and punish any perceived threat to its organization.”

Del Cid, who also goes by the nicknames “Malcriado,” which means spoiled or bratty, and “Sombra,” which means shadow, admitted to two vicious slayings of suspected rival gang members, according to the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York.

In the first incident, prosecutors said Del Cid, a member of the gang’s “Sailors” clique, set up the Facebook profile to trick Kerin Pineda into an ambush on May 21, 2016, because he was suspected of being a member of the rival 18th Street Gang.

“When Pineda arrived, he was surrounded and violently attacked by Del Cid and the other MS-13 members, each of whom took turns hacking and slashing him with machetes,” the US Attorney’s Office said in a press release Wednesday. “Pineda’s body was then buried in a hole that had been dug in the ground the day before in anticipation of the murder.”

In the second killing, Del Cid, who was just 16 at the time, convinced 15-year-old Javier Castillo to go to a secluded section of Cow Meadow Park to smoke marijuana on Oct. 10, 2016.

Castillo, another suspected member of the 18th Street Gang, was hacked to death and buried near the crime scene — where the body remained until it was discovered one year later.

On Wednesday, Del Cid pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in connection with the two slayings as well as conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana, prosecutors said.

MS-13, or La Mara Salvatrucha, is a migrant gang that originated in Central America but has established a foothold in parts of the US, including on Long Island.

“The defendant pleaded guilty to the brutal killings of two young people, whose murders demonstrate the MS-13’s well-established obsession with committing extreme acts of violence and complete disregard for human life,” Eastern District US Attorney Joseph Nocella said.