BY GAIL EPSTEIN-NIEVES, LUISA YANEZ AND JENNIFER BABSON

 KEY WEST -- For Jorge "Bombino'' Aleman and the six men who helped him smuggle 99 migrants in at least five trips across the Florida Straits, federal agents say, the profits were handsome and the cargo -- Cubans desperate to reach the United States -- expendable.

 Then a female passenger on one of their trips died, and federal agents began an investigation that would put Aleman out of business and under arrest.

 Folded into a 187-count indictment against the seven men is the outline of a criminal smuggling organization in which migrants were at the mercy of men whose primary concern seemed to be collecting the $8,000-a-head payments they charged Miami relatives.

 Grimfaced and manacled, Aleman and five of his accused fellow smugglers faced a federal court magistrate Friday.

 A Key West grand jury indicted Aleman and another man for the death of Cira Rodriguez and slapped 186 other counts on Aleman and various other smugglers for illegally transporting 99 Cubans to the Keys between October 1999 and June 2001 for money. Aleman, 36, and Gaspar Coll Gonzalez, 32, could face the death penalty if convicted in Rodriguez's death.

 NO BOND FOR 2

 U.S. Magistrate John O'Sullivan declined to grant bond for Aleman and Coll. O'Sullivan set $100,000 bond for four defendants who solely face smuggling charges -- Noel Ruiz-Perez, 32; Juan Raul Garcia, 35; Angel Arguelles, 34, and Arturo Noa-Marrero, 38.

 Federal authorities have yet to take the seventh man, Yoel Gonzalez-Acosta, into custody.

 For federal agents, the 10-month investigation into Aleman and his associates became a maddening mystery that took them from Anguilla Cay, where they dug for
 Rodriguez's body in vain, to Cuba last October. Interviews with sources familiar with the investigation and material contained in the indictments detail five smuggling
 incidents:

   The Angelfish Creek Load: On Oct. 17, 1999, Jorge Aleman, Yoel Gonzalez-Acosta and Noel Ruiz-Perez picked up nine Cubans, four of them children, in a 26-foot Stingray boat from the Cayo Sal area in the Bahamas. The group was dropped off at Angelfish Creek in Key Largo.

   The Indian Key Load: On Feb. 20, 2000, Aleman and Juan Raul Garcia, picked up 19 Cubans, including one boy, from the Boca de Sagua area of Cuba and
 transported them to the shore of Indian Key in Monroe County.

   The Abandoned Boat Load: On April 28, 2000, Aleman and Angel Arguelles transported 29 Cubans, including five children, to the area of Burgundy Drive in Key
 Largo using a 32-foot Condor speedboat. Aleman and Arguelles abandoned the boat near the Blue Water Trailer Park in Key Largo.

   The Anguilla Cay Incident: On Jan. 14, 2001, Aleman and Gaspar Coll Gonzalez picked up 22 Cubans from a remote stretch along Cuba's Villa Clara province in a 26-foot Powerline boat. As Cuban authorities began to chase, Aleman threw seven passengers into the water to slow his pursuers. The remaining 15 -- including Cira Rodriguez, who was unconscious after sustaining a head injury during the trip -- were left on Anguilla Cay in the Bahamas to await another boat that was to take them to the U.S. Rodriguez died. After running out of food and water, the rest of the group -- including a young girl -- survived on cactus and snails. About five days after they were left on the island, "unidentified co-conspirators'' of Aleman's picked them up in a speedboat and took them to Key Largo. Rodriguez was left buried in the Bahamas.

   The Tavernier Load: On June 1, 2001, Aleman and Arturo Noa-Marrero took a 30-foot Condor boat to Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas, a frequent transit point for
 smugglers. Three days later, Aleman transported 28 Cuban migrants, two of them boys, to Tavernier.

 Juan Raul Garcia, who was named in the Indian Key incident, has had a brush with U.S. authorities before. He was caught by theCoast Guard three years ago with 19 smuggled Cubans aboard his pleasure cruiser.

 Garcia wasn't prosecuted, federal sources said, because his passengers were either friends or relatives. Prosecutors concluded the case would be difficult to try in Miami, where many residents are immigrants themselves or have helped spirit family out of Cuba.

 The Coast Guard returned 17 of Garcia's passengers to Cuba within days. Two others, his sister Marialena Garcia and her infant daughter, were taken to a hospital in Key West after the baby developed a high fever. They were allowed to remain in the U.S.

 SISTER IN COURT

 On Friday, the same sister who was rescued on the seas accompanied Garcia's wife, Maria Gonzalez Garcia, 29, to the courthouse for Garcia's hearing.

 "We received a phone call that his family was lost,'' Garcia's wife recounted about the 1998 incident. ``He took the boat and found them at sea. He's been reporting to immigration every month and everything has been fine, but now they're starting this B.S. again.''

 Juan Raul Garcia had a boat then. Authorities seized it even though they didn't charge him.

 "They should go find something else to do,'' Garcia's wife said. "He's working, he's with his family, with his children. I have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old at home. Today my son, Josue, woke up asking where his father was to take him to school.''

 Gonzalez Garcia insisted that her husband has "nothing to do with'' the charges lodged against him.

 "I only know Bombino,'' she said, referring to Aleman. "He's a friend of ours, but my husband has nothing to do with his problem.''

 VIOLENT PAST?

 Aleman -- who described himself in court as a self-employed boat mechanic with no savings -- may have had a violent past, according to a woman who said she was his landlord until sometime this summer.

 Ana Maria Reitor, 67, Aleman's former landlady in Leisure City, said federal agents knocked on her door in recent weeks inquiring about her former tenant. The agents told Reitor that Aleman had shot someone on her property last summer in a dispute over money he believed he was owed for smuggling Cuban migrants, she said.

 ``The agents said that a man with relatives in Cuba had visited Aleman here, in the back apartment he rented, and that they had argued about money and that Aleman got mad because the man would not pay him and he shot him in the shoulder,'' she said.

 Reitor said that her daughter and son-in-law, who were at home when the alleged incident occurred, didn't hear anything unusual.

 Aleman lived in Reitor's one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Ania, a beautician, and her teenage son from another marriage, according to Reitor.

 CAMOUFLAGE OUTFITS

 Aleman, a short, burly man who is losing his hair, never told Reitor what he did for a living, but often wore camouflage-like clothing. "I thought he was in the Army or something,'' she said.

 She also recalls a large, red boat Aleman parked in front of her home only once.

 Said Reitor: "His wife told me she had been saving money to buy a little house, but that her husband had taken the money and bought the boat.''

                                    © 2001