Hecho en Miami

More determined than ever to leave, Penton traveled to Santa Clara, where he found a man who agreed to take him to the United States. "I went, and there was the boat, and it was incredible," he remembers, with the delight of a man who has himself jerry-rigged all manner of vessels. This "boat" was an assemblage of tubes of galvanized metal stuffed between bits of old, rusted iron grill work. A pump had been commandeered from an old power plant. "It was madness," Penton recalls, shaking his head, "but it had a motor that worked."

When it finally left the unlikely vessel had 42 passengers aboard. Amazingly the crew reached the Bahamas, where they were spotted by members of the Miami-based activist group Hermanos Al Rescate, who dropped supplies and notified the Coast Guard. Penton was detained for six months in Guantanamo, then released to the United States.

He arrived in South Florida on November 4, 1995, and began working immediately — his first job was at a Pollo Tropical in Cape Coral. Within a few months he moved to Miami and began making cigar boxes at the Caribbean Cigar Company on Calle Ocho.

Penton had come to the United States just in time for the cigar boom of the mid-Nineties, and Caribbean was a boomtown business: In 1996 it went from a single store in the Keys to a publicly traded entity; its stock doubled on the first day of trading. By 1997 the firm had seven retail locations as far north as Fort Lauderdale, and was busy acquiring factories in Indonesia.

But the cigar bubble burst — and by the end of the same year, Caribbean reported $2.6 million in losses. Within months the company closed up shop in South Florida, moving its headquarters to Knoxville, Tennessee. On November 5, 1998, its listing was removed from the NASDAQ.

By then Penton had already left Caribbean to strike out on his own. He rented a warehouse in Hialeah and worked fourteen hour days, mostly making humidors and pool furniture. He bathed in a tub in the back, sometimes sweeping up the shavings and sleeping there. But his time at Caribbean stayed with him — he began dreaming of starting his own cigar company.

In 2000 Penton bought his current warehouse — 6600 square feet, complete with woodworking machines — for $100,000. It was there that he began making cigar "gift boxes," copies of top Cuban brands: Montecristo, Hoyo de Monterrey, Cohiba Esplendido, Romeo y Julieta, Partagas. Using pictures from books and originals, he made detailed copies, then sold them empty without cigars. Each was a kind of do-it-yourself kit that included the requisite green certificate of authenticity, and the necessary seals and anillos (the paper rings bearing the cigar's logo). On the back of each box, Penton stamped the words "Habanos S.A. Hecho en Cuba."

That same year Penton married his present wife, Antonia Penton Figueroa, a pretty woman with full, dark hair and tired eyes, four years his senior. Antonia, who was born in Havana and raised in Miami, says she recognized in her husband someone who had also struggled. Her 21-year-old daughter, Jenelly, suffers from what Antonia calls a mental "delay;" she functions normally, but is immature in some ways. "She can't do a lot of stuff by herself," Antonia explains. "She takes a bath and washes her hair, but sometimes I have to do it." Jenelly also suffers from seizures, for which she takes daily medication. "When I met Juan, my daughter was like thirteen — you can't just bring anybody into the house," Antonia points out. Penton was kind and patient with her daughter. "He's very respectable — he doesn't drink, he treats everybody with respect."

Penton moved into Antonia's tidy, three-bedroom house in Hialeah and the three became a family. "We go fishing, we go camping, we go to family parties," she says.

Antonia was working as a dental assistant when she met Penton. She left her part-time job to help him with his business. "We would work on the chairs and patio furniture, mostly. Most of the times I was doing that. Doing chairs, estimates, and all that stuff," she says. When Penton began making cigar boxes instead of furniture, she didn't see the harm in it. "I really didn't know it was that bad ... nobody really knew he was doing something bad," she says gloomily.

Penton demurs when asked about sales and profit, although he contends the boxes became his main source of revenue. He earned enough to live a middle-class life: Penton bought property — a house in Orlando and a studio apartment on Miami Beach. He got himself a small boat and a used '97 Ford pickup.

He's also vague about his customers. "Some people purchased them from me for if they had a party [sic]," he would later testify. "Other people would pick them for jewelry boxes and others to give them away as gifts."