Luiz Fernando da Costa, known in Brazil as Fernandinho Beira-Mar, built a drug-distribution business in the hillside communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s and became one of the best-known leaders of the Comando Vermelho, a Rio criminal faction. Between 2013 and 2016 three juries in the Rio de Janeiro State Court of Justice convicted him of ordering killings. One case concerned a young man killed in Duque de Caxias in August 1999. Another concerned two men killed in 2002. A third, decided in May 2015, concerned four men who died on a single day in September 2002 during a riot in a maximum-security prison in Rio. The sentences were 30, 80 and 120 years, a total of 230 years for seven deaths. Separate drug-trafficking and criminal-association sentences were added to these.
Press totals for all of his convictions run above 300 years. Brazilian law, however, limits how long a person can actually be held to 30 years, and the rule applied in his case. After his capture in Colombia in April 2001 he spent the following decades in a rotation of federal maximum-security prisons, held under a strict disciplinary regime for part of that time. In March 2024 he was moved to a federal prison in Paraná, and in December 2024 he was still held there.
Da Costa was born in the favela that gave him his public name, in the municipality of Duque de Caxias, in the Baixada Fluminense north of Rio de Janeiro. He was 47 at the time of the 2015 trial and 56 in March 2024, which places his birth in the late 1960s.
He began with small thefts as a child and later turned to robbery. By the age of 20 he was working for traffickers as a courier. He took control of his home favela and became one of the largest sellers of drugs in Brazil as part of the Comando Vermelho. Between 1990 and 1995 he took over several Rio favelas, among them Rocinha and Vidigal. In the early 1990s he received a first sentence of 12 years for drug trafficking and stayed at large until 1996.
In June 1996 he was arrested in Minas Gerais in possession of four kilograms of drugs. A second 12-year sentence for trafficking followed. In March 1997 he escaped from prison and settled in Paraguay. He spent about six years on the run through Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Colombia.
By April 2000 he had moved on to Colombia. Authorities there accused him of ties to the FARC guerrilla organization. On Saturday, April 21, 2001, Colombian soldiers took him into custody in the jungle of the Guaviare region. He was transferred to Brazil and held by the Federal Police in Brasília. In 2002 he was moved to Rio de Janeiro, which set off a dispute between federal and state authorities over where he should be held.
The United States government listed him in 2002 under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. In video testimony given later, he said that his chief fear during his years in Colombia had been arrest and a handover to the United States.
The earliest murder conviction concerns Michel Anderson Nascimento dos Santos, a young man killed in August 1999 in Duque de Caxias. Prosecutors said da Costa had ordered the killing by telephone, with unnamed accomplices.
The state prosecution charged him with qualified homicide acting jointly with others, under article 121, paragraph 2, items I, III and IV of the Penal Code, with article 62, item I. The case moved slowly. In February 2011 the Second Panel of the Supreme Federal Court unanimously refused a habeas corpus petition in which his defense asked for the case to be ended or restarted from the evidence stage and for his preventive detention, in place since 2001, to be lifted. The petition argued excessive delay and challenged how some evidence had been gathered. The court noted that the case had been pending in the 4th Criminal Court of Duque de Caxias for more than ten years, that witnesses often refused to testify or asked for security measures, and that when a witness hearing was held he had been a fugitive, with a court-appointed lawyer and a public defender present. It nevertheless ordered the trial court to schedule the jury trial as soon as possible.
The trial was held on October 18, 2016 before the 2nd Jury Court of the Capital in Rio de Janeiro. Da Costa followed it by video link from a federal prison in Rondônia and chose to stay silent. A jury of seven found him guilty of "homicídio triplamente qualificado", a verdict that rested on base motive, the victim's lack of any chance of defense and a third qualifier. Judge Daniel Werneck Cotta imposed 30 years, the maximum for the offense. Press totals after the verdict spoke of nearly 350 years of sentences.
Da Costa was returned to Rio in 2002, and the same year the killings that led to his two other murder convictions took place. The first of them, according to the prosecution, occurred on July 27, 2002 in his home favela in Duque de Caxias. The prosecution said he ordered the deaths of two men from within the prison by mobile telephone, and that a third man survived. The dead were named as Antonio Alexandre Vieira Nunes and Edinei Thomaz Santos. The charge was a double homicide and an attempted homicide.
On September 11, 2002 a riot broke out in a maximum-security prison in Rio de Janeiro in which four inmates from rival factions were killed. Within a day the authorities suspected da Costa of leading the uprising. The dead were Ernaldo Pinto de Medeiros and three other inmates, Carlos Alberto da Costa, Wanderlei Soares and Elpídio Rodrigues Sabino.
Prosecutors said that da Costa gave the orders and controlled the Comando Vermelho in the prison, together with other inmates. The case against him was separated from the others. Five co-defendants were to be tried at a later date.
Da Costa's drug cases ran in parallel. He had two convictions in the years after his return: 11 years for trafficking, and 21 years for trafficking and criminal association ("formação de quadrilha"). On August 15, 2008 the 4th Jury Court of Rio de Janeiro, Judge Maria Angélica Guerra Guedes presiding, sentenced him to six years for association for drug trafficking. He was tried that day with eight co-defendants. Charges against him of attempted homicide of two police officers and of drug trafficking were pending in the same proceeding. His lawyer announced an appeal against the six-year sentence.
In 2003 da Costa was held under the Regime Disciplinar Diferenciado, a strict regime of isolation, in a maximum-security prison in São Paulo state. A court ordered his removal after he exceeded the 360-day legal maximum, and in December 2004 his defense told the Supreme Federal Court that he had been held under it for more than 500 days. He was moved to Maceió, to Florianópolis and to Brasília. In 2006 the Second Panel of the Supreme Federal Court unanimously refused a habeas corpus petition seeking his return to a Rio prison. Justice Celso de Mello cited his dangerousness, the activity of his faction and the public interest in restricting his liberty, and the court confirmed that a São Paulo court decided where he served his sentence. A federal maximum-security prison in Paraná was the place at the time.
In July 2008 the court's president archived two further habeas corpus petitions, again involving where he was held. By then he was in a federal prison in Mato Grosso do Sul. In February 2012 he was moved to a federal prison in Rondônia, after six other units. He was in Rondônia at the time of the 2015 and 2016 trials.
The trial for the four 2002 deaths opened in the 1st Jury Court in Rio de Janeiro on May 13, 2015, with Judge Fábio Uchôa presiding. Da Costa was flown in under escort. Only one witness, a faction leader called by the defense, appeared. The prosecution argued that da Costa had not carried out the killings himself but had ordered them and controlled his faction in the prison.
Da Costa took the unusual step of speaking to the jury. He denied responsibility and denied leading the Comando Vermelho. "Não é justo. Cometi muitos crimes, mas este não" ("It is not fair. I have committed many crimes, but not this one"), he told the judge. The judge later said he had not seen a defendant do this in 30 years of jury trials, and reprimanded him for rhetorical questions and for criticizing a prosecutor.
The seven jurors returned their verdict after the trial had run for more than ten hours, and on May 14, 2015 Judge Uchôa read the sentence. Da Costa was convicted of four counts of "homicídio duplamente qualificado", the qualifiers being base motive and the victims' lack of any chance of defense, and was given 120 years. The judge said he would have to serve the legal maximum of 30 years in a closed regime, which might bar him from benefits such as the semi-open regime.
The trial for the 2002 killings of two men was held on March 12, 2013 before the 4th Jury Court in central Rio. It had been moved from Duque de Caxias after jurors there said they feared to take part. Da Costa arrived in Rio on March 11. The jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to 80 years for the two killings and the attempted killing of a third man. The prosecution placed the killings in July 2002 in Duque de Caxias.
Brazilian courts impose sentences by offense, and a convicted person's sentences can run far beyond a human lifetime. Article 75 of the Penal Code limits the time of imprisonment to 30 years, and the Supreme Federal Court has described the purpose of unifying sentences as restricting the time a convicted person spends in prison. The same decisions, restated in Súmula 715, hold that the unified 30-year figure is not the basis for calculating other benefits such as conditional release or progression to a less strict regime, which are worked out on the sentences as imposed. The totals reported for da Costa, above 300 years, sit beside that 30-year limit.
He was held in a federal prison by 2006. The five federal maximum-security prisons are coordinated nationally by a Justice Ministry body. In January 2024 da Costa and other Comando Vermelho leaders were moved between federal prisons. On March 2, 2024, after two prisoners escaped from the federal prison in Rio Grande do Norte in February, he and 22 other inmates were taken from that prison to a federal maximum-security prison in Paraná.
On December 10, 2024 civil police, state prosecutors and federal police carried out an operation over suspicions that da Costa directed a scheme of cargo thefts in the Baixada Fluminense from custody. At the time he was held in Paraná, and the press described his sentences as more than 300 years.
In video testimony made public in July 2026, da Costa described living in the Colombian Amazon for more than two years under a false name and said he had left Venezuela for fear of being handed over to the United States.
Da Costa has denied leading the Comando Vermelho, a position he repeated at the 2015 trial. Prosecutors and the courts treated him as the commander of the faction. He denied responsibility for the four deaths of September 2002, and the jury rejected that denial.
The allegations of FARC ties came from Colombian and United States authorities in 2001 and 2002 and were denied by him after his capture. The cargo-theft suspicion of December 2024 is an allegation only.
Early 1990s: first sentence of 12 years for drug trafficking; at large until 1996.
June 1996: arrested in Minas Gerais; a second 12-year sentence follows.
March 1997: escapes from prison and settles in Paraguay.
August 1999: Michel Anderson Nascimento dos Santos is killed in Duque de Caxias.
April 2000: moves to Colombia.
April 21, 2001: arrested in the Guaviare jungle and sent to Brazil.
July 27, 2002: the killing of two men in Duque de Caxias, for which he was later convicted.
September 11, 2002: riot in a Rio maximum-security prison in which four inmates die.
2003: held under the Regime Disciplinar Diferenciado in São Paulo state.
February 22, 2011: Supreme Federal Court refuses his habeas corpus petition and orders a prompt jury trial.
March 12, 2013: jury trial in Rio for the two 2002 killings; 80 years.
May 14, 2015: convicted of four counts of homicídio duplamente qualificado; 120 years.
October 18, 2016: convicted of homicídio triplamente qualificado; 30 years.
March 2, 2024: moved to a federal prison in Paraná.
December 10, 2024: operation over suspected cargo thefts directed from custody.