Thread: Mexican Brothers Busted in NYC sex slavery

Bust in NYC sex slavery

Sibs ‘exploit kids’

• By MITCHEL MADDUX and DAN MANGAN
• Last Updated: 5:40 AM, December 11, 2012
• Posted: 1:22 AM, December 11, 2012

US Attorney Loretta Lynch outlines the sex-trafficking case yesterday

Three Mexican brothers have been extradited and charged with running a vicious sex-trafficking ring that lured girls as young as 14 to the US with promises of love and a new life — only to smuggle them into New York to brutally pimp them out, federal officials said yesterday.

The brothers — Benito Lopez-Perez, 32, José Gabino Barrientos-Perez, 51, and Anastasio Romero-Perez, 39 — began targeting three girls who later were forced to work as prostitutes in the Big Apple when the children were just 14 and 15 years old, Brooklyn federal prosecutors allege.

Prosecutors also announced charges against a fourth man linked to another Mexico-to-New-York prostitution pipeline — and the reuniting of a child with her Mexican sex-trafficking-victim mom after they were kept apart more than a decade by the kid’s pimp dad.

“Few crimes are more repugnant than the trafficking of innocent women and girls for sex,” said Brooklyn US Attorney Loretta Lynch, whose office cooperated with the Mexican federal police and Mexico’s attorney general on the cases.

“The defendants lured young women into the world’s oldest profession using the world’s oldest ruse — the promise of a committed relationship and a better life.”

All four defendants face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison if convicted of sex trafficking.

The three Perez brothers allegedly began grooming the girls as far back as 2003 by enticing them into intimate relationships by promising them marriage.

The girls then were forced to work as prostitutes in Mexico after being beaten and sexually assaulted — as well as by threats to harm their families if they ran away, prosecutors charge.

In July 2005, the brothers allegedly began smuggling the girls into the US, where they were driven each day to locations in New York and other states for sex.

The brothers had the girls wire their earnings back to Mexico, to relatives of the brothers, according to authorities.
The fourth defendant extradited in recent weeks, Antonio Lira-Robles, 37, is charged for his alleged involvement in a similar ring that also included the participation of his cousins — the brothers Eleuterio and Samuel Granados-Hernandez.
Both of those brothers have already pleaded guilty in the case and are awaiting sentencing.

The Granados-Hernandez ring operated from 1998 until last year, prosecutors said.
dan.mangan@nypost.com

December 11, 2012
By: Mike Balsamo
examiner.com


Benito Lopez-Perez (top left), Anastasio Romero-Perez (top right), and Jose Gabino Barrientos-Perez (bottom), were all indicted on federal charges relating to a sex trafficking ring run out of a Hempstead home.
Credits: Mexican Federal Police (top l,r) & US Attorney's Office (bottom)

Three men accused of smuggling teen girls to a Hempstead home from Mexico in an alleged sex trafficking ring have been extradited to New York to stand trial, federal prosecutors announced Monday.

Three brothers, Benito Lopez-Perez, 32, Anastasio Romero-Perez, 39, and Jose Gabino Barrientos-Perez, 51, were all indicted on federal charges related to the ring that was run out of homes in Hempstead, Chinatown, and The Bronx.

Calling it “modern day slavery,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said that on Long Island, girls as young as 14 or 15 years old were held in a home on Dartmouth Street in Hempstead, where they were imprisoned into a violent life and used as sex slaves. Promised a better lifestyle, the young teens were lured from their homes in the small impoverished region of Tenancingo, Mexico, prosecutors said.

Assisted by livery cab drivers, the men allegedly forced the young girls to work 12-hour shifts as prostitutes. Authorities said the drivers would hand out pornographic photo cards to solicit customers and then deliver the girls to them.

Officials said the women were forced to wire the money they made from the prostitution to the family of the defendants in Mexico. Homeland Security agents said the men, who had been smuggling women since at least 2003, would beat the girls if they didn’t earn enough money.

"The women were cut off from their families and kept dependent on the traffickers, whose promises of love soon turned to lies, beatings and threats to the victims' families in order to maintain their hold over them," United States Attorney Loretta E. Lynch said in a statement.

The extraditions over the weekend followed by the arraignments today are a testament to our resolve to bring to justice those charged with forcing young women into prostitution,” said James T. Hayes Jr., Special Agent-in-Charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in New York.

All three men have been arraigned in federal court between last week and this morning. They have all entered not guilty pleas to the charges against them.

Feds: Sex slaves held in Hempstead home - Long Island Crime | Examiner.com