http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02317.html

5 Indicted in Holdup at Brothel
U.S. Takes On Md. Case In Anti-Gang Offensive

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 2, 2006; B05



Five suspected MS-13 gang members arrested in November after a robbery at a brothel in Wheaton during which a prostitute was raped have been indicted by a federal grand jury in a case taken over last month by the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland as part of the agency's crackdown on gangs in the Washington area.

The men, alleged members of the gang also known as Mara Salvatrucha, appeared before federal judges in Greenbelt for detention hearings yesterday. They are charged with robbery and the use of a firearm to commit a violent crime.

The five men were ordered to be detained until trial.

"The defendants were allegedly preying on very vulnerable victims who would have been unable to report the crime to the authorities," said Rod J. Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for the District of Maryland, whose office recently received $2 million in federal funding to prosecute gangs.

Montgomery prosecutors, who originally brought the case, said they were happy to relinquish it to federal prosecutors, who generally have more tools to secure lengthy sentences upon conviction.

For example, state prosecutors are sometimes barred from introducing allegations of a defendant's gang affiliation into evidence during criminal trials. It is also easier to try several defendants simultaneously in federal court, alleviating the burden on witnesses.

"It's a question of who's better equipped to prosecute this case," Montgomery County State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler said.

The indictment names Jose Domingo Hernandez, 21, of an unspecified address; Juan Jimenez-Hernandez, 20, of Beltsville; Victor Ramirez, 20, of an unspecified address; Jovet Deuardo Medina, 20, of Gaithersburg; and Juan Carlos Dominguez, 22, of Beltsville.

The defendants' attorneys declined to comment about the case, as did relatives of two of the defendants who attended yesterday's hearings.

The case stems from an incident Nov. 14 in which a female undercover Montgomery County detective stumbled onto a robbery in progress at a brothel operating in an apartment in the 2300 block of Blueridge Avenue. The detective, who was looking for a suspect in an unrelated carjacking case, was pulled into the apartment, where four of the defendants accosted and tried to rape her, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Trusty said yesterday. A backup team of officers stormed the apartment and arrested the four.

The fifth defendant, Dominguez, who was arrested later, had driven the men to the apartment and was acting as a lookout, authorities said.

Hernandez and Jimenez-Hernandez were accused of raping a 24-year-old prostitute at the brothel while armed with a .38-caliber handgun. The brothel's security guard and two customers were tied up and robbed.

Montgomery County vice detectives have shut down numerous apartment brothels similar to the one in this case. They say the proliferation of those establishments has brought violent crime to residential neighborhoods.