Posted on Mon, Jan. 11, 2010


Feds break up South Philly brothel ring

By MICHAEL HINKELMAN
Philadelphia Daily News


Federal authorities unsealed an indictment yesterday accusing four illegal immigrants of bringing in women from out of state to staff brothels located in two South Philadelphia rowhouses, allegedly netting the defendants about $9,000 a week.

Authorities said three of the men were arrested Monday morning and will have a detention hearing in federal magistrate court Thursday. A fourth defendant is on the lam.

The feds say they don't know the actual names of the defendants, who are referred to in the indictment as FNU LNU #s 1-4 and their aliases. (FNU means First Name Unknown, LNU means last name unknown.)

The indictment said the defendants operated two brothels between August 2009 and this month out of rowhouses at 7th Street near Latona and 6th Street near Sears.

The prostitution business was controlled by FNU LNU #1, aka "Jose Claudio," 27, and FNU LNU #2, aka "Raymond Gonsalez," 31, the indictment alleged.

Authorities said the pair would arrange for and schedule Hispanic females to travel on a Greyhound bus from New York, New Jersey and Delaware to Philadelphia, where they would be picked up by the defendants at the bus terminal on Filbert Street near 10th.

The females lived in the brothels for a week at a time while they worked "in house" or for "delivery" to their customers, the indictment said.

Unbeknownst to the defendants, some of the prostitutes and customers were either government informants or undercover law-enforcement agents, the indictment said.

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