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Man pleads guilty in Austin immigrant brothel case
Austin site was part of 13-city prostitution network.

By Steven Kreytak
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, February 09, 2007

A man who federal authorities say managed brothels in Austin and Oklahoma City in an elaborate multistate immigrant smuggling and prostitution ring pleaded guilty in federal court Friday.

The ring included brothels in 13 cities, including ones across Texas, as far west as Las Vegas and as far east as New York City and Atlanta, according to documents filed with Juan Balderas-Orosco's plea. The operators snuck hundreds of women into the country from Mexico as well as Central and South American countries, and forced them to have sex with as many as 40 men — mostly undocumented immigrants — a day, the documents said.

Their bosses, who moved the women among the brothels in the interstate network, kept all or part of the women's earnings, the documents said.

"The prostitutes reported they were not free to leave the brothels on their own, and the brothel operators were usually armed with firearms," one court document said.

Balderas, 34, faces 10 years in prison at a later sentencing on each of three crimes: transportation for prostitution, conspiracy to smuggle, transport and harbor illegal aliens, and importation of aliens.

Balderas' lawyer, Kristin Etter, declined to talk about the case, other than to say it is a symptom of a broken immigration system.

With limited legal channels for immigrants to the U.S., some immigrants "are pushed into this underground economy and forced into these kinds of jobs," she said outside court.

Balderas, who was the manager of brothels in Austin and Oklahoma City, is the lead defendant in an indictment filed last year in U.S. District Court in Austin charging 12 people in the case with various smuggling and prostitution crimes.

Six people pleaded guilty in the case earlier this week and another defendant, Mohammad Arami, pleaded guilty with Balderas before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Pitman on Friday.

Three defendants are fugitives in the case, including one woman accused of running the operation: Cecilia Maria Roberson, aka "Lila." Information about that woman's nationality and possible whereabouts were not included in court documents.

Another woman whom co-defendants and some of the prostitutes identified as a boss of the operation, Maria Camacho-Teran, was arrested in December, and her case is pending. She earned substantial income from the operation, is a citizen of Venezuela and is married to a U.S. citizen, a judge wrote in court documents.

Arami pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. He owned a house at 9807 FM 969 that federal agents raided last summer. Court documents say that Arami knew that the rent on that house was paid with proceeds of the illegal operation.

Both men said little more than "yes" at the sentencing hearing. They were responding to a standard list of questions Pitman asked regarding whether they understood the ramifications of their pleas.

skreytak@statesman.com