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All of the human trafficking cases found in this section of the site are recent federal cases prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice. Note: The details of the cases are taken directly from the public press releases issued by the U.S. Office of Public Affairs and are not written by Polaris Project.
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May 11, 2009 | Maryland - Greenbelt, Maryland—Paul Raymond Green, a/k/a “PJ,” age 23, of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking in a scheme to prostitute three minor females, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King, of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
According to Green’s guilty plea, from April to May 2007 Green, through his coconspirator, arranged on two separate occasions to provide minor victims to an acquaintance of Green’s who was paying to have sex with the victims. On both occasions “dippers” or “wets” (cigarettes dipped in phencyclidine liquid known as PCP), were available in the hotel room where the girls were brought to have sex. Green also sold cocaine to that same individual. |
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April 27, 2009 | Texas - Maximino Mondragon, 57, was sentenced today for his role in a scheme to smuggle Central American women and girls into the United States and to hold them in a condition of forced labor in the Houston area. U.S. District Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore sentenced Mondragon to 156 months incarceration, three years post release supervision, $200 special assessment and further ordered that he, jointly with his co-defendants, pay $ $1,715,588.05 in restitution to the victims.
Maximino Mondragon is the last of eight defendants to be convicted and sentenced in connection with this scheme to compel the victims into service in restaurants, bars and cantinas, using threats to harm the victims and their families if they attempted to leave before paying off their smuggling debts.
Mondragon previously pleaded guilty to violations of conspiracy to hold persons in a condition of indentured servitude and to illegally and knowingly recruiting, harboring, transporting persons for labor and services, and conspiracy to bring, harbor, and transport known illegal aliens for purposes of commercial advantage and private financial gain.
The defendants lured Central American women to the United States with promises of good jobs. However, once the young women arrived, they were forced to work in the defendants’ bars and cantinas selling high-priced drinks to male customers. The women were subjected to threats of harm to them and their families in order to compel their servitude.
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April 13, 2009 | WASHINGTON – Acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Loretta King and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri Catherine L. Hanaway today announced that defendant Waquita Wallace pleaded guilty to the federal civil rights charge of sex trafficking. Wallace admitted to forcing a young woman to engage in commercial sex acts through a combination of force, fraud and coercion. Defendant Wallace also benefitted financially from the sex trafficking. She faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The court announced that sentencing will take place on July 7, 2009. |
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April 6, 2009 | WASHINGTON – Today, Jorge Flores-Rojas, 44, an undocumented Mexican national, was sentenced to 24 years in prison by Chief Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr. in Charlotte, N.C., for two counts of sex trafficking of minors and one count of interstate transportation of an adult for purposes of commercial sex, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division and Acting U.S. Attorney Edward R. Ryan of the Western District of North Carolina.
Flores-Rojas pled guilty to the charges on Oct. 7, 2008.
According to testimony at today’s sentencing hearing, in approximately November 2007, Flores-Rojas trafficked a 16-year-old girl between Washington, D.C., and Charlotte for the purpose of causing her to engage in commercial sex acts in the Charlotte area. According to the testimony, the defendant forced the victim, an undocumented Honduran national, to go to Charlotte with him. Also according to the testimony, the defendant repeatedly sexually and physically abused her in order to force her to perform commercial sex acts.
Testimony at the hearing also revealed that in approximately November 2007, Flores-Rojas trafficked a 17-year-old girl and an adult woman between Charlotte and Washington, D.C., for the purpose of causing them to engage in commercial sex acts in the Washington area. Flores-Rojas had previously paid other persons to smuggle these victims from Mexico into the United States, testimony indicated. |
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February 23, 2009 |WASHINGTON – Leonard Fox a/k/a Anton a/k/a "Daddy" pleaded guilty today to a federal civil rights charge for sex trafficking of minors, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King of the Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Lawrence J. Laurenzi for the Western District of Tennessee. In U.S. District Court in Memphis, Fox admitted to recruiting and obtaining underage girls and arranging for those girls to engage in commercial sex acts for his financial benefit. |
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THE FRONTLINES