Police break up international sex slave ring
By ANDY SOLTIS
Last Updated: 4:58 PM, May 1, 2013
Posted: 3:10 PM, May 1, 2013
Federal agents busted 13 people running an international sex slave ring that lured women from Mexico and turned them into prostitutes in New York, authorities announced today.
Since 2006, dozens of women in their 20s were brought to New York and forced to work in four brothels, authorities said today.
Some of the women were delivered to farms in New Jersey where they would have sex with up to 25 workers a day.
The criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court said on a typical day a woman in New York had 20 to 30 customers, who each paid $30 to $35 for 15 minutes of sex.
Usually $15 of the fee would go to the brothel operator or the driver who transported the women. The rest went to the women but they were typically forced to give all of it back to the trafficker.
Officials said the ring convinced women to be smuggled to New York, through promises of a better life or by engaging them in romantic relationships with the help of young Mexican men.
Once in New York, they were forced into prostitution by physical and verbal abuse, including beatings, and threats to their relatives.
The traffickers “consigned them to a living hell,” US Attorney Preet Bharara said.
The 13 people arrested included ringleader Isasias Flores Mendez, 40, along with brother operators, drivers, dispatchers and others.
They face a variety of charges, punishable by from 2 years to life in prison.
