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Woman in Family-Run Prostitution Ring Pleads Guilty
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: July 23, 2008
A 61-year-old woman pleaded guilty to sex trafficking on Tuesday for her role in a family-run gang accused of smuggling women from Mexico to New York and forcing them, sometimes violently, into prostitution.
The plea by the woman, Consuelo Carreto Valencia, who is from Mexico, abruptly ended her trial, which began on Monday with jury selection and had been scheduled to continue on Tuesday with opening arguments in federal court in Brooklyn. She had faced 12 counts of conspiracy, sex trafficking and smuggling; she pleaded guilty to one sex-trafficking count.
She now awaits sentencing and, according to federal guidelines, faces as much as 14 years in prison.
Her lawyer, John S. Wallenstein, said in an interview that Ms. Carretošs decision to plead guilty was unexpected and that he was "frankly surprised." She had repeatedly rejected other plea offers and steadfastly maintained her innocence, he said. As recently as two weeks ago, Mr. Wallenstein said, she turned down a plea deal that would have capped her sentence at 10 years.
"All along, she said she had done nothing wrong," Mr. Wallenstein said.
According to documents filed by prosecutors in the case, the Carreto family, who were based in the central Mexican town of Tenancingo, "engaged in a scheme to lure, entice, compel and coerce young Mexican women and girls into prostitution" in Mexico and the United States and to reap the profits.
The Carretos recruited the women primarily from impoverished communities in Mexico, smuggled them across the border, brought them to New York and housed them in simple apartments, including two near Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, Queens, said prosecutors, who built their case in part on the testimony of nine women smuggled and forced into prostitution by the Carretos.
Two of Ms. Carreto's sons and an associate compelled the women "through physical violence, sexual assault, threats of harm, deception, false promises and coercion" to become prostitutes in "various brothels in New York City and elsewhere," according to the indictment.
"These defendants isolated the victims from their families, controlled every aspect of their lives and required them to engage in prostitution often for over 12 hours per day, often in unsanitary surroundings," prosecutors said in a filing in United States District Court in Brooklyn.
The women were ordered to charge $25 to $35 for each sex act, and then were forced to surrender their earnings: half to the brothel owners and half to the Carretos, prosecutors said. The Carretos, in turn, wired the money to family accounts in Mexico, prosecutors said.
The women made nothing.
Prosecutors had planned to introduce evidence showing that she had confined some of the victims in her home; created a "climate of fear" through intimidation, threats and beatings; forced the women into prostitution in Mexico; and took the profits.
The business thrived from 1991 until 2004, when federal immigration agents raided the two apartments in Corona and found five young Mexican women and advertisements for prostitution services, the government said. Prosecutors had also planned to present other evidence seized from the homes in Corona and Tenancingo, including notebooks detailing prostitution activities or proceeds, telephone records, letters, wire-transfer records and sex paraphernalia.
Ms. Carreto had been jailed in Mexico on related charges and was extradited to the United States in January 2007.
Ms. Carreto's plea came more than three years after two of her sons, Josue and Gerardo Flores Carreto, and a friend, Daniel Perez Alonso, pleaded guilty to 27 criminal counts for their participation in the smuggling and sex ring. The brothers were each sentenced to 50 years and Mr. Alonso to 25. |
