BROOKLYN, N.Y.
Three co-defendants involved in an international sex trafficking organization that forced women and girls from Mexico and Central America into prostitution face a sentencing Tuesday.
Last week, five members of a notorious international criminal organization, known as the Rendon-Reyes Trafficking Organization, were sentenced to prison terms from 15 to 25 years.
U.S. District Court Judge Edward R. Korman will determine how much restitution at a later date.
Defendants Jose Rendon-Garcia, aka Gusano, 35, of Mexico, Guillermina Rendon-Reyes, 48, of Mexico, and Francisco Rendon-Reyes, aka Pancho, 30, of Mexico, will be sentenced on Tuesday.
The defendants previously pled guilty to racketeering, sex trafficking, and other federal charges following their arrests in Mexico and the United States, where they were residing illegally.
For over a decade, the Rendon-Reyes Trafficking Organization, based in Tenancingo, Tlaxcala, Mexico, smuggled numerous young women and girls from Mexico and Central America into the United States, according to prosecutors.
The women were forced them to engage in prostitution for the Organization’s profit, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in criminal proceeds that were then laundered back to Mexico.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division prosecuted this case.
“These well-deserved sentences reflect the gravity of the human trafficking crimes these defendants committed,” said Acting Attorney General Whitaker. “The defendants operated an extensive sex trafficking enterprise that preyed on vulnerable young women and girls, deceiving them with false promises, coercing their compliance, and compelling them into submission through beatings, threats, isolation, and intimidation. “
“These sentencings are the latest chapter in this Office’s long-term commitment to eradicate human trafficking and all forms of modern-day slavery,” stated United States Attorney Donoghue. “The crimes committed by the members of the Rendon-Reyes Trafficking Organization were brutal and shocking, and I hope that the sentences give the victims, in this case, some sense of justice. We will not tolerate the exploitation of women and girls for profit or sexual servitude.”
The defendants sentenced to prison were the following people:
Jovan Rendon-Reyes, aka Jovani, 32, of Mexico, was sentenced to 20 years in prison
Saul Rendon-Reyes, aka Satanico, 41, of Mexico, was sentenced to 15 years in prison
Felix Rojas, 48, of Mexico, was sentenced to 25 years in prison
Odilon Martinez-Rojas, aka Chino or Saul, 47, of Mexico, was sentenced to over 24 years in prison
Severiano Martinez-Rojas, 53, of Mexico, was sentenced to over 24 years in prison.
Severiano Martinez-Rojas was sentenced in a related case in Georgia.
According to documents filed in court, between December 2004 and November 2015, members of the Rendon-Reyes Organization, including the defendants, enriched themselves by forcing multiple young women and girls, including the 12 referenced in court documents, to perform countless commercial sex acts throughout the United States and Mexico.
The Organization targeted vulnerable women and girls, some as young as 14, from impoverished areas of Mexico and Central America.
Male members of the Organization typically used false promises of love and marriage to lure the victims into fraudulent romantic relationships.
In some instances, they forcibly abducted the victims, and on one occasion, a victim’s child.
Members of the Organization frequently arranged for others to smuggle the victims across the border and into the United States.
Once in the United States, members of the Organization used different methods to force the victims to engage in prostitution, including severe and repeated beatings, sexual assaults, forced abortions, threats to the victims, their families and children, and psychological harm.
Members of the Organization forced the victims to perform as many as 45 sexual acts a night and took all of the prostitution proceeds, funneling the money back to Mexico.
The investigation, prosecution, bilateral enforcement action, and extraditions of the defendants apprehended in Mexico through the U.S.-Mexico Bilateral Human Trafficking Enforcement Initiative.
Since 2009, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have collaborated with Mexican law enforcement counterparts in a Bilateral Human Trafficking Enforcement Initiative to more effectively dismantle human trafficking networks operating across the U.S.-Mexico border, bring human traffickers to justice, and restore the rights and dignity of human trafficking victims.
These efforts have resulted in successful prosecutions in both Mexico and the United States, including U.S. federal prosecutions of over 170 defendants in multiple cases in New York, Georgia, Florida, and Texas, in addition to numerous Mexican federal and state prosecutions of associated sex traffickers.
The convictions in this case are also the latest development in the Eastern District of New York’s comprehensive anti-trafficking program, which has to date indicted more than 80 defendants, assisted more than 150 victims, including 45 minors, reunited 19 victims’ children with their mothers, and secured restitution orders of over $4 million on behalf of trafficking victims.