Six Sex Traffickers Get a Total of 81 Years in Federal Prison

“Sex traffickers often prey upon the most vulnerable victims in our society and intentionally exploit those vulnerabilities,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “The damage inflicted upon children through this form of sexual exploitation is immeasurable. The victim-survivors are subject to multiple forms of mental, physical, and emotional trauma, the scars of which never fully fade. The minor victim in this case was particularly vulnerable, and her traffickers used fear, coercion, and control to abuse and exploit her entire being for profit. We will remain dogged in our pursuit of all those who perpetrate this modern-day slavery.”

From April 2018 through Jan. 14, 2019, five of the defendants sex-trafficked a minor victim throughout Virginia and Maryland.

The minor was housed at multiple hotels in Alexandria and Fairfax for the purposes of commercial sex, and the defendants advertised the minor victim through various means, including prostitution advertisements online:

Bedpage.com

CityXGuide.com

Backpage.com (shortly before it was seized by the federal government)

They also advertised the minor victim through the communications platform WhatsApp by sending her picture out to a list-serve of known customers.

As a form of grooming, the male defendants engaged in sexual intercourse with the minor.

As a form of enticement, the defendants permitted the minor to keep about 50 percent of the commercial sex proceeds while the defendants collected the remaining 50 percent.

In January 2019, members of the conspiracy, including defendant Fatima Ventura Perez, recruited an adult victim to fly from Miami to Reagan National Airport to work in a brothel apartment in Laurel, Maryland. 

Ventura-Perez also sent out advertisements of the adult victim and the minor victim on her commercial sex customer listserve via WhatsApp, resulting in numerous men arriving at the apartment to have sex, with each victim being sexually exploited by over 50 men each. 

The minor victim and the adult victim were sold for sex out of that brothel apartment.

On Jan. 14, 2019, law enforcement recovered both victims at the brothel apartment, which was leased by Ventura Perez.