NYC: Mexican sex traffickers get 50 years

Heavy sentences handed down, indeed.Sex traffickers sentenced to 50 years Two brothers were in a gang that forced Mexican women to work in brothels in Queens, Brooklyn BY ANTHONY M. DESTEFANO Newsday Staff Writer April 28, 2006 The reputed ringleader of a Mexican sex trafficking ring and his brother each were slammed with a 50-year prison sentence yesterday in Brooklyn federal court, one of the toughest sentences ever given for the crime. Gerardo Flores Carreto, 34, and his brother Josue, 38, originally from Tenancingo, Mexico, pleaded guilty last year to numerous sex trafficking and immigrant smuggling offenses. Reading from a pre-sentence probation report, Judge Frederic Block said the Carreto men, now from Corona, were part of a gang that from 1991 to 2004 forced Mexican immigrant women to work in brothels in Queens and Brooklyn. The women, some of whom gave statements in court, faced death threats, rape and other brutality in the prostitution operation, Block said. Daniel Perez Alonzo, 26, another member of the ring from Tenancingo, was sentenced to 25 years in prison yesterday. Four of the six Mexican women who were victims in the case gave short statements to the court in Spanish before Block announced the sentences. The women, all of whom are in the process of getting special visas to stay in the United States, sat in the front row. "I hope justice is done; that is all I ask," said a woman identified only as Veronica. Excellent. May justice be served to the fullest extent. human trafficking, sexual slavery, fleshploitation