Category: Perpetrators

“I told them that he didn’t want to come… there was no reason to bring him and he didn’t want to come. He didn’t want to go through all that. I also told them that the Marshall’s service didn’t want to go through the hassle and everyone was fine with that.”

“With this extradition, the defendant Jose Miguel Melendez-Rojas will be held accountable in a United States court for sex trafficking women and girls and related crimes. “Melendez-Rojas was flown thousands of miles back to New York, N.Y. to face charges.“The Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law those who profit from forcing vulnerable victims into sexual servitude.”

Jeffrey Epstein accused of orchestrating a sex-trafficking ring had been taken off suicide watch before he killed himself in a New York jail. “Unequivocally, he should have been on active suicide watch and therefore under direct and constant supervision,” Cameron Lindsay said.

Weinstein’s lawyers had sought to take the unusual step of immediately appealing Judge Robert W. Sweet’s ruling last August that the proverbial Hollywood casting couch – in which aspiring actors and actresses are promised valuable professional opportunities in exchange for sexual favors – could be considered a “commercial sex act.”

In a recent court filing, prosecutors said that entities controlled by Mr. Epstein own at least two private jets in active service, and that at least one of them is capable of traveling internationally. He frequently traveled by private jet between his homes in New York and Palm Beach, Fla., according to the indictment against him.

Lance Hamilton, 30, of Foch Boulevard, pleaded guilty on Jan. 23 to one-count of sex trafficking before Acting Queens Supreme Court Justice Peter F. Vallone Jr., who sentenced him to five to 10 years in prison. Hamilton was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison Monday after pleading guilty to forcing a teenage girl into the sex trade.

Jennifer Araoz whose father died of AIDS when she was just 12, was led to Epstein’s New York home by that recruiter, according to her recollection. She said she was slowly manipulated into sex acts until she was “forcefully raped” by Epstein. Maria Farmer, another accuser, claimed that both Epstein and a woman named Ghislaine Maxwell sexually abused her and her 15-year-old sister.

An indictment alleging sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy was unsealed Monday morning against financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “The victims, who were as young as 14 years of age, were told by Epstein or other individuals to partially or fully undress before beginning the ‘massage. The 66-year-old also allegedly “incentivized his victims” to become recruiters by paying the victim-recruiters hundreds of dollars for each girl brought to him.

Scott Wilbert has been linked to one of the region’s most prominent sex trafficking cases — and who once sexually molested a 2-year-old — is going to prison for only It appears that the decision not to seek charges against Wilbert was related to his willingness to cooperate with the government. Wilbert’s “history of sexual abuse of children clearly demonstrates the danger he poses to the community,” Marangola wrote in court papers.