Three Cubans sentenced for crimes of sex trafficking committed in strip clubs

Three Cuban men were sentenced by a federal court in Texas after pleading guilty to committing crimes related to sex trafficking at Houston-area strip clubs, the US Justice Department said Thursday.

Rasiel Gutiérrez Moreno, 38, admitted having taken women from Cuba to the US, where he later imposed smuggling debts of up to $30,000.

The Justice Department described how the man “forced the women to work at Houston-area strip clubs, such as Michaels’ International, where they danced and engaged in commercial sexual acts with the club’s patrons, turning all the profits over to Gutiérrez Moreno. to pay your debt.

The defendant trafficked about 20 women in this manner. However, in the case of one of them, identified as Victim 1, she “boasted about her acts of violence against other women and their families.”

Gutiérrez Moreno allegedly hit another woman shortly before Victim 1 arrived at her house and forced her to observe that woman’s wounds. Victim 1 managed to escape from the man’s custody, however, according to the prosecution, he contacted his family in Miami and Cuba to demand that he return to work and “finish paying the debt.”

The defendant was sentenced to 210 months in prison and to pay $451,298 in restitution.

A second man identified as Hendry Jimenes Milanes, 39, pleaded guilty to coercion and seduction, for which he was sentenced to 120 months in prison and to pay $359,108 in restitution; and a third man identified as Rafael Mendoza Labrada, 29, admitted having made interstate trips to support organized crime, for which he was sentenced to 34 months in prison.

“These defendants cruelly used violence, threats of violence, and false debts to coerce vulnerable victims into participating in the sex trade,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the Department of Civil Rights Division, said in written statements. Justice.

Alamdar Hamdani, US Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, added that “these human traffickers terrorized migrant women, using Houston strip clubs combined with psychological threats and sexual violence for their personal financial gain.”

The federal prosecutor assured that the Cuban women came to the United States “in search of a new life,” which made them especially vulnerable to being victims of the crimes committed against them.

The State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service investigated the case as part of the Alliance to Rescue Human Trafficking, with assistance from the Miami Homeland Security Investigations division and the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. .

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