A Mexican man was arrested and taken to the United States for allegedly running a decades-old sex trafficking ring with his two brothers in Queens.
A Mexican man has been arrested and taken to the United States for allegedly running a decades-old sex trafficking ring with his two brothers in Queens, federal prosecutors said.
Leonardo Jiménez-Rodríguez was extradited to Brooklyn, where he faces charges of sex trafficking, interstate prostitution and alien smuggling for allegedly bringing young women from Mexico to the United States, where they were forced into sex work.
Jiménez Rodríguez, 39, was arrested in May following a joint investigation involving the National Security Investigation and the Mexican Federal Police.
His older siblings, Marcos, 46, and Melisa Jiménez Rodríguez, 41, had previously been arrested in Queens for their involvement in the scheme, authorities said.
The couple worked with his family and brother to deceive women with false promises of romantic relationships, before “brutally” forcing them into prostitution in the United States between 1997 and May 2018, according to Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of NY.
The brothers had apartments in Brooklyn and Queens where they kept their alleged victims, who were forced to work in brothels and other locations including New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Boston, Philadelphia, Virginia and Washington, DC, according to Peace.
The joint investigation into the “Jiménez Rodríguez Sex Trafficking Organization,” based in Tenancingo, Mexico, a notorious trafficking city, and New York, has led to charges against more than 175 people involved in Georgia, New York, Florida, and Texas. , along with some in Mexico.