Tag: sex trafficking

Abercrombie & Epstein? Ex-CEO Sued Over Gay Sex Trafficking, Abuse Allegations

Abercrombie & Fitch is being sued along with its former CEO Mike Jeffries, who has been accused of running a giant sex-trafficking ring that exploited young men who wanted to become models for the brand.

Court documents depict a horror story wherein Jeffries, the once-celebrated architect of the brand’s provocative image, is accused of masterminding the despicable sex trafficking operation. Under this scheme, young men, dazzled by the glamour of modeling stardom, were allegedly subjected to sexual abuse under the guise that it would land them coveted modeling contracts, CNBC reports.

Earlier this month, a BBC investigation revealed systematic abuse, involving Jeffries’ partner Matthew Smith and associate James Jacobson, under the pretense of offering modeling gigs.

The BBC’s two-year investigation involving 12 witnesses reveals a systematic operation spanning from the 1990s through 2015, where Jeffries, aided by Smith and a conspicuous associate identified as James Jacobson, allegedly lured young men into an abusive quagmire. The promise of lucrative modeling contracts with A&F baited the trap, often leading to coercive sexual encounters at various luxury locations worldwide, from New York to Marrakesh.

The narratives shared by these men, including David Bradberry, sketch a sinister picture. The operation, disguised behind the glamour of A&F’s brand allure, often began with meetings involving Jacobson. With his striking appearance marked by a snakeskin patch over a missing nose, Jacobson is accused of acting as the gatekeeper to A&F’s inner sanctum, demanding sexual favors as the price for entry.

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NYC family convicted of running sex trafficking ring using ‘threats of force, fraud and coercion,’ bribing cop with sexual favors

The Queens family that allegedly operated a years-long sex trafficking ring involving young women and girls from Mexico — and bribed an upstate cop to cover up their horrific offenses in exchange for sexual favors — was found guilty this week, federal officials said. 

Luz Elvira Cardona, 35, her partner Jose Facundo Zarate Morales, 34, as well as her mother Blanca Hernandez Morales, 53, and the older woman’s partner, Roberto Cesar Cid Dominguez, 60, were all found guilty Thursday after a four-week jury trial in Brooklyn Federal Court.

During the sick scheme, Cardona even paid for her 15-year-old niece — who lived in Mexico — to come to New York back in 2007 under the pretense that she could start working as a cleaner, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. 

But once the teen arrived in Queens, her aunt, along with Morales, brokered a deal with a client to sell her virginity.

She was then forced to engage in “commercial sex” with 20 or more men daily, officials said. 

The family’s nefarious plot began in 2002 when they pressured young women and girls – including one other minor besides Cardona’s niece – to come to the US with false promises of a better life, and work lined up for them, the jury heard.

Instead, they “used force, threats of force, fraud and coercion” to pressure their victims to engage in prostitution, prosecutors said. 

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Hide-and-Seek: Jeffrey Epstein Victim Virginia Giuffre Fighting Jane Doe’s Objection to Unsealing of Records

Jeffrey Epstein’s loudest victim Virginia Giuffre is battling a woman associated with a sex trafficking case who is fighting tooth and nail to remain anonymous, RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal.

Giuffre, who famously accused Prince Andrew of sexually molesting her as a teenager, filed court documents in Manhattan federal court seeking to unseal the name of the woman labeled as Jane Doe #133.

“Doe 133’s objections to unsealing are the same as those the Court has already rejected numerous times: that unsealing certain documents might be embarrassing, would expose nonparties to media attention, and could result in some unfortunate association between the non-parties and Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell,” Guffre’s renowned attorney Sigrid S. McCawley wrote in a legal brief.

“But as the Court has previously recognized, such generalized concerns about annoyance or embarrassment are insufficient to overcome the presumption of public access to judicial documents in a case of great public interest like this one.”

Jane Doe #133 is among hundreds of anonymous characters implicated or simply named in a now-settled 2015 defamation lawsuit Guffre filed against Epstein’s alleged pimp Maxwell — who was convicted of sex trafficking and is 20 years in federal prison – for publicly calling her a liar.

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Hunter Biden was suspected of hiring prostitutes from ‘Eastern European sex trafficking ring’ during drug binges and falsifying checks to pay the women, Treasury documents reveal

Bank investigators suspected Hunter Biden was associated with a ‘sex trafficking ring’ and falsified checks to pay prostitutes, Treasury documents reveal.

Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) reviewed by DailyMail.com show the First Son’s accounts were being monitored as late as December 2019, after investigators found payments from Hunter and his companies to a suspected ‘Eastern European prostitution ring’.

A previously unreported document, filed to the Department of the Treasury on December 17, 2019 by financial crime investigators at Wells Fargo, picked out 25 individuals linked to the suspected ring and almost $7million of suspicious transactions, some of which included checks from Hunter that they believed may have been falsified to hide his payments to hookers from his business account.

The report, shown to DailyMail.com by a confidential source, said ‘Biden has sent money to individuals who may be part of an Eastern European prostitution ring’, and that investigators were monitoring ‘several [Wells Fargo] customers suspected of participating in a sex trafficking ring associated with Biden’.

Others associated with the ring included women with Russian passports and a China-based company to which money was funneled.

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Bloodthirsty female kingpins of nationwide sex trafficking ring circulated videos showing brutal torture of rivals

The depraved ringleaders of a Queens-based, nationwide sex-trafficking and prostitution ring with “significant” ties to “China” posed for cheery selfies hours after a victim they targeted was “viciously beaten by a rolling pin,” prosecutors said.

The doe-eyed duo —  manager Yuan Yuan Chen and her boss Rong Rong Xu —  were part of a Flushing-based sex ring that extended all the way to Oregon and included hundreds of sex workers, most of whom were migrants from China forced to hand over their passports, according to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace.

Prosecutors said both women made numerous trips from Flushing’s Chinatown to China.

Yuan Yuan Chen, 30, was indicted on September 15 after Xu, 31, was arrested last year.

The selfie they took together — just hours after allegedly siccing enforcers on rival sex workers at a Kansas hotel in 2020 — was included in paperwork prosecutors filed to deny Chen bail

In “complete disregard for the victim,” the two women “posed for nearly a dozen ‘selfies,’  smiling and having fun, hours after the victim . . . had been viciously beaten with a rolling pin,” prosecutors wrote.

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Lawsuit Over Sex-Trafficked Teen Could Stop Schools From Hiding Kids’ Dysphoria

The mother of a Virginia teen sex-trafficked twice after her school concealed her newly asserted gender identity has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against school staff and a Maryland public defender who alleged parental “misgendering” and abuse. The complaint was filed Aug. 22 in the Western District of Virginia court on behalf of Michele Blair by the Child and Parental Rights Campaign (CPRC) with support from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR).

It alleges that the defendants’ actions—first in withholding vital information about the girl’s gender identification and related assault in the boys’ bathroom, then later by falsely alleging abuse to deprive her mother of custody—resulted in the child’s ordeal at the hands of sexual predators not once, but twice. Blair v. Appomattox et al. will set critical precedents in two areas of roiling national debate: parental notification of gender transition in schools and parental custody relating to gender identity.

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A Cop Jailed Her for 2 Years on Fake Charges. Will She Ever Get Justice?

A Minnesota woman has resuscitated her effort to sue a police officer who jailed her as a teenager for two years on false charges associated with a sham sex trafficking investigation that the FBI once billed as its largest human trafficking crackdown. The case is another example of the legal labyrinth victims are required to navigate when attempting to get recourse after the government infringes on their rights and once again raises the question: How inoculated should those government officials be from civil suits for violating the Constitution?

Hamdi Mohamud’s odyssey began over a decade ago when St. Paul police officer Heather Weyker had her arrested on witness tampering charges concerning a woman named Muna Abdulkadir, who allegedly attacked Mohamud and her friends at knifepoint. Abdulkadir was crucial to Weyker’s sex-trafficking case, which, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit conceded, was “plagued with problems from the start.” Some of those problems included Weyker lying under oath, coercing witnesses, editing police reports, and making up evidence.

The groundless charges against Mohamud were ultimately dropped, but not until she spent about two years in federal prison, where those accused of federal crimes are typically held pretrial.

When Mohamud sued, Weyker was denied qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that makes it difficult to sue state and local government actors unless their alleged misconduct was “clearly established” in a prior court precedent. Yet the 8th Circuit in 2020 overturned that decision, citing Weyker’s position on a federal task force. Government employees at the federal level receive an even more muscular immunity.

“Qualified immunity makes it very, very difficult to sue government officials,” Patrick Jaicomo, an attorney at the Institute for Justice (I.J.), told me in 2021. “This makes it impossible.” The U.S. Supreme Court further strengthened that protection in June 2022.

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GOP donor Anton Lazzaro sentenced to 21 years for sex trafficking minors in Minnesota

A formerly well-connected GOP donor convicted of giving teenage girls gifts, alcohol and money in exchange for sex was sentenced Wednesday to 21 years in prison on sex trafficking charges.

Anton “Tony” Lazzaro was found guilty in March by a federal jury of seven counts involving “commercial sex acts” with five girls ages 15 and 16 in 2020, when Lazzaro was 30. The charges carried mandatory minimum sentences of 10 years with a maximum of life in prison.

Prosecutors had requested a 30-year sentence for Lazzaro. They likened Lazzaro to financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested in 2019 on federal charges accusing him of paying underage girls for massages and then abusing them at his homes in Florida and New York. The defense asked for no more than 10 years.

“He’s a sex trafficker,” prosecutor Laura Provinzino said. “One who has shown absolutely no remorse. He has accepted no responsibility for his crimes.”

U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz came down in the middle and had harsh words for Lazzaro.

He said Lazzaro showed sympathy to only two people during the trial — “to himself and Jeffrey Epstein.” And the judge said he was struck by the “soulless, almost mechanical nature” of how Lazzaro exploited the girls.

“It’s almost as if Mr. Lazzaro set up a sex trafficking assembly line,” Schiltz said.

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Global investigation leads to child sex abuse operation that charged 19 men, removed 13 Australian children from harm

The murder of two FBI agents in the United States during a child sexual abuse investigation has led to charges against 19 men and 13 children being removed from harm in Australia.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) has revealed details of the joint FBI operation targeting child abuse material on the dark web.

The investigation dates back to February 2021 when FBI agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger were gunned down as they served a search warrant on a paedophile computer programmer who was distributing child sexual abuse material in Florida.

The programmer, David Lee Huber, was thought to have watched the agents through a doorbell camera before shooting them through the unopened door and then killing himself.

Three other agents were injured in the shooting.

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Bloomberg ‘Sound Of Freedom’ Hit Piece Written By Pro-Pedo Contributor

Following the release of the “Sound of Freedom,” Jim Caviezel’s anti-child-trafficking film, a chorus of mainstream hit-pieces came out denouncing it as a “QAnon” conspiracy flick.

But one author of a recent SoF hit-piece in Bloomberg isn’t just against the movie, he’s a pedo-defending freelancer who used to work for an organization working to normalize pedophilia.

Meet Noah Berlatsky: he’s just your average liberal mainstream media news contributor. Ironically, Berlatsky’s latest criticism of the drama focusing on the grave yet glossed over issue of child trafficking lambasted the movie with vitriolic scorn for perpetuating dangerous tropes, whilst he himself turned to the truly tired trope of accusing the movie of packaging together various QAnon conspiracy theories and being a movie made for alt-right boomers. There’s just one problem…Berlatsky has a sordid history of advocating for the normalization of pedophilia.

In 2021, Berlatsky was named the communications director at Prostasia, a non-profit organization which has dedicates itself to a self-avowed mission of protecting children from sexual abuse. While that on its face sounds antithetical to advocating for the normalization of pedophilia, a deeper look into Prostasia’s published content shows it merely masquerades under the guise of acting in the interest of protecting children from sexual abuse in order to promote a much more perverse ulterior motive.

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