LOS ANGELES (KABC) — Eleven suspected gang members are facing federal charges for allegedly participating in a massive sex trafficking ring along the Figueroa Corridor in South Los Angeles, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The alleged victims include young women and teenage girls as young as 14. According to a federal indictment, the crimes occurred over the past four years with the suspected gang members acting as pimps, forcing the alleged victims to perform sex acts in several states across the country.
According to the indictment, the suspects forced the sex trafficking victims to pay them tens of thousands of dollars over the past several years after performing sex acts on men across the country. If they didn’t perform as ordered, the indictment alleges the suspects would threaten the alleged victims with violence.
“The allegations in the indictment are horrendous,” U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in an interview with Eyewitness News. “We’re talking about women and children as young as 14 years old being pimped out for sex in these motels.
“They were kidnapping them; they were drugging them; they were beating them; they were raping them and coercing them. A lot of them were in the foster system or recruited on social media.”
Residents in one neighborhood in Riverside reported loud flash bangs, announcements made over a loudspeaker and more than a dozen federal agents serving a search warrant at the home of one suspect. The suspect was arrested without incident.
According to the indictment, many of the suspects would brand their alleged victims with tattoos of their street names. In one incident in San Bernardino, three of the suspects are accused of attempting to force two alleged victims into their car. Those victims escaped.
One of the suspects is accused of stabbing his alleged sex trafficking victim with a pair of scissors, yanking her earrings until she started bleeding, and on multiple occasions driving her to a location in Riverside where he allegedly beat her and locked her inside a bedroom with no escape route.
“Anyone who is engaged in this behavior, we are coming for you,” Essayli said. “You may think you’re above the law or out of the reach of the law – you’re not. And just like these individuals had a wakeup call this morning, your door could be next, and we got more of these cases coming.”
If convicted as currently charged, several of the suspects face 15 years to life in federal prison.
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