St. Paul federal jury convicts all 5 on trial in Thai sex trafficking case

International probe led to charges against 39 people accused of trafficking hundreds of women to U.S. 

By Stephen Montemayor Star Tribune

 

After Wednesday's verdicts, U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Erica MacDonald called the sex trafficking operation one of largest, most sophisticated transnational sex rings ever dismantled.

 

A federal jury in St. Paul has convicted all five people charged with conspiring to traffic hundreds of Thai women for sex, siding with prosecutors who alleged during a six-week trial that the defendants and nearly three dozen other co-conspirators ran a lucrative business that spanned more than a decade and crossed international borders.

 

Jurors returned guilty verdicts on all counts Wednesday afternoon, barely a day after receiving the case following six weeks of trial. Two waves of defendants from across the country were charged in the case, beginning in October 2016 and again in May 2017. All but five pleaded guilty to avoid trial. Prosecutors described the case as “modern-day sex slavery” and argued that the defendants forced Thai women to work long hours having sex with multiple men daily to pay off “bondage debts” owed to traffickers for help coming to the United States. Prosecutors said victims, some of whom testified during the trial, were misled as to how much they truly owed and were threatened if they tried to leave the business.

 

Full story: http://www.startribune.com/st-paul-federal-jury-convicts-all-5-on-trial-in-thai-sex-trafficking-case/502626291/

 

-- Star Tribune 2018-12-13

Only scum earn a living from pimping their fellow man/woman.

Even if the women consented to work as prostitutes, exploiting them through debt bondage and stealing their earnings is human trafficking.

 

Well done, prosecutors.

Look who’s going to get pimped now lol better hope you aren’t put in the General population in prison lol

St Paul.  Got some long tough cold winters there.  but reading the article it looks like they moved around between California and Texas, and even one of the Thai ladies eventually joined or maybe even started as one of the marketers and ran her own part of the ring.  What a piece of crap knowing and taking advantage of other Thais