Queens residents, police officer busted in major sex trafficking scheme

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Queens residents, police officer busted in major sex trafficking scheme


https://www.amny.com/new-york/queens-re ... ng-scheme/



Five Queens individuals and a police officer from an upstate community were charged in an indictment Tuesday for their roles in a major sex trafficking ring that smuggled minors from Mexico for prostitution in the New York area.

Federal prosecutors said four of the Queens suspects were picked up Tuesday morning at their homes: Luz Elvira Cardona, 33; Roberto Cesar Cid Dominguez, 54; Blanca Hernandez Morales, 51; and Jose Facundo Zarate Morales, 32. A fifth suspect — Cristian Noe Godinez, 42 — remains at large as a fugitive from justice, authorities said.

Agents also apprehended Wayne Peiffer, 48, an officer with the Village of Brewster in Putnam County, whom prosecutors said allegedly provided the sex trafficking ring with protection in exchange for free sexual favors — which he sometimes received from the very police station where he worked.

“[T]he defendants conspired to lure young women and minor girls to travel to the United States based on false promises of a better life and forced them into prostitution once they arrived,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace of the Eastern District of New York. “The defendants allegedly received assistance in carrying out this conspiracy from a corrupt police officer who traded the honor of his badge and sworn oath for free sexual services.”

The sex trafficking ring was halted through the investigative efforts of the FBI’s New York Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes the NYPD, with assistance of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department.

According to the indictment, the ring comprised of a trafficking operation that Cid-Dominguez allegedly led and a prostitution business under Godinez’s alleged purview.

Prosecutors said the trafficking outfit has been smuggling in young women, including minors, from Mexico for nearly 20 years, beginning in about May 2002. The ring operators used a combination of false promises of a better life in America, and outright coercion (including threats of force) to come to the United States and sell their bodies to strangers.

Godinez’s alleged prostitution business transported the victims from various locations in Queens to trysts with clients around New York state, including in Brewster, where Peiffer was sworn to protect the vulnerable as a local police officer.

But instead, federal prosecutors alleged, Peiffer took advantage of the situation. Since about 2006, he allegedly offered protection of the sex trafficking and the prostitution business, receiving in return free sexual favors from prostitutes that the operators sent directly to h