MS-13 gang leader to serve 50 years for sex trafficking teens

InsideNoVa.com ^ | June 03, 2012 | Amanda Stewart

[kevcol]

ALEXANDRIA, Va. --

MS-13 gang leader to serve 50 years for sex trafficking teens in Northern Virginia

A gang member was sentenced Friday to serve 50 years in prison for forcing girls as young as 14 to work as prostitutes in Northern Virginia.

A jury at U.S. District Court in Alexandria in February found 24-year-old Rances Ulices Amaya, also known as “Murder” or “Blue,” guilty of conspiring to commit sex trafficking of a child and three counts of sex trafficking.

According to an affidavit on file in federal court, Amaya, of Springfield, a leader of the criminal street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, prostituted teen girls at hotels throughout northern Virginia, including in Woodbridge, Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church.

Prosecutors said Amaya began prostituting teen girls in 2009 and used his affiliation with MS-13 “to keep customers and the victims compliant and fearful” and ran the prostitution ring “in an effort both to raise capital for MS-13 and to raise his stature in the gang,” according to court documents He often carried a machete with him, prosecutors said.

Amaya would solicit customers “at sites frequented by Hispanic day laborers, such as 7-Eleven stores.” They often sought out illegal immigrants as customers because they did not think illegal immigrants would call the police, prosecutors said in a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

According to the news release, Amaya frequently had the clients and prostitutes meet at hotels in the Falls Church area.

The prostitutes were all between the ages of 14 and 17 years old and were forced to have sex with eight to 10 paying customers a day, prosecutors said. According to court documents, Amaya often raped the girls and also gave them drugs and alcohol.

“Rances Amaya’s gang name was ‘Murder,’ and in a real sense he killed the hopes and dreams of teenage girls whom he systematically and sadistically victimized,” U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride said in a statement. “He told these girls that he owned them and that he would hurt their loved ones if they didn’t comply. They were his sex slaves, and that slavery goes to the heart of the heinous crime of sex trafficking. These girls have traumatic scars that will last a lifetime, and Mr. Amaya is justly going to spend the rest of his productive life paying for his crimes.”

[kevcol]

"MS-13 operates in at least 42 states and the District of Columbia and has about 6,000-10,000 members nationwide and is described as "America's Most Dangerous Gang." LINK

[raygunfan]

unless there is some sort of ongoing investigation of a specific individual...garbage like these should be shot on site....

[reagan_fanatic]

Kill him.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

We should have zero tolerance for gangs in the US. If we can clear out insurgents in whole cities in the middle east, we can clear out gangs in the US. It’s the lack of political will and the cancer that is political correctness that is responsible for the continued violence, disgusting sex trafficking, and the terrorism that is ongoing in our own inner cities.

[Beagle8U]

If Obama had a son...

[jakerobins]

This piece of garbage will just continue to run things from his prison cell......We need to shoot these monsters!

[Shannon]

I watched a show on tv about sex trafficking just last night. They get the young women from other countries with promises of work in a legitimate business. Once they arrive, everything changes. The reason the young women stay is because their families back home are threatened if they leave. I had no idea we have slaves right here in the US!

One of the law enforcement people interviewed said it's a better source of income for the criminals than drugs because once they sell a given quantity of drugs, that's it, it's gone. But with sex slaves, they'll keep using them for years. Horrible, horrible stuff.

[A Strict Constructionist]

“We should have zero tolerance for gangs in the US.”

We did when they were Italian, Irish, and Puerto Rican.

[no-to-illegals]

Mighty close to D.C. Would D.C. be involved? One can only guess. Am going to tell a story about a congresscritter that had to be dragged (or rather her staff did) to what was actually going on inside the nation. On second thought, that congresscritter is leaving. May she take her staff with her. Encounter with the congresscritter’s staff took place over fifteen years ago. Kicking and screaming they had to be dragged into looking at this situation as was/is. Refusal to believe it was happening was and is not an option. Tip of the iceberg, regrettably (imho).

[driftdiver]

Lots of those guys down here in Florida. Any trip to walmart will see them.

[rovenstinez]

All these twerps were kids who grew up fatherless in El Salvador. A war that went on...and on...and on. Today we have a fatherless generation in Mexico now mature, their dad’s went to work illegally in poultry slaughter houses. Has anyone done the calculations of the impact on our society for this cheap labor? Families were meant to have One Dad, and one Mom. Period. There are no substitutes, not even Big Sis and the Gov’t Nannies.

[CSM]

Good riddance dirtbag.

[paul51]

It's too profitable for law enforcement and the justice system to keep the wars going in perpetuity. It doesn’t matter if it’s the war on drugs, war on gangs, war on (insert whatever you want here). To win them would be like killing the golden goose that lives forever. To declare open season on any known gang member with a $1,000 bounty paid for each body would end the scourge in 30 days.