Crime
Dominican woman sex trafficked Hispanic immigrants, says FBI
According to the indictment, the suspect preyed on Spanish-speaking immigrant women who had recently arrived in the United States and were looking for work, forcing them into prostitution
September 1, 2022 2:37pm
Updated: September 2, 2022 5:40pm
A woman of Dominican origin was arrested in New York on sex trafficking charges, whose victims could number as many as a hundred Spanish-speaking women over the course of a 10-year criminal operation in the Bronx and Westchester, the FBI reported on Tuesday.
Ysenni Gomez, 39, was arrested on August 12 in Tarrytown, New York on charges of coercing a woman into prostitution by threatening her with deportation.
The alleged sex trafficker may have coerced other women into sex work, according to authorities.
Gomez had posted an ad on the Internet seeking waitresses to work at a Manhattan restaurant and gave the job to one of the women who responded to the ad, but on the victim's first day, "Gomez told her there was no waitress position and forced her into having sex with men by threatening to call federal authorities to have her deported," according to the FBI statement, which also noted that the defendant's arrest was in collaboration with local law enforcement agents.
The investigation against Gomez turned up more than 1,600 online advertisements related to her promoting prostitution, which had been posted for about 10 years on social networks such as Facebook and adult classified sites.
Investigators said the suspect used the name Carolina and Ysenni Peguero as aliases and may also have used "Chicas Express" as a business name to post the ads.
Investigators believe Gomez may have hundreds of victims so they activated the phone lines for women connected to the case, regardless of their immigration status, to provide information against the alleged sex trafficker.
