09/20/2010

News / Brooklyn Woman Pleads Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to Participating in Organized Crime-Related Sex Trafficking Ring

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that SUZANNE PORCELLI pled guilty earlier today to sex trafficking charges before U.S. Magistrate Judge RONALD L. ELLIS in Manhattan federal court. PORCELLI was arrested in April 2010 in connection with a takedown of 14 members and associates of the Gambino Organized Crime Family. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge LEWIS A. KAPLAN.

As alleged in the Indictment and other public filings in the case:

From at least June 2009 to about September 2009, PORCELLI and numerous co-conspirators—including co-defendants THOMAS OREFICE, DOMINICK DIFIORE, ANTHONY MANZELLA, MICHAEL SCOTTO, DAVID EISLER, and STEVEN MAIURRO—built and operated an interstate prostitution business where young women were exploited and sold for sex. The defendants first recruited various young women to work as prostitutes and then advertised the prostitution business on Craigslist and other websites and had a phone number where customers could call in to set up appointments to have sex with the women. The defendants drove the women to appointments in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and New Jersey to have sex with customers and took approximately 50 percent of the money paid to the women. They also made the women available for sex to gamblers at a weekly, high-stakes poker games that OREFICE and his crew ran.

PORCELLI’s primary involvement in the scheme was to coordinate appointments for the business. PORCELLI handled the business’s phone line, took incoming calls from customers to arrange appointments, and assigned other co-conspirators to drive the women to the appointments.

PORCELLI is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge KAPLAN on January 21, 2011. She faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Mr. BHARARA praised the work of the FBI and noted that the investigation is continuing.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys ELIE HONIG, STEVE KWOK, and NATALIE LAMARQUE are in charge of the prosecution. The case is being handled by the Office’s Organized Crime Unit.

http://newyork.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel10/nyfo091710.htm

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