An Indian American motel owner, who regularly rented rooms to pimps who forced women to engage in prostitution, pleaded guilty last week to financially benefiting from a sex trafficking scheme operated out of Riviera Motel in New Orleans.
Kanubhai Patel, a.k.a Kenny and Pop, of Kenner, Louisiana, confessed to prosecutors that as the former owner of the motel, he regularly rented rooms to individuals, who were also charged as sex trafficking co-conspirators in connection with this case. Patel knew that the individuals were pimps and coerced women into prostitution.
According to prosecutors, Patel admitted that although he never personally recruited, groomed or coerced any of the victims, he benefited financially from the sex trafficking operation.
The guilty plea of Patel, 74, was announced July one by Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division and the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and US Attorney Kenneth Allen Polite Jr. of the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Gupta said in a statement that the the Department of Justice will not tolerate those trafficking in human beings or benefiting financially from human trafficking. “We will continue to bring to justice, not only those who use force and coercion to exploit other human beings, but also those entities or individuals who knowingly profit from these depraved acts.”
Polite added that Patel “callously profited from a sex trafficking venture” that used force, fraud and coercion to compel women to engage in commercial sex acts and these crimes often pass without detection because victims live in fear of physical abuse, threats and other forms of coercion.
According to evidence and documents presented in court, Patel would charge the pimps and sex trafficking co-conspirators higher rates than other motel guests, and would open the motel’s gate to allow the women to bring customers back to the hotel.
Patel learned that members of the sex trafficking conspiracy physically assaulted women they prostituted, including in one instance in which a co-conspirator brutally beat one woman with a large piece of wood while she screamed for help, leaving her with multiple lacerations and what appeared to be a broken arm. Patel also saw the damage that a co-conspirator caused to a motel room during a beating, including a broken toilet, a damaged sink and blood on the walls.
Patel agreed not to call the police after the co-conspirator paid him for the damage to the room. Patel also knew that besides sex trafficking, the pimps would take the women’s identification cards from them. Patel saw the sex trafficking co-conspirators possessing the women’s identification cards and using them to rent hotels. Patel did not report them to police as long as they paid their rent.
At sentencing, Patel faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in prison for benefiting financially from participating in a trafficking scheme involving control of victims’ identification documents.
Five other defendants have pleaded guilty in connection with the case, including Zacchaeus Taylor, 22, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking conspiracy and to transportation for purposes of prostitution. All the other defendants are from Memphis, Tennessee, and each faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in prison for conspiracy and a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for transportation for prostitution.
Patel was charged in a second superseding indictment returned Oct. 3, 2014.
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