A Cuban national living in Texas faces multiple federal charges for allegedly using false promises and coercion to force four Cuban women into commercial sex work for his financial benefit, the Justice Department announced.
Michel Cedeno-Castillo, 41, is set to make his initial appearance in Houston after the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs worked with the Government of Panama to secure his arrest and extradition from Panama.
According to court documents, Cedeno-Castillo lured the four victims from Cuba to Texas with false promises of lucrative employment in the United States. Once the women arrived, he allegedly transported them within the Southern District of Texas while knowing, or recklessly disregarding the fact, that they had entered the country in violation of the law. He then allegedly used threats of violence, physical abuse, and other coercive means to force them into prostitution for his monetary gain.
“The defendant has been indicted for luring vulnerable women from Cuba to the United States with promises of financial stability only to force them to have sex with men for money for his monetary gain,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Acting U.S. Attorney John G.E. Marck for the Southern District of Texas said Cedeno-Castillo “allegedly lured women with lies and forced them into prostitution,” adding that human traffickers who flee the United States should know prosecutors “will work with our international partners, pursue every legal avenue, and wait as long as it takes to bring them to justice.”
Special Agent in Charge Lucia Cabral-DeArmas of ICE Homeland Security Investigations’ Houston Field Office called the extradition a “powerful message of deterrence to transnational criminal organizations across the globe.”
Cedeno-Castillo faces charges of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; importing an alien for immoral purposes; conspiracy to transport an alien in the United States for financial gain; transporting for purposes of prostitution; extortion; and cyberstalking. If convicted, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and up to life in prison.
An indictment is merely an allegation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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