3 El Paso men get prison for prostitution scheme involving underage girls
A federal judge has sentenced three El Paso men for their roles in a sex trafficking scheme involving underage girls.
Thursday, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone sentenced Khalil S. Maxwell, 22, to 25 years in federal prison followed by ten years of supervised release. Maxwell was also known as “Korrupt” and “Khalil Zero Tolerance,” federal prosecutors said.
On May 16, 2019, Cardone sentenced Daniel Chavez, 28, to ten years in federal prison followed by ten years of supervised release. On May 15, 2019, the judge sentenced Raymundo Nettles, 21, to nine years in federal prison followed by ten years of supervised release. Judge Cardone also ordered each defendant to pay a $5,000 fine.
“The miscreants who inflicted violence on children to coerce them into selling sex were given long prison terms,” said U.S. Attorney John F. Bash, “We need to do more as a society to prevent this kind of abuse in the first place.”
Maxwell led a sex trafficking ring in El Paso from March 11, 2015 through October 31, 2016 and “used physical violence to intimidate” underage girls into prostitution. The ages of the victims ranged from 13 to 17, prosecutors said.
Maxwell enlisted Chavez and Nettles to rent hotel rooms and to drive the underage girls to hotels and other locations where the prostitution ocurred, investigators said. On February 1, 2019, Maxwell pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of children by force, fraud, or coercion and a count of sex trafficking of children. In January 2019, Chavez and Nettles pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge.
“These sentences assure this heinous sexual predator and his accomplices will not prey on any more girls for a long, long time,” said HSI El Paso Special Agent in Charge Staton. “It also serves as a sobering warning to those engaged in the sex trafficking of minors: HSI will continue to work relentlessly with its law enforcement partners to identify these dangerous offenders and bring them to justice.”
