Mexican man arrested, extradited to NYC for running sex trafficking ring, feds say

Sex was this family’s business.

A Mexican man was arrested and brought to the United States for allegedly running a decades-long sex trafficking ring with his two siblings in Queens, federal prosecutors said Saturday.

Leonardo Jimenez-Rodriguez was extradited to Brooklyn, where he faces charges of sex trafficking, interstate prostitution and alien smuggling for allegedly bringing young women from Mexico to the US, where they were forced into sex work.

Jimenez-Rodriguez, 39, was arrested in May following a joint investigation involving Homeland Security Investigation and the Mexican Federal Police.

His older siblings, Marcos, 46, and Melisa Jimenez-Rodriguez, 41, had previously been arrested in Queens for their roles in the scheme, authorities said.

The pair worked with their family and brother to dupe women with false promises of romantic relationships, before “brutally” forcing them into prostitution in America between 1997 and May 2018, according to Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

The siblings had apartments in Brooklyn and Queens where they kept their alleged victims, who were forced work in brothels and other locations that included New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Boston, Philadelphia, Virginia and Washington, DC, according to Peace.

The joint investigation into the “Jimenez-Rodriguez Sex Trafficking Organization” — based in Tenancingo, Mexico, a notorious trafficking city, and New York — has led to charges against more than 175 people involved in Georgia, New York, Florida and Texas, along with some in Mexico.