Sex slave pimp gets 15 years
A PIMP HAILING from a notorious town of sex traffickers in Mexico was spared a life sentence Wednesday in Brooklyn Federal Court despite the searing plea for the maximum penalty by a victim he raped and forced into prostitution and four abortions.
Antonio Lira-Robles was begging for the mandatory minimum sentence of 180 months in prison for his participation in a “family business” of luring women from Mexico to the U.S. with false promises of romance, then forcing them to peddle their bodies.
Judge Kiyo Matsumoto sentenced him to 188 months, or 15 years and eight months, behind bars. She also gave him credit for the 31 months served in a Mexico jail while awaiting extradition to New York City.
“He seems devoid of feeling the suffering of others,” Matsumoto observed.
Lira-Robles, 38, had pleaded guilty to being a member of a cold-blooded ring for nearly a decade led by the Granados-Hernandos’ family in Tenancingo, considered ground zero for sex traffickers. A victim publicly identified only as Jane Doe No. 1 told the judge she met Lira-Robles in Mexico in 1998 and they became boyfriend and girlfriend. He soon began pimping her out.
“I was forced to have sex with thousands of men,” she said.
“I had sex with up to 60 clients in one day and was often forced to sell my body seven days a week. “He treated me like a sexual robot. He made promises that we would escape poverty if I worked in prostitution. But I never did,” she said.
Lira-Robles faces deportation after completing his sentence.