Their defense: No proof of pimping
Bail set at $20G on human-trafficking charges
A judge ordered a Revere husband and wife accused of running a sex ring held on $20,000 bail yesterday after their defense attorneys argued prosecutors don’t have enough evidence to back up the human-trafficking charges they’re facing.
“I have this girl, I will try to bring pretty girls to you,” Assistant District Attorney Melissa Brooks said in East Boston District Court while reading text messages sent from a number associated with online sex-for-cash ads and linked to Cesar AldanaCarranza.
Aldana-Carranza, 48, and his wife Elda Munoz, 42, stood inside the holding bay as the prosecutor described their alleged operation.
Brooks asked that each defendant be held on $100,000 cash bail, while their attorneys requested a low cash bail or release on recognizance.
Judge John McDonald Jr. set a $20,000 bail for each.
The couple was arrested Thursday along with Nabia Enamorado, a relative of Aldana-Carranza, Brooks said. Police surveilled an address on Bradstreet Avenue in Revere, the sex ring’s “dispatch center,” and an address on Putnam Street in East Boston, where the women being trafficked were housed, Brooks said.
Cops tailed Munoz as she drove a woman to a prearranged meeting with an undercover police officer, who said the woman could barely speak English, Brooks said.
After leaving the meeting, police followed Munoz as she picked up her husband and drove the woman to two other addresses, where she went inside for about a half-hour each time, Brooks said. The time frame, investigators said, was consistent with an escortbabylon.com ad that listed a 30-minute visit for $100.
“What is that?” attorney Francisco Napolitano, representing Aldana-Carranza, exclaimed in reference to the undercover meet.
“I can tell you what it wasn’t, it wasn’t sexual,” he said. “They saw a young lady go into a house and come out 30 minutes later, you say there was some sex going on there, but you don’t know.”
Napolitano said the actions could be consistent with Aldana-Carranza’s claim of working as a taxi driver, adding, “to make the link to being the head of some sex ring is just too much.”
Patrick Murphy, representing Munoz, described the woman as a mother of two and stressed the state doesn’t have enough to prove the trafficking charge.
“There is simply no evidence the commonwealth can provide to the court today that my client caused or enticed or recruited anybody to do anything,” Murphy said.
Brooks told the court $7,000 was recovered at the couple’s Revere apartment and she expected investigations into cellphones, computers and bank records to back up the state’s trafficking allegation.
Aldana-Carranza, Munoz and Enamorado, who Brooks said may be AldanaCarranza’s niece, are all due back in court June 28.