‘Playmates’ pimp gets 10-year term
He ran prostitution ring from hotel
A South Florida pimp who ran a lucrative prostitution ring for several years out of an extended-stay hotel in the heart of Fort Lauderdale’s tourist district was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in federal prison.
Miguel Arcangel Hernandez, 50, of Miami Beach pleaded guilty earlier this year to eight federal charges. He admitted he was the ringleader of the sex-for-hire business that offered “International Playmates” and “Latina Power” escorts. The women lived and worked at an extended stay hotel just
blocks from Fort Lauderdale’s 17th Street Causeway.
Lawyer Joel DeFabio, acting as Hernandez’s attorney, floated an unusual legal argument earlier this year when he accused federal prosecutors of discrimination and selective prosecution. He filed court papers suggesting Hernandez should get the same “sweetheart deal” that a prior administration at the U.S. Attorney’s Office gave to notorious billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein eight years ago.
Under Epstein’s deal, federal prosecutors agreed they would not file criminal charges against him and his associates and allowed him to plead guilty to relatively minor state charges. Epstein admitted he paid underage teen girls for sex and erotic massages at his Palm Beach mansion. The registered sex offender was jailed for less than 18 months and was allowed to leave jail and work at his local office most days.
“He got a pass,” DeFabio told the judge regarding Epstein, suggesting that a prison term of five years would be adequate punishment for Hernandez.
Prosecutor Matthew Grady of the U.S. Department of Justice’s human trafficking prosecution unit sidestepped the defense’s criticism of the Epstein deal. He told the judge that Hernandez’s case had more in common with the recent prosecution of a Key Largo man who was convicted of sextrafficking minors he met at a children’s shelter where he worked. That man, Ricky Atkins, was sentenced to more than 30 years in federal prison.
The defense argued that the women who worked for Hernandez were willing participants who worked in the sex industry before meeting him.
The prostitutes were mostly women from foreign countries who were recruited and illegally imported into the U.S. by Hernandez’s network, but prosecutors said he also hired some local women and at least three minors.
One of the minors, DeFabio said, was recruited by her mother, who also worked for Hernandez. None of the women was locked up or forced towork, he said.
“Escort services, while illegal, are part of modern life, especially in South Florida,” DeFabio told the judge.
Prosecutors said Hernandez illegally brought workers into the U.S. and used the women and minors, who cannot legally consent to sex, to make money for himself. Hernandez, who deposited large amounts of cash in local banks and paid most of the hotel costs for the women in cash, also avoided paying income taxes, they said.
“He did sell them to finance his way of life,” prosecutors said. They said it was a “slap in the face” to honest people who work and pay taxes.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke, who had nothing to do with the Epstein case, told the lawyers she did not think the seven to eight years of imprisonment for Hernandez recommended by federal sentencing guidelines was sufficient. She imposed the 10-year term followed by two years of supervised release.
Hernandez, who has been locked up since he was arrested in January, did not speak in court.
Court records showthat Hernandez, whowas born in Puerto Rico and lived in the U.S. and Spain, fled Spain in 2009 to avoid serving a six-year sentence for immigration fraud. He will likely be sent back to Spain to serve that prison term after his 10-year punishment in the U.S.
Hernandez settled in Miami Beach and began running the prostitution business from the Extended Stay America hotel in the 1400 block of the 17th Street Causeway. The women served clients in Broward and Miami-Dade counties from 2010 to January of this year.
In one 11-month period, Hernandez spent more than $100,000, mostly in cash, on hotel rooms for the women, records show.
Prosecutors said the business was so successful that he recruited his younger brother, Eduardo Jose Hernandez, 47, to help him run it. The judge previously sentenced the younger brother to 10 months in federal prison for his lesser role in the crime.
Investigators said they found out about the business in August 2012 when a Spanish woman arrived at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. She told federal agents that she and several other women from Spain, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere worked as prostitutes for Hernandez at the hotel.