A US federal court Friday sentenced a leading member of a Mexican sex trafficking ring to more than 15 years in prison for forcing women and underage girls into prostitution in the United States. Paulino Ramirez Granados, a 39-year-old whose family ran a network that smuggled young women from Mexico to New York, pleaded guilty in July to threatening and using violence to coerce women into prostitution over the course of a decade.
Prosecutors said male members of the trafficking ring, which operated out of Tenancingo in Mexico's central Tlaxcala state, promised women love and marriage to dupe them into relationships and then force them into prostitution.