Tampa Bay Criminal Defense Lawyer - Human Trafficking in Pinellas County

By Nicholas Dorsten, Esq.

From the St. Petersburg Times, an article that discusses a rare crime in Pinellas...human trafficking.

LARGO — The young woman said she was smitten by the older man who frequented the local strip club where she worked as a dancer.

After she performed a private dance for him in a limo in January 2010, the two began dating. He promised he'd take care of her, she said, and based on that promise, she moved into his Largo home.

But instead, she said, he soon began to monitor her every move, took away her cell phone, began forbidding her to see family and friends and plied her with oxycodone in exchange for sexual favors, she said.

She told no one the full story, she said — until Tuesday, when police finally came to his home and the woman opened up to them.

After serving a search warrant and finding prescription drugs, more than $80,000 in cash and a ledger documenting how much oxycodone the man was giving her, Largo police arrested the 63-year-old man, living in Largo and charged him with human trafficking, a rare charge in Pinellas County.

Police said the suspect, a felon, controlled the woman for about a year and a half, keeping her as a virtual prisoner by taking advantage of her addiction to oxycodone. The suspect kept the drugs locked up in a 400-pound safe at his home they shared, police said.

"She has an addiction where he would end up supplying her, kind of preying on that addiction, because he had the ability to supply the narcotics she was addicted to," said a Largo police Lt. "She felt like she was trapped there or couldn't go anywhere."

The police is not naming the woman at time of publication due to the nature of the allegations.

But in a seperate interview Wednesday afternoon, the woman said the suspect initially offered her "a beautiful life." Then, after she moved into his beige stucco home in his quiet neighborhood south of Ulmerton Road, her "savior" began cutting off her ties with family and friends, she said. He threatened to hurt her or her loved ones if she told anyone what was happening, she said.

"He took anything and everything I had, any resources I had to get out," she said.

The woman did eventually acknowledged she was "highly addicted" to narcotic painkillers when she met the suspect, having gotten hooked on them after she suffered a debilitating back injury when she fell off a roof as a teenager. The man would dole out the pills to her and keep track in the ledger, she said.

In an arrest report, police said the suspect "began to control her movements and her dosages of oxycodone for sexual favors." Police said the suspect went so far as to have an alarm system at his house and refused to give the woman the code so he would know if she tried to leave. He also made her give him money she made at her job and he kept track of what she owed him, according to the report.

The woman said the suspect would go to her job and watch her, at times throwing fits if she talked to other people.

Police say they became aware of the situation after the suspect called them Tuesday morning, saying he wanted the woman out of his house.

After the woman told officers her side of the story, police got the warrant and found the money, the ledger and various drugs. The man also was charged with trafficking in oxycodone and possession of Xanax (an antianxiety medication), Trazadone and Fluoxetine (both antidepressants), Carisprodol (a muscle relaxer) and marijuana.

Human trafficking is a worldwide issue that generally takes the form of forced labor, domestic servitude or forced prostitution. Trafficked people can be physically forced or coerced or deceived into various exploits, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

In Pinellas County, the suspect is the seventh person charged with human trafficking over the past two years. In December, local authorities found 27 Hispanic and Asian people in two homes in Largo and Clearwater. The disposition of that case was still unresolved as of Wednesday.

The suspect owns the roughly 2,000-square-foot house with his wife, according to Pinellas County property appraiser records. Pinellas civil court documents show the man's wife (not surprisingly) filed for divorce in February. That case is ongoing.

Wednesday evening, the suspect was being held in the Pinellas County Jail in lieu of over $70,000 bail.

While he does not have a criminal history in Florida. But he was sentenced to a year in federal prison in Massachusetts in 1999 after he was convicted of charges related to selling cable television descramblers and descrambling kits that helped people get premium and pay-per-view channels without paying for them, according to federal court records and news reports.

Have you been arrested on prescription pill or trafficking in oxycodone charges? Then the Pinellas, Florida based Blake & Dorsten, P.A. Pinellas criminal defense lawyers are at your service.

For more information, or to speak directly with experienced Pinellas County criminal defense attorneys, please contact the law firm of BLAKE AND DORSTEN, P.A. at 727.286.6141or email the defense lawyers at: info@blakedorstenlaw.com