Lawrence “Larry” Ray has been discovered responsible of racketeering, trafficking, compelled labor and will face life in jail after he was convicted on Wednesday, April 6.
Lawrence Ray was found responsible of sex trafficking and different crimes for forcing younger adults into prostitution or compelled labor after winning their belief by posing as a father figure.
Larry began a cult amongst his daughter Sarah Lawrence’s buddies in her school dormitory 12 years in the past and engaged in racketeering, sex trafficking and forced labor on his younger adult victims, the courtroom mentioned
It took the jury just few hours on Wednesday to convict Ray, 62, on all 15 counts.
Within the last decade Larry ran a felony enterprise during which he brainwashed and abused his victims, extracting free labor and a big amount of “restitution” cash.
The courtroom was shown proof how Ray took control of a set of his daughter Talia’s school pals after transferring into their campus housing in 2010.
One of many victims, Santos Rosario, later introduced two of his sisters into the combination; their involvement with Ray devastated the Rosario household financially and psychologically.
Each sisters are Ivy League-educated, however Felicia Rosario, a medical college graduate, dropped out of her residency program at a California hospital to be with Ray and never went again.
She now works as a tutor; her youthful sister Yalitza is unemployed.
The three siblings, who had been in courton Wednesday to listen to the decision, left the courtroom with prosecutors.
They declined to talk to reporters after.
The courtroom heard how Ray collected blackmail materials by routinely filming or taking audio recordings of his victims confessing to non-existent offenses and crimes.
After aome time, he began to order the younger adults to do chores for him and started giving them sexual assignments, including sometimes to have intercourse with one another.
Claudia Drury, one among his victims, joined his cult aged 19. She testified that she spent 4 years working as a prostitute in New York resort rooms, giving about $2.5 million in her earnings on to Ray.
Additionally, Santos Rosario labored as a waiter one summer season, handing off the whole lot he earned to Ray. He additionally paid Ray $150,000 in installments, money that he acquired from his parents, plus one other $13,000 he stole from their enterprise.
“When [Ray’s] victims had been utterly subdued, after they had been underneath his management, he dedicated crimes to get them to pay — extortion, compelled labor, intercourse trafficking, obstruction of justice, financial crimes,” Assistant U.S. Legal professional Mary Bracewell argued .
“The defendant did all of this for management, for his personal greed, and to extend his energy, to cement his place within the organized group that he led.”
He moved into his daughter’s dorm and focused her roommates for intercourse trafficking, prosecutors mentioned.
Prosecutors mentioned Ray captivated his psychologically fragile admirers with tales about his life and the contacts he mentioned he had in authorities, legislation enforcement and the navy. He as soon as was shut with former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, serving as as finest man at Kerik’s wedding ceremony.
Ray took credit score for sending Kerik to jail on corruption-related expenses in 2010.
He informed victims that he believed there was a authorities conspiracy to hurt him and that his enemies, together with Kerik, had been out to get him. He additionally accused his victims of working along with his enemies to poison him, his daughter and others.
Ray’s victims had been conditioned to consider they had been responsible, and in flip they conceded that they owed Ray favors and some huge cash. They testified that they had been petrified of going to jail for what Ray informed them had been crimes, and mentioned he routinely threatened to show them in.
He’s scheduled for sentencing Sept. 16 and faces the potential of life in jail on his intercourse trafficking conviction and a long time behind bars on the opposite counts.
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