Queens Family Behind Sex Trafficking Ring Convicted: Feds

QUEENS, NY — A Queens family who for decades forced young women and girls from Mexico into prostitution have been convicted on sex trafficking charges, authorities said.

Jurors found four family members in the so-called Cid-Hernandez sex trafficking ring guilty on all counts Thursday after a four-week federal trial, prosecutors said.

Since 2002, the quartet lured victims, including two young girls, into the U.S. with promises of work before they forced them to work as prostitutes, officials said.

One victim testified that she arrived in the country as a 15-year-old and found that her own aunt, Luz Elvira Cardona, brokered a deal to sell her virginity, prosecutors said. The victim then was forced to have sex with 20 or more men a day, authorities said.

"Today's verdict is a milestone in the dismantling of a sex trafficking organization that exploited young women and minors, it is justice for the vulnerable victims who suffered so much pain and suffering, and it is a reckoning for the perpetrators who will soon learn the consequences for their deplorable crimes," said United States Attorney Breon Peace, in a statement.

Besides Cardona, 37, the family members who were convicted are:

• Roberto Cesar Cid Dominguez, 60
• Blanca Hernandez Morales, 53
• Jose Facundo Zarate Morales, 34

The family drove young women and girls across New York and Connecticut, authorities said. They had also bribed a former Brewster police officer, Wayne Peiffer, with free sex in exchange for protection from law enforcement, prosecutors said.

Peiffer pleaded guilty in 2022 to guilty to conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act extortion and conspiracy to commit bribery and awaits sentencing.

All the family members except Cid Dominguez face up to life in prison. Cid Dominguez faces up to 40 years behind bars.