Defendant Previously Sentenced to Over 40 Years’
Imprisonment Ordered to Pay Restitution to Six Victims of Interstate Sex
Trafficking and Prostitution Enterprise
U.S. District Judge Carlos E. Mendoza of the Middle District
of Florida today ordered defendant Abdullah Hamidullah, 43, to pay
$1,179,000.00 in restitution to six victims of his sex trafficking and
interstate prostitution enterprise, the Justice Department announced. Last
month, the court sentenced the defendant to serve 482 months’ imprisonment and
a lifetime of supervised release. On
June 17, 2016, the defendant pleaded guilty to sex trafficking by force, fraud,
and coercion and related interstate prostitution violations, and agreed as a
term of his plea agreement to pay restitution to six victims identified in the
indictment.
At the Feb. 24, 2017 sentencing hearing, the court made
detailed findings, noting that the defendant engaged in “fraud and deception to
lure young women” whom he then “enslaved … using violence and intimidation and
permanently branding them as [his] property.” The court cited violent physical
and sexual assaults which the defendant perpetrated “out of greed,”
demonstrating the capacity to “view these women as nothing more than property.”
In imposing the sentence, the court emphasized that, “these women will carry
the scars of their enslavement with memories of your brutality, the manner in
which you branded them as your property, and with the fact that you forced them
to engage in countless sexual encounters with total strangers for you own
profit.”
“This defendant preyed on vulnerable young victims and
cruelly exploited them for his profit,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General
Tom Wheeler of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Trafficking
Victims Protection Act requires traffickers to pay restitution to their
victims, with good reason. Restitution compels traffickers to relinquish the
proceeds of their crimes, and helps restore victims to lives of independence
and freedom. We will continue to pursue restitution as an integral part of our
efforts to seek justice on behalf of victims of human trafficking.”
“Victims of sex trafficking can never be truly compensated
for the horrors that they have endured,” said Acting U.S. Attorney W. Stephen
Muldrow of the Middle District of Florida.
“However, our Office is firmly committed to seeking restitution in these
cases to help victims transition to normal lives.”
This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and the Orlando-based
Metropolitan Bureau of Investigations, and was prosecuted by Assistant United
States Attorney Ilianys Rivera Miranda of the Middle District of Florida, and
Trial Attorney William Nolan of the Civil Rights Division’s Human Trafficking
Prosecution Unit.
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