Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Report: Suspects in illegal Las Vegas brothel manipulated, threatened victims

After getting into a car with her new employer and beginning a 300-mile trip to Las Vegas from Phoenix, the victim learned the job she agreed to had changed.

She wouldn't be a "cleaning woman," the job description in the Craigslist ad she responded to. Instead, she'd be giving men massages, said her employer, Ernesto Pineda Solis. And although Solis claimed the massages were "legitimate," the job would change again after she arrived in Las Vegas.

And this time, there was nothing legitimate about it. According to Metro Police, Solis, 29, and an accomplice, Jacqueline Lopez, 26, sexually assaulted her, then forced her into prostitution under the threat of getting her deported or doing harm to her young son, who accompanied her to Las Vegas.

The threats continued the next morning after they arrived, according to the Metro arrest report. Solis reiterated that if she told anyone, he would hurt her child and call police to kick her out of the country. He also said that “she was going to work as a prostitute” with three other women.

The woman told police that she came to the U.S. on a temporary visa to get her son medical treatment. She said Lopez took her son and she didn’t see him for about a week.

She also told police that Solis and Lopez forced her to adopt a different name, took away her phone and ID card and told her not to contact her son's father in Mexico.

Solis and Lopez were arrested in a SWAT raid June 3 on counts of sexual assault, kidnapping and sex trafficking of an adult. The police report redacted the age of the woman and her son.

The raid happened about a month after the woman went into a police station to “press charges against everyone involved because she could not sleep at night anymore.”

They are booked at the Clark County Detention Center.

The operation

The woman told police she worked out of a two-bedroom apartment near Twain Avenue and Swenson Street. The customers would choose the girl from a common area. The rooms were equipped with timers, hand sanitizers, hand towels, bags of condoms and closets filled with lingerie. The woman said she performed sex with over 40 men the first two weeks.

Solis would take photos of the women wearing lingerie and advertise them on sites such as Craigslist with the header, “Latinas nuevas en (new latinas in) Las Vegas.” The ads would list the location of Twain Avenue and Swenson Street.

In an undercover operation, officers called the number.

They received instructions on how to get to a residence, but weren’t given the exact location — “a technique commonly used by brothels to avoid giving information over the phone,” according to the arrest report.

A man stopped leaving the apartment told officers he had paid for sex.

During SWAT raids at two locations, officers found ledgers, condoms, lubricants, a timer, Western Union receipts and a copy of a passport, police said.

Suspects’ side of the story :

In interviews with detectives, Pineda and Lopez admitted to running a sex-for-sale operation, but denied sexually assaulting the woman or holding her against her will, according to the report. Solis said the contact was consensual and that they had sex multiple times. He also said the women were free to come and go as they pleased.

Solis told police that after several weeks he and Lopez had given the woman more control of the operation and let her collect money from the others. However, there was a fallout over missing funds with Lopez accusing the victim of stealing and kicking her out of the apartment, he told police.

Lopez demanded the woman pay her $3,000 or she would send “provocative” photos to her husband, which she eventually did.

The woman told investigators she traveled to and from Mexico several times, but returned because Solis threatened her. He said he knew where she lived and would send someone to harm her and her son.

Finally, she went to police.

Lopez “knew that running the brothel was illegal, but she needed money to pay her bills,” she told police.

Other sex workers

One of the other women forced into prostitution said she responded to an ad to do massages. After sending photos to Solis through Facebook, he picked her up in Tucson, Ariz. During the first week she was tasked with only answering the phone, for which she made $80.

After the week, she told police, Lopez told her she “was going to have to spend time with clients,” instructing her on how much she had to charge.

She said she made $1,800 in five days and gave most of it to Solis.

The other woman answered a Craigslist ad for a job at a spa in Las Vegas. Solis drove to Tijuana, Mexico, to get her and told her she would give massages and no sex acts would be involved.

Eventually she began to prostitute herself, she told police. She had to return home to tend to her husband and children, but Solis persuaded her to return. She did twice.

When she was in Mexico, she told detectives, an unknown person sent her husband text messages saying that his wife was a prostitute and that “they were going to kill him if his wife did not work as a prostitute in Las Vegas.”

Through a phone check, investigators determined Solis had sent the messages.

Solis and Lopez are scheduled to appear in court July 7, jail logs show.

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