Santa Ana's Samuel Martinez Gonzalez was born in Mexico, came to the United States at the age of 16 with dreams of leading a prosperous life and, though he gained permanent resident status, now is scheduled to be deported as a despicable felon.
In 2011, Dallas-based Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents assigned to human trafficking and working with Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies arrested Gonzalez, who transported three minor girls–one 15 years old and two 16-year-olds–from Texas for a prostitution ring based out of motels in Garden Grove and Orange.
According to a DHS report, Gonzalez–who lived entirely off the prostitution earnings of the minors plus one adult hooker–offered the girls a trip to California “to kick it.”
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Some of the minors' family members in Texas contacted police and a nationwide missing children report got issued.
After on-the-ball officers located the girls walking on Fourth Street in Santa Ana, the minors were initially uncooperative, but later reported they had been anxious to visit Southern California to see the Pacific Ocean.
Gonzalez bought his employees a large box of condoms, revealing clothes, placed Internet sex ads that failed to disclose their ages and waited for the phone to ring.
During the adventure, an Orange County John tied up and brutally assaulted one of the minors.
This week U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford decided that the appropriate punishment for Gonzalez is 63 months in prison.
When the 26-year-old pimp–who isn't married but has an 11-year-old daughter living with her mother in Texas–emerges from custody he'll be banned from coming within 100 feet of schools, playgrounds, youth centers or any place children gather.
That condition probably is meaningless given that Gonzalez will be deported from the U.S. after he serves his prison sentence.
He hopes to be housed in a federal prison in Texas so that his mother can easily visit him.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.