PORTLAND — A Biddeford resident who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor in Maine earlier this year has been sentenced to nine years in prison by a U.S. District Court judge.
Isaac “Henny” Suero, 23, was arrested in August 2018 for the crime and had been charged with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of a minor.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen imposed the sentence and also mandated that Suero pay $750 in restitution to the victim and serve five years of supervised release for the crime.
Federal investigators say that in April 2017, Suero persuaded a 15-year-old girl he had met online to engage in prostitution at different locations in Scarborough and Bangor.
According to a court affidavit, Suero paid for the motel rooms where the girl met clients and he also placed advertisements on the since-closed Backpage.com for her.
Investigators say that the girl kept two-thirds of the money she received from prostitution and Suero pocketed a third of the money she earned.
Suero was represented in the case by David R. Beneman of the Federal Defender’s Office.
He had previously been arrested for possession of oxycodone in 2016 in Portland and domestic violence assault in Scarborough in 2018.
Suero’s mother, Lourdes “Lulu” Suero of Biddeford, 46, also was indicted by a federal grand jury on a sex trafficking conspiracy charge related to this same case in January. She entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of the use of a facility in interstate commerce with the intent to promote unlawful activity.
The indictment charged that in April 2017 Lourdes Suero rented a room at a Scarborough motel that the teenage victim used for prostitution activities and she also communicated with the victim by a series of text messages. Prosecutors indicated that the conspiracy charge would be dropped at sentencing.
Sentencing for Lourdes “Lulu” Suero is set for Aug. 16 in U.S. District Court in Portland.
— Executive Editor Ed Pierce can be reached at 282-1535 or by email at editor@journaltribune.com
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