18 years for sex ring boss convicted of human trafficking

July 12, 2011|Staff report

A Chicago man convicted of running an operation that forced women into prostitution was sentenced to 18 years in prison today, according to the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Troy Bonaparte, 46, of the 8000 block of South Ridgeland Avenue, had been convicted in March of involuntary servitude and trafficking in persons for forced labor and pandering. He was the first person convicted in Cook County under updated laws against human trafficking.

Cook County Judge William Lacy sentenced Bonaparte today.

Bonaparte, who has 55 other arrests on his record, had been arrested on the trafficking charges on Aug. 8, 2010 in an Elk Grove Village motel room after an undercover investigation.

Bonaparte had the women he forced into prostitution call him "Magnificent," prosecutors said. He would rent motel rooms in the city and suburbs and force women to prostitute themselves to between 5 and 25 men a day.

Bonaparte would keep all of the money earned in the prostitution and threaten to beat or kill the women if they tried to disobey him, prosecutors said.

The Human Trafficking Initiative Unit from the state's attorney’s office, including assistant state's attorneys Beth Pfeiffer and Matthew Thrun, had worked on the case in cooperation with the Cook County Sheriff's Police.

"Today's sentence represents a significant achievement in our new efforts to investigate and prosecute the crime of human trafficking, which is occurring in our own backyard," said State's Attorney Anita Alvarez in a release today.

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