CHICAGO — A suburban Chicago man has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for violently sex trafficking multiple women over the course of a decade.
From 2007 to 2016, Benjamin Biancofiori used false promises of assistance to entice women into performing commercial sex acts. Biancofiori recruited multiple victims and arranged for them to travel to meet customers in the Chicago area and other locations in the United States. He often beat and punched the women, and he kept almost all of the money they received. On one occasion, Biancofiori arranged for a victim to be returned to him at gunpoint after she tried to leave him.
A jury in 2018 convicted Biancofiori, 41, of Naperville, Ill., on sex trafficking and obstruction charges. U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber imposed the prison sentence Thursday after a hearing in federal court in Chicago.
The sentence was announced by John R. Lausch, Jr., United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; Emmerson Buie, Jr., Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Field Office of the FBI; and Justin Campbell, Special Agent-in-Charge of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division in Chicago. Substantial assistance was provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, the Denver Field Office of the FBI, the Carol Stream, Ill., Police Department, and the Naperville Police Department. The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Erika Csicsila and Diane MacArthur.
Two co-defendants of Biancofiori pleaded guilty and admitted conspiring with Biancofiori to engage in sex trafficking. Marcus Willis, of Wheaton, Ill., and Nathan Perez, of West Chicago, Ill., are awaiting sentencing.
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