Case # 15NF1305
Date: May 19, 2015
MAN AND WOMAN CHARGED WITH HUMAN TRAFFICKING, ATTEMPTED PIMPING, AND PANDERING OF MINOR GIRL
FULLERTON – A man and a woman were arraigned yesterday on charges of human trafficking, and attempted pimping and pandering for attempting to exploit a minor girl to be exploited for commercial sex. Lorenze Trannseau Lanier, 33, and Denise Lucy Obregon, 25, both from Los Angeles, were charged and arraigned yesterday May 18, 2015, on one felony count of human trafficking of a minor, one felony count of pandering, and one felony count of attempted pimping. Obregon was charged with an additional misdemeanor count of driving a motor vehicle without a valid license. If convicted, Lanier and Obregon face a maximum sentence of 12 years in state prison and an additional six months for Obregon, due to the misdemeanor. The defendants are in custody on $50,000 bail and are scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on May 27, 2015, at 8:30 a.m. in Department N-3, North Justice Center, Fullerton.
Members of the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force (OCHTTF) and the Orange County District Attorney’s (OCDA) Office work proactively to protect women and minors from falling victim to commercial sexual exploitation. This case was investigated by OCHTTF, a partnership between the Anaheim Police Department, California Highway Patrol, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Huntington Beach Police Department, OCDA, Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and community and non-profit partners.
Deputy District Attorney Bryan Clavecilla of the HEAT Unit is prosecuting this case.
Circumstances of the Case
Lanier is accused of being a human trafficker/pimp and Obregon is accused of working for him as a prostitute and recruiting other women to prostitute for Lanier. In the pimp/prostitution subculture, pimps exploit women and/or children for financial gain often assign ranks to the women they exploit. With the rise in popularity of social media and ease of meeting people on the Internet, many pimps and human traffickers utilize a variety of social media to locate potential victims. They often establish rigid rules that their victims are expected to follow including requiring victims to speak only when spoken to, address the pimp as “Sir” or “Daddy,” assigning seats in the car based on “rank,” and setting daily quotas that the victims are expected to fulfill. The victims are required to turn over all payment they receive for sex acts from sex purchasers to their pimp. Failure to follow these rules can result in deprivation of food and/or physical or emotional abuse. Obregon is accused of being the highest-ranking of Lanier’s prostitutes.
On May 13, 2015, members of the OCHTTF contacted 16-year-old Jane Doe 1, who was in a part of Anaheim known for prostitution. Lanier and Obregon are accused of driving Jane Doe 1 from Los Angeles to Anaheim, and putting her on the street to solicit commercial sex acts from sex purchasers. They are accused of instructing the victim on how to solicit commercial sex acts, how much to charge, and then telling the victim to work for them as a prostitute.
Members of OCHTTF then located Lanier and Obregon nearby, and the defendants were arrested the next day, May 14, 2015.
Proposition 35 and HEAT
In November 2012, California’s anti-human trafficking Proposition 35 (Prop 35) was enacted in California with 81 percent of the vote, and over 82 percent of the vote in Orange County, to increase the penalty for human trafficking, particularly in cases involving the trafficking of a minor by force.
A component of the OCHTTF is the OCDA’s Human Exploitation And Trafficking (HEAT) Unit, which targets perpetrators who sexually exploit and traffic women and underage girls for financial gain, including pimps, panderers, and human traffickers. The HEAT Unit uses a tactical plan called PERP: Prosecution, to bring justice for victims of human trafficking and hold perpetrators responsible using Prop 35; Education, to provide law enforcement training to properly handle human trafficking and pandering cases; Resources from public-private partnerships to raise public awareness about human trafficking and provide assistance to the victims; and Publicity, to inform the public and send a message to human traffickers that this crime cannot be perpetrated without suffering severe consequences.
Under the law, human trafficking is described as depriving or violating the personal liberty of another person with the intent to effect a violation of pimping or pandering. Pimping is described as knowingly deriving financial support in whole or in part from the proceeds of prostitution. Pandering is the act of persuading or procuring an individual to become a prostitute, or procuring and/or arranging for a person work in a house of prostitution.
Penal Code Section 236.1 defines:
(1) “Coercion” includes any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process; debt bondage; or providing and facilitating the possession of any controlled substance to a person with the intent to impair the person’s judgment.
(2) “Commercial sex act” means sexual conduct on account of which anything of value is given or received by any person.
(3) “Deprivation or violation of the personal liberty of another” includes substantial and sustained restriction of another’s liberty accomplished through force, fear, fraud, deceit, coercion, violence, duress, menace, or threat of unlawful injury to the victim or to another person, under circumstances where the person receiving or apprehending the threat reasonably believes that it is likely that the person making the threat would carry it out.
(4) “Duress” includes a direct or implied threat of force, violence, danger, hardship, or retribution sufficient to cause a reasonable person to acquiesce in or perform an act which he or she would otherwise not have submitted to or performed; a direct or implied threat to destroy, conceal, remove, confiscate, or possess any actual or purported passport or immigration document of the victim; or knowingly destroying, concealing, removing, confiscating, or possessing any actual or purported passport or immigration document of the victim.
(5) “Forced labor or services” means labor or services that are performed or provided by a person and are obtained or maintained through force, fraud, duress, or coercion, or equivalent conduct that would reasonably overbear the will of the person.
(6) “Great bodily injury” means a significant or substantial physical injury.
(7) “Minor” means a person less than 18 years of age.
(8) “Serious harm” includes any harm, whether physical or nonphysical, including psychological, financial, or reputational harm, that is sufficiently serious, under all the surrounding circumstances, to compel a reasonable person of the same background and in the same circumstances to perform or to continue performing labor, services, or commercial sexual acts in order to avoid incurring that harm.
(i) The total circumstances, including the age of the victim, the relationship between the victim and the trafficker or agents of the trafficker, and any handicap or disability of the victim, shall be factors to consider in determining the presence of “deprivation or violation of the personal liberty of another,” “duress,” and “coercion” as described in this section.