64 people arrested, 2 women rescued during Riverside County anti-human trafficking operation

CALIFORNIA – Riverside County law enforcement arrested 64 people over the course of 4 days as part of an anti-human trafficking operation, authorities said in a press release on Tuesday.

The arrests were a part of Operation Reclaim and Rebuild, an annual effort by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to fight against sexual slavery and human trafficking in California. The statewide operation looks to rescue victims and apprehends their captors, a Riverside County Sheriff’s Department press release reads.

In 2020, 518 individuals had been arrested while 87 victims, together with 11 youngsters, were recovered in the course of the effort.

This year’s operation in Riverside County went on for four days in a row and concluded on January 28, a Sheriff’s Department press release revealed. It involved the county’s Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force together with the Palm Desert, La Quinta, Lake Elsinore, and Temecula special enforcement groups, and the Riverside and Murrieta police departments.

The county’s operation primarily focused on online prostitution.

Anti-human trafficking task force members had positioned decoy ads within the classified sections of internet sites generally used to solicit prostitution. The task force responded to those that replied to the adverts after which made the arrests when the subjects arrived at the predetermined meeting location.

At the same time, task force members separately negotiated agreed upon acts of prostitution primarily based on different online regional escort ads. In these situations, women had been directed to meet the undercover task force members posing as clients. They were then interviewed, and people who weren’t discovered to be human trafficking victims were also arrested, authorities said.

In total, 64 individuals were arrested, nearly all of them on suspicion of soliciting prostitution. Two ladies believed to be victims of sex trafficking were rescued, officers mentioned.

The arrestees were booked and released upon a written promise to show up to their courtroom appearances, the Sheriff’s Department report says.

Authorities arrested Issac Mciver, 26, of Lakewood (Not Pictured) on suspicion of soliciting a minor for lewd purposes and Corey Wiggins, 20, of Moreno Valley on suspicion of supervising and aiding an individual to commit prostitution.

The following people were arrested throughout the operation on suspicion of soliciting prostitution:

• Audon Aguilera-Cortez, 26, of Riverside (Not Pictured)
• Ian Alexander, 51, of Long Beach
• Gabriel Alvarez, 28, of Coachella
• Ethan Andrews, 29, of Menifee
• Daniel Arriaga-Diaz, 27, of Ontario (Not Pictured)
• Douglas Ayala, 43, of Twentynine Palms
• Matthew Babb, 26, of Bishop (Not Pictured)
• Monte Bertoldo, 53, of Palm Springs
• Kivanc Bilgin, 36, of Murrieta
• Scott Borel, 42, of Murrieta
• Anousack Bounyadeth, 47, of Menifee
• Rutilio Brito, 33, of La Quinta
• Eduardo Calderon, 32, of Los Angeles
• Sergio Castaneda, 37, of San Bernardino
• Wilson Chen, 33, of Lake Elsinore
• Dak Chim, 37, of Rosemead
• Rodolfo Cortez, 37, of Riverside
• Anthony Dagnenica, 52, of Menifee
• Andrew Diaz, 23, of Lake Elsinore
• Michael Eder, 45, of Murrieta
• Margarito Escobar-Orozco, 34, of Lake Elsinore
• Bryan Gaboury, 45, of Chino
• Armando Gatewood, 32, of Murrieta
• Anthony Gonzales, 43, of Chino
• John Hald, 50, of Hesperia
• Donovan Heard, 42, of Huntington Park (Not Pictured)
• Stefan Hyatt, 34, of Apple Valley
• Robert Johnson, 72, of Winchester
• Nathan Keys, 23, of Bellflower (Not Pictured)
• Gari Leal-Vallejo, 35, of Menifee
• Alberto Leon-Lopez, 26, of Vista
• Florencio Lopez, 50, of Thermal
• Randall Lopez, 65, of Azusa
• Roberto Lopez, 47, of Bermuda Dunes
• Rodrigo Macias-Leal, 21, of Cathedral City
• Quincey Morton, 41, of Los Angeles
• Hai Nguyen, 50, of Mission Viejo
• Wesley Orta-Marcano, 26, of Menifee
• Daniel Martin, 42, of Murrieta
• Ricardo Pachuca, 23, of Indio
• Justin Parish, 46, of Murrieta
• Juan Poblano-Martinez, 48, of Thermal
• Goldsborough Purnell, 62, of Palm Springs
• Eliuth Ramirez, 22, of Thermal
• Enrique Ramirez, 23, of Thermal
• Travis Risner, 41, of Murrieta
• Lenard Rodriguez, 25, of Harbor City
• Guadalupe Rosales, 44, of Perris
• Adam Sambrano, 39, of Indio
• Francisco Scott, 38, of Coachella
• Marius Simmons, 47, of Temecula
• Anthony Smith, 26, of Palm Desert
• Kyle Smith, 26, of Palm Desert
• William Spicknall, 37, of Palm Desert
• Thomas Stanford, 42, of Indio
• Christopher Stiles, 26, of Moreno Valley
• Christopher Teague, 23, of Aguanga
• Geoffrey Torres, 53, of Lake Elsinore
• Mason Tubiolo, 27, of Temecula
• Manuel Vega, 44, of Thermal
• Gilbert Vita, 27, of La Habra (Not Pictured)
• Ivory Woodly, 21, of Lynwood (Not Pictured)

Sheriff’s officers say women and kids comprise about 95% of sex trafficking victims. And an estimated one out of six endangered runaways are seemingly victims of sex trafficking, the National Center for Missing and Exploiting Children found.

“Those victimized by commercial sexual exploitation frequently have long histories of emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse or trauma in their backgrounds,” the news release stated. “Sex trafficking victims are often subjected not only to severe forms of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of their trafficker but are also frequently physically and sexually assaulted by those that solicit them for prostitution.”

Full results from the statewide operation weren’t immediately available, although in previous years that announcement has usually been made available by early February.

UPDATE: The statewide figures were soon released. Across California, the seventh annual Operation Reclaim and Rebuild ran from January 26 through February 1, 2021, and involved roughly 100 federal, state, and local agencies and task forces. The coordinated effort produced 450 arrests — 51 of them on felony charges — and the rescue of 39 trafficking victims. Among those recovered were 13 children, including a 15-year-old girl who had been reported missing from Nevada and was located in San Luis Obispo County. Los Angeles County accounted for 145 of the arrests, with victim-care coordinated by organizations such as CAST, Saving Innocence, Zoe International, and Journey Out. For The Aegis Alliance’s reporting on those statewide totals, see our companion coverage: 450 arrested, 39 victims rescued, including children in California anti-human trafficking operation.

Operation Reclaim and Rebuild has continued as a fixture of California’s response to sex trafficking, timed each year to National Human Trafficking Prevention Month in January. The 2022 operation, conducted February 6–12, ended with 413 arrests statewide and the recovery of 65 adult and 7 minor victims, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The annual initiative has only grown in scope since: a more recent statewide push tied to the operation reported more than 600 arrests and 164 victims rescued, including a 13-year-old, after an investigation that began with a single citizen complaint about a residential brothel in Walnut and expanded into the discovery of several more.

The Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, which carried out the local effort detailed above, was formed in 2010, with an eastern Riverside County counterpart established in 2020. Both units pursue cases involving the exploitation of victims through force, fraud, or coercion — commercial sex trafficking of children as well as forced labor, indentured servitude, debt bondage, and slavery — and continue to participate in the statewide operation each year.