Three convicted on human trafficking case, underage sex charges on Central Coast<\/a><\/p>\nThe jury found Packard guilty of all charges and found true multiple aggravating factors, including that the victim was particularly vulnerable, that the crimes involved cruelty and violence, and that Packard\u2019s criminal history showed he posed a serious danger to society.<\/p>\n
Evidence presented at trial showed the victim, a 19-year-old woman from out of state, became stranded in Northern California without a phone, money, or support. <\/p>\n
Packard approached her under the guise of helping, but instead exploited her circumstances, according to the evidence.<\/p>\n
After taking the woman to a hotel in Oakland, Packard forced her into commercial sex acts, the evidence showed. <\/p>\n
He later brought her to Fresno, where he continued to traffic and exploit her through physical violence, intimidation, and threats. <\/p>\n
After months of abuse, the victim was able to escape and contact law enforcement.<\/p>\n
The court also considered Packard\u2019s criminal history, including a 2015 conviction in Merced County for human trafficking of a minor, along with convictions for robbery, evading a police officer, narcotics offenses and failure to register as a sex offender.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuman traffickers prey on vulnerability and use fear, violence, and manipulation to control their victims,\u201d District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp said. <\/p>\n
This sentence holds a repeat offender accountable and reflects our commitment to protecting victims of exploitation and aggressively prosecuting those who profit from human trafficking.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors also presented evidence that shortly before trial, Packard and his wife conspired to contact the victim in an effort to dissuade her from testifying.<\/p>\n
Packard is awaiting trial on separate charges related to witness dissuasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 A Fresno man convicted of human trafficking and pimping was sentenced on Monday to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-342131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}