Lucio Vasquez/Houston Public Media
The Bob Casey United States Courthouse is located on Rusk Street in downtown Houston.
A woman who ran an illegal brothel in southwest Houston faces life in federal prison, capping a yearslong court case surrounding a sex trafficking scheme.
Maria Angelica Moreno-Reyna, also known as “Patty,” was sentenced earlier this month to life in prison on two counts of sex trafficking by means of force, threats, fraud, or coercion and conspiracy to engage in it, according to federal court documents.
She had previously pleaded guilty to those two counts in December 2023 as part of a plea bargain. In that deal, she admitted to operating a brothel connected to the “Southwest Cholos” gang out of the Carriage Way Apartments and Inglewood Village Apartments as well as stash houses in and around the southwest border between Texas and Mexico.
Moreno-Reyna, 59, also admitted to federal prosecutors to working to transport four women, one as young as 14, from Mexico into Houston to work as prostitutes. At least one of them was coerced with the prospect of working at a restaurant purportedly owned by Moreno-Reyna, only to be forced into prostitution, court documents show.
According to court records, associates of Moreno-Reyna physically abused the women and would often make threats of violence against them and their families. One woman said she fled the brothel back to Mexico, only for one of the alleged Southwest Cholos associates to track her down and return her to the brothel.
Nearly two dozen people were initially indicted by a federal grand jury in 2017 for the Southwest Cholos operation. Most were charged with counts of sex trafficking, human smuggling or other similar charges.
A defense attorney for Moreno-Reyna was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
Moreno-Reyna had originally faced 27 criminal charges, but pleaded guilty only to the two aforementioned charges. The other charges were dismissed Oct. 9, when she was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences for each of the charges to which she pleaded guilty, with restitution to be determined.