Foreign National Human Trafficking Rings in the US

Over the past five years, Californians have watched the investigation and prosecution of a vast range of foreign national trafficking rings that are making millions of dollars by exploiting vulnerable people from foreign countries in our communities.

Five foreign national rings operating out of the Inland Empire, were so large they had over 50 different bank accounts and were buying and selling real estate to launder the money back to their homeland. The sex selling taking place is advertised online and the sex buying is conducted through a telemarketing center. One of these rings, placed more than 20,000 sex ads online and the victims were naïve and innocent immigrants who came into the U.S. legally but were exploited in ways hard to comprehend. Most were so afraid they would not cooperate. Most victims were in debt bondage and owed their captors money even after thousands of exploitative sexual encounters.

The increase in the number of undocumented individuals entering our communities has resulted in several large scale foreign national rings operating in the Inland Empire. We will look at the Paredes case study operating out of Colton, California where many unaccompanied young girls from Mexico were being trafficked in Southern California for the purpose of laundering the money back to organized criminal enterprises south of the border. This ring was led by a family Matriarch.

We will also explore how gang trafficking works in California and across the nation. Gangs are sophisticated and organized using technology to find victims, control victims, and exploit victims in incomprehensible ways. Many of the gangs are using apps, video games, dating sites, hook up sites, and social media videos and VPN to recruit sex buyers and sellers and stay in communication with cartels. Gang sex trafficking is some of the most brutal type of trafficking in the world and many gang trafficking rings are controlled from Pr*son using contraband technology.

Foreign national and gang traffickers are totally focused on generating millions of dollars by selling sex and illicit drugs and in the end tens of millions of dollars are laundered to countries outside the U.S. During this session we will look at the many ways money is laundered and examine case studies of how organized crime used naïve and unsuspecting individuals to move dirty money around the world.

Workshop led by Opal Singleton.

Opal Singleton is the President and CEO of Million Kids and serves as the Training and Outreach Coordinator for the Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force. She has trained more than 250,000 government and individual leaders about labor trafficking, child sex trafficking, sextortion, child pornography and social media exploitation. She often appears on television and radio talk shows across the United States.

Opal is an Instructor at USC Price Safe Communities Institute and a Co-Instructor at the USC School of Social Work for the Los Angeles Police Department LEAD program. She is an Instructor at Los Angeles Fire Leadership Training Academy and has served on the Peace Officers Standardized Training panel to develop the training curriculum on human trafficking for law enforcement for the State of California. She also sits on the Board of Directors for Rapha House International in Cambodia, Thailand and Haiti.

Opal is the author and hosts two weekly radio shows. KTIE 590 AM broadcasts “Exploited: Crimes and Technology” throughout Southern California. “Exploited: Crimes against Humanity” is a weekly global internet human exploitation training program that broadcasts through Voice America to more than 170 countries.

Event Venue

Online