Houston Gang Member Indicted On Sex Trafficking Caught In Mexico

HOUSTON, TX — A man indicted last November for helping run an international gang-affiliated brothel based in the Bellaire area was caught in Mexico this week after months on the run. William Alberto Lopez, 28, was arraigned in a federal court in Houston on Thursday, one day after his arrest in Mexico.

Lopez is one of 22 members of the Southwest Cholos gang who were indicted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for human smuggling and forced prostitution. Lopez fled the country and assumed a fraudulent Mexican identity through falsification. Court documents stated Lopez refused a return to the United States, and that he became combative with Mexican officials who were trying to detain him Wednesday.

The members of the Cholos were indicted Nov. 2 for human smuggling and forcing their victims to work off their "debt" in brothels in the Houston area.

The gang allegedly smuggled Mexican nationals, El Salvadoran nationals, and other Latin Americans and Asians into the U.S. through the Mexican border, and promised they would be working in restaurants to pay off their smuggling debt into the U.S.

Instead, prosecutors said the undocumented immigrants were forced into prostitution, and forced to work in brothels the gang controlled.

Prosecutors alleged that the victim were tattooed with the name or nickname of the person who controlled them as a way of being identified as property.

So far, federal authorities have identified six victims of this human and sex trafficking scheme, with the youngest being just 14-years old.

The gang also trafficked narcotics and illegal weapons through their Houston-based operation in Gulfton, on the west side of Bellaire.

Prosecutors of the Cholos say the gang has run brothels in apartment complexes in Gulfton and other parts of Texas and throughout Mexico.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Goldman said Lopez was also in charge of a "farm team" brothel in Cancun, Mexico. The "farm team" is where women were trained into prostitution before they were smuggled into the United States to work at a more upscale brothel in Houston.

Photo via Harris County Jail