Jurors convicted a Queens Village man last week of forcing two teenage girls into a life of prostitution, selling their bodies for his own profit over a nearly year-long period, prosecutors announced on Friday.
Ricardi (aka Dirty) Dumervil, 29, was found guilty on June 29 of sex trafficking and second- and third-degree counts of promoting prostitution. He faces up to 50 years behind bars when he is sentenced on July 27, according to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown.
“The defendant has been convicted of inducing fear of physical harm into two young women so that he could treat them as chattel, commodities to be sold to others for cash, which he then pocketed for himself,” Brown said in a statement on June 30. “Sex trafficking is a violent, degrading and demeaning crime that will not be tolerated in Queens.”
Prosecutors said Dumervil kept the two girls, ages 18 and 19, at an undisclosed location in Queens between April 1, 2014, and March 7, 2015. During that period, he threatened to physically harm the two victims if they did not engage in prostitution on his behalf.
Both victims engaged in prostitution with various individuals at the location where they were held and other places across Queens, sources familiar with the investigation said. They were then forced to hand over the money they received to Dumervil.
