A Hispanic gang associate has been sentenced to 292 months, more than 24 years, in prison for sex trafficking runaway females as part of his juvenile prostitution business

Alonso Bruno Cornejo Ormeno, 22, a Peruvian-born U.S. citizen, who went by the name "Casper," is a close associate of MS-13. He targeted multiple teenage girls who had run away from home and recruited them to work for him as prostitutes, according to court documents and a news release from the U.S. Attorneys office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Police working on gang crime cases say that teenage prostitution is one of the most alarming trends they've seen. Girls as young as 12 are taken from neighborhoods in the D.C. area and forced into prostitution by violent street gangs. The girls in this case were between 15 and 17 years old. They needed shelter and a way to support themselves, and Cornejo Ormeno promised them money and narcotics by prostituting themselves. One teenager, who police identified as a recruiter for prostitutes says that she looked for girls at schools, at convenience stores or on the run, good candidates to pull into a life of gang servitude. Cornejo Ormeno recruited a sixth-grade girl at a Halloween party. He prostituted each of the juveniles on numerous occasions, including providing them to members of MS-13 for sexual intercourse free of charge. They were threatened with violence, fueled with liquor and marijuana and the money they earned went straight to the gang. According to evidence presented in court, Cornejo Ormeno managed all aspects of his prostitution ring, from recruiting girls to obtaining clients, scheduling the prostitution appointments, collecting the money, transporting the girls to the appointments and instructing them how to engage in sexual intercourse with the paying customers. “Anything that a gang member can do to raise a dollar, they're going to do because they're predatory in nature,” said Joshua Skule of the FBI. Cornejo Ormeno was sentenced by United States District Judge Liam O’Grady. Four other gang-related juvenile sex trafficking cases have been tried within the past year in the federal court in Alexandria.