A pretty significant bust in the Sunshine State.  Read the whole story at SunSentinel.com…

South Florida prostitution ring busted, feds say
By John Holland and Luis F. Perez

They spent the hours between the beatings and threats and forced sexual encounters cloaked in suburbia, stashed invisibly in quiet family homes.

Now they are free, and the ring of smugglers who prosecutors say kidnapped them in Mexico and shuttled them to brothels across South Florida to service as many as 100 clients per week are behind bars.

Federal agents this week charged five people with operating a prostitution gang that targeted girls as young as 14, smuggled them across the border and forced them into a “modern day form of slavery,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

The arrest affidavits outline the victims’ lives spent bouncing between homes and brothels in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Homestead, Miami and elsewhere, always watched over by vicious handlers. At least one was held captive for nine years.

According to the affidavits:

The women collected $25 per encounter. Nearly all of the money went to their pimps. Some called the men their husbands, but all said they lived in constant fear that they or their families back home would be harmed.

The plot began unraveling in January when a victim started cooperating with law enforcement agents. From then until this week, investigators talked to more victims and tracked the smugglers.

The first woman to come forward had been kidnapped in Mexico in 1999, smuggled through Arizona and wound up on the streets of New York.