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Long Island resident Justin Rivera, age 32, of Amityville, was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison Tuesday, Oct. 11, in US District Court in Manhattan.
The sentence followed an eight-day jury trial in June 2021 in which he was convicted of conspiring to sex traffic two victims.
Federal prosecutors said Rivera - also known as Denzel Rivera, Bangout, and Jackie Chan - conspired with others to coerce the young women to engage in commercial sex acts at an abandoned house in Bohemia in 2015.
They did so using violence, psychological abuse, and false promises of romance and drugs, prosecutors argued.
Rivera physically assaulted one victim on multiple occasions, pointed a gun at her head, and manipulated her heroin addiction by controlling her access to the drug.
On one occasion, he acted as the conspiracy’s “enforcer” by threatening one victim’s mother when she came to the Bohemia house and tried rescuing her daughter, prosecutors said.
After both victims testified at trial, Rivera engaged in witness tampering by offering one woman bribes if she recanted her testimony and falsely claimed that the government had coerced her into testifying.
“Justin Rivera was responsible for terrorizing young women and coercing them into engaging in commercial sex acts,” US Attorney Damian Williams said.
“After Rivera was convicted and in jail, he hatched a plan to subvert the judicial process by attempting to coerce one of his victims—who courageously testified at trial—into recanting her testimony. Today’s sentence holds Rivera accountable for his horrific crimes.”
In addition to his prison time, a judge ordered Rivera to complete five years of supervised release.
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